23. Nothing is more common in the Word than for a day to be understood as meaning the times, as in Isaiah:
The day of Jehovah is near. Look — the day of Jehovah is coming! I will shake heaven, and the earth will tremble right out of its place, on the day when my anger blazes up. The time of his coming is near, and its days 1 will not be postponed. (Isaiah 13:6, 9, 13, 22)
In the same prophet:
In the days of old she was old. It will happen on that day that Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, corresponding to the days of one king. (Isaiah 23:7, 15)
Because a day stands for a time period, it is also taken to mean the state we are in during that period, as in Jeremiah:
Doom to us! For the day has faded, for the shadows of evening have lengthened. (Jeremiah 6:4)
In the same prophet:
If you nullify my compact with the day and my compact with the night, so that there is no daytime or night at their times ... (Jeremiah 33:20, 25)
And again:
Renew our days as in ancient times. (Lamentations 5:21) 2
Footnotes:
1. The phrase "its days" here refers literally to the final days of Babylon. [LHC]
2. Swedenborg here introduces two quotes by saying that they came from "the same prophet," namely, Jeremiah, yet one of them is from Jeremiah and the other from Lamentations. This is because Swedenborg, like others in his day, saw Lamentations as a book by Jeremiah. [LHC]
