“Day” can be used to mean “daytime” or as a way of measuring time. The meanings are related, but with distinctions.
All measurements of time in the Bible, according to Swedenborg, describe spiritual states we experience rather than time as we understand it (which makes sense; we now know that time is simply a physical dimension in the natural world). So “days” used to measure time illustrate a progression we can make as we encounter new true ideas and through them seek new states of love and caring (or, too often, the states that result as we reject these ideas in our desire to love only ourselves).
And when we do embrace the Lord’s leading and seek to be loving in one of those states, we are in effect turning ourselves toward the Lord, much as the earth turns to face the warmth and light of the sun in the daytime. Used in that sense, then, “day” represents an enlightened, loving spiritual state.
Passages from Swedenborg
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 221
- ‘Breeze, or breath,* of the daytime’ means a time when the Church still had a residue of perception. This becomes clear from the meaning of ‘day’ and of ‘night’. The most ancient people compared states of the Church to the times of the day and of the night. States when the Church still had light they compared to times of the day; therefore this verse speaks of ‘the breath’ or breeze of the daytime’ as when they still had some residue of perception, from which they knew that they were fallen. The Lord too calls a state in which there is faith ‘the daytime’ and one in which there is none ‘the night’, as in John,
I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; night is coming when nobody will be able to work. John 9:4.
The consecutive states of man’s regeneration for the same reason were called ‘days’ in Chapter 1.
Arcana Coelestia n. 488
[3] In the sense of the letter ‘day’ cannot be seen to mean anything other than a period of time, but in the internal sense it means a state. Angels, who abide in the internal sense of the Word, do not know what a period of time is, for the activity of the sun and moon with them does not produce divisions of time. As a consequence they do not know what a day or a year is, but only what states and changes of state are. This is why among angels, who abide in the internal sense of the Word, anything connected with matter, space, and time, goes unnoticed, as with the following usages in the sense of the letter in Ezekiel,
. The day is near, even the day of Jehovah is near, a day of cloud; it will be a time of the nations. Ezek. 30:3.
And in Joel,
Alas for the day! For the day of Jehovah is near, and as destruction. Joel 1:15.
Here ‘a day of cloud’ stands for cloud or falsity, ‘a day of the nations’ for the nations or wickedness, and ‘the day of Jehovah’ for vastation. When the concept of time is removed there remains the concept of the state of the things existing during that period of time. The same applies to the days and the years that are mentioned so many times in this chapter.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 936
- ‘Day and night’ means the state of the same person, that is, of one who is regenerate, as regards things belonging to his understanding, which alternate as day and night do. This is clear from what has just been stated. Summer and winter have reference to things of the will because like things of the will, they are manifestations of heat and of cold, whereas day and night have reference to things of the understanding because, like things of the understanding, they are manifestations of light and darkness.
Apocalypse Explained (Tansley) n. 664
- And after three days and a half.- That this signifies when completed, thus the end of the old church, and the beginning of a new church, is evident from the signification of three days and a half, as denoting fulness or completion at the end of the old church, when there is the beginning of a new church, concerning which see above (n. 658). The reason why it is said, after three days and a half, is, that days, in the Word, signify states, here, the last state of the church. For all times, in the Word, as hours, days, weeks, months, years, and ages, signify states in the Word, as in this case, the last state of the church, when there is no longer any good of love or truth of faith remaining. Because days signify states, and since in the first chapter of Genesis the establishment of the Most Ancient Church is treated of which was accomplished successively from one state to another, therefore it is said there that there was evening and there was morning the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and sixth days, unto the seventh, when it was completed (Gen. i. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), and the days there do not mean days, but the successive states of the regeneration of men at that time, and the consequent establishment of the church with them. So also elsewhere in the Word.