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.

900. The symbolism of the second month as all the stages that precede rebirth can be seen from the symbolism of two in the Word. Two symbolizes the same thing as six, which is the fighting and hard work that come before rebirth. So here it means all the stages we go through before becoming regenerate.

The longest and shortest intervals in the Word are generally split in three or in seven and are called days, weeks, months, years, or "ages." ¹ Three and seven are holy; two and six, being just one less, are not holy but relatively profane, as shown before (§720).

Three and seven also mean something sacrosanct, each because of its connection with the Last Judgment, predicted as coming on the third or else the seventh day. ² Every person — both collectively and individually — has a last judgment when the Lord comes. There was a last judgment when the Lord came into the world. There will be a last judgment when he enters into his glory. There is a last judgment when he comes individually to each person. There is also a last judgment for each person who dies. This last judgment is the third day and the seventh day, which is holy for those who have lived good lives but unholy for those who have lived evil lives. Consequently, a third day and a seventh is predicted for those judged worthy of death and for those judged worthy of life, so that the numbers symbolize what is unholy for those with a verdict of death but what is holy for those with a verdict of life.

Two and six, the numbers just before three and seven, bear a relationship to them and symbolize in general every preceding stage. This is the meaning of the numbers two and six, and the meaning adapts to the subject at hand and to whatever the subject applies to, which the numbers describe.

All of this will become clearer from the discussion of the number twenty-seven in the next section.

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