The Bible generally uses two different terms for large groups: “people” and “nations.” When it uses “nation,” it is talking about a group with the desire for good as its ultimate underlying motivation; when it uses the term “people” it is talking about a group whose deep motivation is to seek true ideas and concepts. As with all symbolism in the Bible, this can be also used in a negative sense, to describe groups with the lust for evil or those driven by false concepts. It can also be used in the abstract, with “nation” representing desires for good themselves and “people” representing true ideas themselves. In a way, these meanings make sense if we look at the two words themselves. “People” brings to mind a collection of individuals, and that is somewhat how it is with ideas -- you can have many of them that inter-relate, but also stand somewhat on their own, individually. “Nation” is a more unified term, reflecting the way that a desire for good tends to unify other feelings.

1902. 'And Abram hearkened to Sarai's voice' means it could not have been achieved in any other way. This becomes clear from the train of thought in the internal sense and from the necessity that the human rational can be born in this and no other way. If man were not steeped in any hereditary evil, the rational would be born straightaway from the marriage of the celestial things belonging to the internal man with the spiritual things belonging to the same; and through the rational the faculty of knowing would be born. This would mean that on entering the world a person would possess straightaway within himself fully-formed faculties of reason and of knowing, for this would all be in accordance with the order that belongs to influx. This may be deduced from the fact that all animals without exception are born into a fully-formed faculty of knowing what they need and what is suitable for them in the way of food, safety, habitat, and producing offspring, because their inborn nature is in accordance with order. For what other reason is man born without the same faculties than that in his case order has been destroyed - for he alone is born without any knowledge?

[2] That which causes him to be born without any knowledge is hereditary evil received from his father and from his mother. Because of that evil all his faculties are turned in a contrary direction insofar as goods and truths are concerned, so that the latter are not able through an immediate influx of celestial and spiritual things from the Lord to be translated into correspondent forms. This is the reason why man's rational has to be formed in an entirely different manner or way, that is to say, by means of facts and cognitions entering in through the senses, and so by the external route, thus by what is a reversal of order. In this way, miraculously so, a person is made rational by the Lord. This is described by 'going in to the servant-girl', which means the joining of the internal man to the exterior man, and by the statement that 'Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai', which means that it could not have been achieved in any other way.

[3] Because the Lord was born as any other is born and had a heredity from the mother, He was like any other in this respect also, the purpose being that through the conflicts brought about by temptations and through victories He might restore all things to order. His Rational as well therefore was conceived and born as it is with any other, yet with the difference that the Divine, or Jehovah - and so the life belonging to love towards the whole human race, on whose behalf and for whose salvation He fought in all His temptations - resided in every single thing that was His inmostly.