493. There is no need for me to linger any further over the symbolism of days and years as those times and states. I must only say here that in the world, the necessity for periods of time and units of measure, expressed in numbers, is unavoidable, since they are among the most concrete features of the natural world. But every time such terms are used, the number of days and years (and the numbers used in measurement) symbolize something abstracted from time (and measure). Just what is being symbolized depends on what the number is. This is true of the six days' labor and the holy seventh day, discussed above [§395]. It is true of the jubilee that was proclaimed in the forty-ninth year of every cycle and celebrated in the fiftieth [Leviticus 25, 27]. It is true of the twelve tribes of Israel, matching the number of the Lord's apostles; of the seventy elders [Numbers 11:16, 24-25] and the equal number of the Lord's disciples [Luke 10:1]; and of many other phenomena. The numbers in these places symbolize some special quality, as distinguished from the objects to which they apply. Once the qualities are isolated, their various states are what the numbers symbolize.