Seven, as in Revelation 15:1, signifies everything in an universal sense. The number 'seven' was considered holy, as is well known, because of the six days of creation, and the seventh, which is the celestial self, where peace, rest, and the Sabbath is. The number seven occurs so frequently in the rites of the Jewish church and is held holy everywhere.

So times were divided into seven, longer and shorter intervals, and were called weeks, like the great intervals of times till the coming of the Messiah, in Daniel 9:24-25. The time of seven years is called 'a week' by Laban and Jacob, as in Genesis 29:27-28. So wherever the number seven occurs, it is considered holy and sacred, as in Psalm 119:164, and in Isaiah 30:26.

As the periods of a person's regeneration are distinguished into six, prior to the seventh, or the celestial self, so the times of vastation are also distinguished, until nothing celestial is left. This was represented by the many captivities of the Jews, and by the last Babylonian captivity, which lasted seven decades, or seventy years. This was also represented by Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel 4:16, 22, 29. It also refers to the vastation of the end times, in Revelation 15:1, 7-8. They should 'tread the holy city under foot, forty and two months, or six times seven,' as in Revelation 11:2 and Revelation 5:1. So the severity and increments of punishment were expressed by the number seven, as in Leviticus 26:18, 21, 24, 28 and Psalm 79:12.

(参考: Apocalypse Explained 5, 7-8, 15; Arcana Coelestia 395; Daniel 9, 9:24, 9:25; Psalms 119)

4661. The preliminary section of the previous chapter continued the explanation of what the Lord foretold about the last period of the Church, that section dealing with what He foretold by means of the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25:1-13. After this another parable follows, the one about the servants to whom a man going away on a journey gave talents. He gave five to the first, two to the second, and one to the third, which they were to trade with. He who received five talents used them to gain five more; he who received two used his to gain two more; but he who received one hid it in the ground. But this parable holds practically the same ideas within it as those in the parable of the ten virgins, so let us move on to and explain the final section in that chapter - Matthew 25:31-end - which in the letter reads as follows: