487. The symbolism of days as those times and states in general was shown in the first chapter [§23], where the days of creation symbolize nothing else.

It is very common for the Word to call all units of time "days." ¹ In this verse the practice is quite obvious, as it also is in verses 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 27, and 31 below. The general states at those times accordingly are symbolized by days as well. When years are mentioned in conjunction with days, the time spans represented by those years symbolize the nature of the states then; in other words, they symbolize the specific states.

[2] The earliest people had particular numbers they used for symbolizing various aspects of the church: three, seven, ten, twelve, and additional ones that they compounded out of these and others. This allowed them to sum up the states of the church. As a result, these numbers contain hidden wisdom that would require a long explanation. It was a way of evaluating different states in the church.

The same phenomenon occurs at many other places in the Word, especially in the prophets. In the rites of the Jewish religion there are also numbers for both timing and measurement in connection with sacrifices, minhas, ² oblations, and other acts of worship; and everywhere those numbers occur they symbolize holiness in the thing they are applied to.

What these numbers specifically involve, then — the eight hundred in this verse, the nine hundred thirty in the next, and so on for the numbers of years in the following verses — is more than I can ever convey. They all come down to changes in the state of religion among those people, seen in relation to their general state.

Later on, by the Lord's divine mercy, I will need to tell what the simple numbers up to twelve symbolize. ³ Unless this is known first, the symbolism of their products cannot be grasped.

Footnotes:

1686. Four kings against five symbolizes the unity of the truth and goodness and the disunity of the evil and falsity, as the symbolism of four and of five shows. Four symbolizes unity because it symbolizes pairings, just as two does when it has to do with a marriage between things, as noted at §720. Five, however, symbolizes disarray because it symbolizes a small amount, as illustrated at §649. All meanings depend on the subject under discussion.

1285. The meaning of the whole earth had one language as the fact that a single broad view of doctrine existed everywhere can be seen from the symbolism of a language [or lip] in the Word (to be discussed just below).

This verse, in just a few words, describes what conditions had been like in the ancient church, in that it had held a single overall view of doctrine. The next verse portrays the commencement of falsification and adulteration, and the following verses up to verse 9 tell how the church became thoroughly corrupt, so that it no longer had any internal worship. Directly afterward, the text takes up the second ancient church, started by Eber, and eventually it turns to the third ancient church, which was the beginning of the Jewish religion. (Three churches came in a row after the Flood.)

[2] The first ancient church had one language and the same words — that is, a doctrinal view that was united in both its general and its particular tenets — despite its broad spread throughout the globe. It displayed this unity even though its forms of worship, both deep and shallow, differed everywhere, as the last chapter showed. (Each nation mentioned there symbolized a different doctrinal position and a different style of ritual.) ¹ As far as that church and its unity is concerned, the situation is this:

Heaven contains a countless number of communities, each of them different but still united, because the Lord leads them all as one. (For more on this, see §§457, 551, 684, 685, 690.) It resembles a human being, in whom all the elements without exception are regulated as a single whole, by a single soul, despite the vast number of organs and of component parts to the organs, viscera, and limbs, each component acting in a different way from the next. Or it is like the human body, in which all the activities of force and motion, though unlike, are still regulated by a single motion of the heart and a single motion of the lungs, and in which they still form a unified whole.

The reason they are able to act as one in this way is that heaven has a single stream of influence, which each individual receives according to his or her own character. (The stream of influence consists of the emotional effect that the Lord in all his mercy and vital energy has on us.) Even though there is a single stream [received in different ways], all things obey and yield to it as a united whole. This is the result of the love that heaven's inhabitants share.

[3] Such was the case with the first ancient church. There were as many general categories of inner and outer worship in it as there were nations, as many subcategories as clans in the nations, and as many specific types as there were people in the church. Yet they all had one language and the same words, which is to say that they all had one doctrinal view in general and particular.

A doctrinal view is united when everyone loves each other, or displays charity. Mutual love and charity bring such people together into one despite the variety among them, because it draws unity out of variety. When everyone practices charity, or loves each other, then no matter how many people there are — even if they number in the hundreds of millions — they share a single goal: the common good, the Lord's kingdom, and the Lord himself. Variety in doctrine and worship are, again, like the variety of senses and organs in the human body, which contribute to the perfection of the whole. When doctrine or worship varies, then the Lord, working by means of charity, affects and acts on each of us in a way uniquely suited to our personality. In this way he fits each and every one of us into the order of things, on earth just as in heaven. Then, as the Lord himself teaches [Matthew 6:10], his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

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