4379. 'And if the men overdrive them for one day, all the flocks will die' means a passage of time and a subsequent stage; also that otherwise they would not live, and so needed to be prepared to be joined together. This becomes clear from the actual train of thought. For in what has gone before the subject has been the joining of good to truths in general, whereas now the same joining together of them in particular is dealt with. The actual process in which truth is instilled into good is described at this point in the internal sense. One may catch a glimpse of what that process is like from the explanation in general; but one can see nothing of the countless arcana to do with it. Such arcana are clearly visible only to those who dwell in the light of heaven, while a rough outline of them is seen by those dwelling in the light of the world when the light of heaven is allowed to brighten that light.

[2] Clear enough evidence of this exists in the fact that when a person is being born again he passes through phases analogous to those passed through after birth, and from the fact that a previous state is always like the egg in relation to the state that follows it, thus that there is a repeated occurrence of conception and birth. This is so not only when he lives in the world, but also when he enters the next life for ever. And even then he cannot be perfected beyond the point of being at the egg-stage so far as the limitless things to come are concerned. From this one may see how countless the things are which are involved in a person's regeneration, but of which people know scarcely anything, and one may see how many are the things contained in the internal sense at this point, where a subsequent state and the manner by which good is instilled into truths is the subject.

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.