2061. 'God said to Abraham' means perception. This is clear from the meaning of the expression used in the historical sense - God saying - which in the internal sense means perceiving, dealt with already in 1791, 1815, 1819, 1822, 1898, 1919. Because a different subject is taken up at this point - namely the things meant by the names 'Sarai' and 'Sarah', as well as by the promise of a son borne by Sarah, and by Ishmael's being a great nation in the future - it is introduced by a new perception which the Lord had, expressed here, as in many other places, by the words 'God said to Abraham'.