720. And cast them unto the earth, signifies their extinction and destruction. This is evident from the signification of "casting to the earth," when said of the "stars" by which is signified the knowledges of truth and good from the Word, thus truths; here it means to extinguish and destroy, for truths are extinguished and destroyed when they are falsified and adulterated. Truths falsified and adulterated are more false than falsities from any other source; for falsities from other sources do not so extinguish and destroy truths, for they give some place to truths in or near themselves. By falsities from other sources, those especially are meant that are from ignorance, from fallacies, and from religion with those who do not have the Word. It is to be known that those who live in evil, and yet say that they are saved because they have faith, have scarcely any genuine truth, however many things they know and draw forth from the sense of the letter of the Word; for the sense of the letter of the Word is such that when it is not comprehended interiorly it may be explained in various ways, and when that sense is not looked at from genuine truths it is believed according to the letter and is falsified, according to what was shown in the preceding article in the comparison with the movement and position of the sun. That such have scarcely any genuine truth was ascertained with some in the spiritual world who had confirmed faith alone by doctrine and life, who it was found did not know and acknowledge a single genuine truth; angels investigated it and were surprised. This showed clearly that they had extinguished and destroyed with themselves the truths of the Word. This, then, is meant by "the dragon drew down the third part of the stars of heaven with his tail, and cast them to the earth;" as the he-goat did also in Daniel:

The horn of the he-goat waxed great even to the host of the heavens, and some of the host and of the stars it cast down to the earth and trampled upon them; and it cast down the truth to the earth (Daniel 8:10, 12).

"The host of the heavens" means all the truths and goods of heaven and the church. (The stars that shall fall from heaven have a like signification, Matthew 24:29)

6098. 'And they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers' means that it did not come up to their state of life. ¹ This is clear from the meaning of 'attaining to' here as coming up to, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'the days' and 'the years of life' as states of spiritual life, as above in 6093, 6095, 6097. The reason 'attaining to' here means coming up to is that his fathers Isaac and Abraham represented higher, that is, more internal, things than he. 'Abraham' in the highest sense represented the Lord's Divine itself, 'Isaac' the Lord's Divine Rational, and 'Jacob' His Divine Natural. For the representation of 'Abraham' as the Lord's Divine itself, see 1965, 1989, 2011, 7245, 7251, 3305 (end), 3439, 3703, 4615; for the representation of 'Isaac' as the Divine Rational, 1893, 2066, 2072, 2083, 2630, 2774, 3012, 3194, 3210, 4615; and for the representation of 'Jacob' as the Divine Natural in respect of truth and in respect of good, 3305, 3509, 3525, 3546, 3576, 3599, 4286, 4538, 4570, 4615. That being so, 'Abraham' also represents the celestial degree with man, 'Isaac' the spiritual degree, and 'Jacob' the natural, for the reason that the regeneration of man is an image of the Glorification of the Lord, 3138, 3212, 3296, 3490, 4402, 5688. From all this one may now see that 'they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers' means that it did not come up to their state of life.

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