524. "The nations were angry." (11:18) This symbolically means that people who were caught up in faith alone and thus in evil practices were enraged, and harassed those who opposed their faith.

Nations mean people caught up in evil practices, and abstractly, the evil practices themselves (nos. 147, 483). Here, however, it means people caught up in faith alone, because they are the subject here, and they are caught up in evil practices because their religion says that the Law does not condemn them, provided they have faith that Christ took away its condemnation.

Their being angry means, symbolically, not only that they were enraged, but also that they harassed people who opposed that faith of theirs, as can be seen from the description of the dragon in the next chapter, chapter 17, and later.