194. And thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. That this signifies man's ignorance of that time, and of his state then, is evident from the signification of hour, as being the time when man is to die, and also his state at the time; and from the signification of not knowing it, as being ignorant. It is said, what hour I will come upon thee, namely, as a thief; and in the sense of the letter is hereby meant that the Lord would thus come, but in the spiritual sense it is meant that evils and falsities would steal the knowledges which they have from the Word; for, in the sense of the letter of the Word, it is attributed to Jehovah, or the Lord, that He does evil, but, in the spiritual sense it is meant that He does evil to no one, but that man does evil to himself (as may be seen, Arcana Coelestia 2447, 5798, 6071, 6991, 6997, 7533, 7632, 7643, 7877, 7679, 7710, 7926, 8227, 8228, 8284, 8483, 8632, 9010, 9128, 9306, 10431).

[2] The reason why hour also signifies state is, because in the Word all times, as a day, a week, a month, a year, an age, signify states of life, and hence hour has a similar signification. (The cause of this may be seen in the work, Heaven and Hell 162-169, where time in heaven is treated of.)

But because hour signifies both time and state, therefore, where hour is mentioned in the Word it may to some extent be known that something other than time is signified by it.

In Matthew:

A householder hired labourers into his vineyard, who, laboured from the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, and the eleventh, and received an equal reward (Matthew 20:1-17).

By these hours in the world are meant times, but in heaven states of the life, because there are no hours in heaven, as times there are not measurable, and divided into days, and these into hours, as in the world, therefore instead of these they there perceive the states of the life of those who die, whether old, young, youths or children, who have alike procured to themselves spiritual life. To labour in the vineyard, denotes the procuring of spiritual life by means of knowledges of good and truth from the Word applied to the uses of life. (That a vineyard in the Word signifies the spiritual church, and spiritual life pertaining to man, may be seen, Arcana Coelestia 3220, 9139.) By the third, the sixth, and the ninth hours similar states of life are signified; for all numbers in the Word are significative, and those numbers have a similar signification. Three signifies a full state, or what is complete even to the end (see n. 2788, 4495, 7715, 8347, 9825). The like is signified by six and nine; but the number eleven signifies a state not yet full, but yet a state of reception, such as that of well-disposed children and infants. The twelfth hour up to which they all laboured, signifies truths and goods in their fulness (see n. 577, 2089, 2129, 2130, 3272, 3858, 3913. That all numbers in the Word are significative, see n. 4495, 4670, 5265, 6175, 9488, 9659, 10217, 10253; and that multiplied numbers have a similar signification to the simple numbers from which they arise by multiplication, hence three, six, and nine have a similar signification, see n. 5291, 5335, 5708, 7973).

[3] Since twelve signifies truths and goods in their fulness, and thus a state of light or of man's intelligence therefrom, the Lord says,

"Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any one walk in the day, he stumbleth not" (John 11:9).

In other places, also by hours are signified states of life, as in the Apocalypse:

"The four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, to slay the third part of men" (9:15).

By the times here mentioned are meant states of evil in men, as will be seen when we come to the explanation of those words.

From these considerations it is now evident that by, Thou shalt not know in what hour I will come upon thee, is meant man's ignorance not only of the time of his death, but also of the state of his life at that time, which state remains to eternity; for according to the quality of the state of man's past life even to the end of it, such he remains to eternity.

[4] Similar things are frequently said by the Lord in the Evangelists, as in Matthew:

"Ye know not in what hour your Lord doth come; be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man shall come" (24:42, 44).

Again:

"The lord of the servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of" (24:50).

And again:

"Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man shall come" (25:13).

It must be known that a man remains to eternity such as the quality of his whole life has been to the end, and not at all such as he is at the hour of death; for repentance then in the case of the evil is of no avail, but with the good it confirms the state.

8227. 'And the Egyptians were fleeing to meet it' means that they plunged themselves into the falsities arising from evil. This is clear from the meaning of 'fleeing to meet the sea' as plunging themselves into falsities arising from evil, which are meant by the waters of that sea, 8226. The situation is that a person who is ignorant of causes lying on more internal levels inevitably believes that the bad things which happen to the evil, such as their undergoing punishment, vastation, and damnation, and finally being cast into hell, are attributable to the Divine. That is exactly how it seems to him, since such things occur at the presence of the Divine, 8137, 8138, 8188. Even so, no such thing happening to them is attributable to the Divine, only to themselves. The Divine and His presence have one end alone in view, namely the protection and salvation of the good. When the Divine is present with them, protecting them from those who are evil, the evil feel all the more antagonistic towards them, and all the more antagonistic towards the Divine Himself; for they hate Him most of all. Those who hate good hate most of all the Divine. So they rush to the attack, and in the measure that they do so they subject themselves, in keeping with the law of order, to punishment, vastation, and damnation, and at length cast themselves into hell. From all this it becomes clear that the Divine, that is, the Lord, does only what is good and does nothing bad to anyone; rather, those ruled by evil subject themselves to such miseries. This is what is meant when it says that the Egyptians fled to meet the sea; that is, they plunged themselves into the falsities arising from evil.

[2] On this subject something further must be said. The belief also exists that bad things are attributable to the Divine because He allows them and does not take them away. And one who allows something and does not take it away when he has the power to do so appears to will it and so to be the cause of it. But the Divine allows it because He cannot prevent it or take it away. The Divine wills only what is good; if therefore He were to prevent or remove bad things, that is to say, the miseries of punishment, vastation, persecution, temptation, and the like, He would be willing something bad. For then the people who must suffer them could not have their faults corrected and evil would increase until it held sway over good. The situation is like that with a king who acquits the guilty. He is the cause of the ill done by them subsequently in his kingdom, and he is the cause of the resulting lawlessness of others, not to mention that the evil person becomes more deeply immersed in evil. Therefore although a good and righteous king has the power to cancel punishments, yet he cannot, for if he cancels them he does not do what is good but what is bad. It should be recognized that all forms of punishment as well as of temptation in the next life have good as their end in view.