4174. 'That stolen by day and that stolen by night' means the evil of merit-seeking in a similar way. This is clear from the meaning of 'stolen' or theft as the evil of merit-seeking. The evil of merit-seeking exists when someone attributes good to himself and supposes that it originates in himself, and on that account wishes to merit salvation. This is the evil meant in the internal sense by 'theft'. But the situation with this evil is that at first all who are being reformed imagine that good originates in themselves and as a consequence that they merit salvation through the good which they perform. For the supposition that they merit salvation through the good which they perform is the outcome of their supposition that good originates in themselves, since the one supposition clings to the other. But people who allow themselves to be regenerated do not set their minds firmly in that way of thinking or convince themselves that such ideas are right. Instead these are gradually dispersed. Indeed as long as a person stays in the external man, as all do at the beginning of reformation, he inevitably thinks in that way. But he is thinking solely from the external man.

[2] But when the external man together with its evil urges is being removed and the internal man is starting to be active, that is, when the Lord is flowing in through the internal man with the light of intelligence and by means of it giving light to the external man, that person starts to think in a different way and to attribute good not to himself but to the Lord. From this one may see what the evil of merit-seeking is, which is meant here by evil through which good comes - the kind of evil for which one is not blameworthy, dealt with already. But if, on reaching adult years, a person firmly establishes this evil in his thinking and becomes utterly convinced that he merits salvation through the good which he performs, that evil becomes strongly rooted in him and cannot be put right. For such people claim to themselves that which is the Lord's. So they are not receivers of good which flows in constantly from the Lord; for the moment this enters them they channel it into themselves and into their proprium, and in so doing they defile it. These evils are what are meant in the proper sense by 'thefts', see 2609.

2609. But as regards commandments to do with life ¹ - as all the Ten Commandments are, and as very many in the Law and the Prophets are because the service which these perform is to man's very life, they are of use in both senses, the literal sense and the internal. The things that exist in the literal sense were for the people and peoples of that period, who had no understanding of things that were internal, while the things that exist in the internal sense were for the angels, who have no interest in things that are external. Unless the Ten Commandments also contained internal things, they would never have been declared on Mount Sinai by means of so great a miraculous event; for everything contained in them, such as the commands to honour one's parents, not to steal, not to murder, not to commit adultery, not to covet what belongs to another, is known to gentiles also and has been laid down for them in their laws. And the children of Israel too, being members of the human race, ought to have known the same without any such declaration from Sinai. But it was because those commandments in both senses were to be of service to man's life, and were as external forms produced from internal, which corresponded to one another, that they came down out of heaven on Mount Sinai by means of so great a miraculous event - being declared and heard in heaven in the internal sense and declared and heard on earth in the external sense.

[2] Take, for example, the words that those who honoured their parents would have their days prolonged upon the land. By 'parents' the angels in heaven perceived the Lord, and by 'land' His kingdom, which those who worship Him in love and faith would possess for ever as sons and heirs. People on earth however understood parents by 'parents', the land of Canaan by 'the land', and years of life by 'the prolonging of their days'. By 'do not steal' angels in heaven perceived that they were not to take anything away from the Lord nor to ascribe any righteousness and merit at all to themselves. People on earth however understood that they were not to steal. From this it is clear that these commandments are true in both senses. Or take the commandment 'not to murder'; angels in heaven perceived that they were not to hate anyone nor to destroy any good and truth existing with another. But people on earth perceived that friends must not be murdered. And so it is with all the other commandments.

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