9152. 'He shall repay double' means restoration to the complete amount. This is clear from the meaning of 'making repayment' as undertaking restoration, dealt with in 9087, [9097;] and from the meaning of 'double' as to the complete amount, dealt with in 9103. The present verse and those that follow down to verse 14 deal in the internal sense with a person's loss of the truth of faith, and so with his loss of spiritual life, and the restoration of it; for the truths of faith are the means by which a person is brought to the good of charity and made spiritual. But these matters dealt with in the internal sense of the verses that come immediately after this are for the most part unknown to a person. The reason for this is that people do not know what spiritual life is, nor therefore that this life is life on a more internal level, distinct and separate from natural life, which is that on a more external level. Nor do people know that the Lord imparts spiritual life to a person through his acceptance of the truth of faith within the good of charity. So it is that the matters stated regarding the loss of that life and the restoration of it fall into thick darkness in a person because they are among things he knows nothing about. Yet such matters constitute angelic wisdom, for they are suited to the light in which angels live. When therefore a member of the Church in whom the good of faith is present reads the Word, the angels attach themselves to the person and take delight in him because they delight in the wisdom which flows into them from the Lord through the Word. In this way heaven is linked to mankind; and without the Word that link would not exist. For the nature of the Word is such that not even a tittle or a jot of it in the original language fails to touch angels' affections and link the angels to mankind. I can positively declare this to be so because I have been shown it from heaven.

1053. That 'and the bow will be in the cloud' means the state of that man is clear from what has been stated and shown already about the bow in the cloud, that is to say, in the next life a person or soul is known among angels from his sphere; and as often as it pleases the Lord that sphere is represented by means of colours like those of the rainbow, variously according to each person's state as to faith in the Lord and thus respectively as to goods and truths of faith. In the next life colours present themselves to view, which on account of their brilliance and splendour are immensely superior in beauty to colours seen with the eyes on earth. Each colour represents something celestial or spiritual.

[2] Those colours derive from the light in heaven, and from the variegation of spiritual light, as stated above. Indeed angels live in light so bright that the light of the world is in comparison no light at all. The light of heaven in which angels live, compared with the light of the world, is as the light of the sun at midday to the light of a candle that is put out and ceases to give any light at all when the sun rises. In heaven there is celestial light and there is spiritual light. Let me compare the two by saying that celestial light is as the light of the sun, while spiritual light is as the light of the moon. But all manner of variation exists depending on the state of the angel receiving the light. The same applies to colours since they are a product of the light. In the heaven of celestial angels the Lord Himself is the Sun, and in the heaven of spiritual angels the Moon. To people who have no conception of the life which souls lead after death these matters are unbelievable. They are nevertheless completely true.