656. Verses, 9, 10. And they of the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations shall see their bodies three days and a half, and they shall not suffer their bodies to be put in sepulchres. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them and shall be glad, and shall send gifts one to another, because those two prophets tormented them that dwell upon the earth.

"And they of the people and tribes and tongues and nations shall see," signifies with all who are in falsities and evils of religion, of doctrine, and of life; "their bodies three days and a half," signifies the complete extinction of Divine Truth and Divine Good; "and they shall not suffer their bodies to be put in sepulchres," signifies their rejection and damnation. "And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them and shall be glad," signifies the delights of infernal love with those who are opposed to the goods and truths of the church; "and they shall send gifts one to another," signifies their consociation; "because those two prophets tormented them that dwell upon the earth," signifies anxiety of heart in the devastated church on account of these.

4603. 'The sons of Jacob were twelve' means a state in which all things were now present in the Divine Natural. This is clear from the representation of 'Jacob' as the Divine Natural, often dealt with already; and from the meaning of 'twelve' as all, and when used in reference to the sons of Jacob, or to the tribes named after these, as all aspects of truth and good, dealt with in 2089, 2129, 2130, 3272, 3858, 3913, 3939. The subject so far has been the way in which the Lord made his Natural within Him Divine, for 'Jacob' has represented the Natural; but now the subject becomes the joining of the Divine Natural to the Rational. This joining together is represented by Jacob's coming to Isaac, for 'Isaac' represents the Lord's Divine Rational. This explains why all the sons of Jacob are listed once again, since every aspect of truth and good had to be present within the Natural before it could be fully joined to the Rational. The reason for this particular listing of them is the service which the natural renders the rational as the receptacle for it. But one should recognize that Jacob's sons are now mentioned in a different order from before; the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah - Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher - are mentioned last, though in actual fact these were born before Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. The reason for this difference is that at this point the subject is the order in which truths and goods exist within the Natural when this has been made Divine, for it is the state belonging to the subject under discussion that determines the order in which their names appear, see 3862, 3926, 3939.