3264. 'Whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's servant-girl, bore to Abraham' means the birth of the spiritual man brought about by Divine influx into the affection for knowledge. This is clear from the meaning of 'bearing' as coming into being, dealt with in 2621, 2629, from the representation of 'Hagar the Egyptian' as the life of the exterior man', dealt with in 1896, 1909, and from the meaning of 'servant-girl' as the affection for knowledge and cognitions which belong in the exterior man, dealt with in 1895, 2691. She is called 'Sarah's servant-girl' because 'Sarah' represents the Lord's Divine Truth to which the affection for knowledge and cognitions of truth was subordinate. Since Ishmael represents the spiritual man it is evident that the words 'Whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's servant-girl, bore to Abraham' mean the birth of the spiritual man brought about by Divine influx into the affection for knowledge. This is the way in which man's rational is born, see 1895, 1896, 1902, 1910, 2094, 2557, 3030, 3074, and therefore the way in which his spiritual is born, seeing that this has no existence except within the rational.

[2] Consequently the spiritual man and the rational man are practically the same. The difference between one spiritual person and another lies solely in what each person's reason and his life resulting from this are like. Their birth or regeneration is brought about by Divine influx into the affection for cognitions, see 1555, 1904, 2046, 2063, 2189, 2657, 2675, 2691 (end), 2697, 2979. See what has been stated and shown already about Ishmael - that he represented the Lord's first rational which was not as yet Divine, 1893, and that later on he represented those who are truly rational, or who are spiritual, 2078, 2691, and so represented the Lord's spiritual Church, 2699.

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.