10288. 'Shall be cut off from his people' means separation and spiritual death. This is clear from the meaning of 'being cut off', and of being put to death, as separation from those governed by good and by truths springing from it, and destruction of spiritual life, dealt with in 6767, 8902; and from the meaning of 'people' as those belonging to the Church in whom the truths and forms of the good of faith are present, dealt with in 3581, 4619, 6451, 6465, 7207. Thus 'being cut off from one's people' means being separated from them and being destroyed. In the Word those who belong to the Church are sometimes called a people, sometimes a nation, as in the expressions Israelite people and Jewish nation. The word 'people' there means those who belong to the spiritual Church, and 'nation' those who belong to the celestial Church; and this is the reason why 'peoples' means truths and forms of the good of faith, while 'nations' means forms of the good of love, see in the places referred to immediately above.

4619. 'And was gathered to his peoples' means that it was now among the things which belonged to the Divine Natural. This is clear from the meaning, when representatives are involved, of 'being gathered to his peoples' as its ceasing to be the subject any longer, dealt with in 3255, 3276, and so here that it was now among the things which belonged to the Divine Natural, as also follows from what has been stated immediately above in 4618. The ancients used to say, when anyone died, that he was gathered to his peoples; and when they said this they meant in the proximate sense that he was among his own in the next life. For every human being while living in the body is in company with spirits and angels as to his spirit, and also comes among the same after death, 1277, 2379. This was what they meant by 'the peoples' to whom he was gathered. But in the internal sense of the Word, where the goods and truths of the Church, or the Lord's kingdom, are the subject, 'being gathered to one's peoples' means being among truths and goods which accord or correspond. Truths and goods exist with all heavenly communities, but because truths and goods there are interrelated as in blood relationships and relationships by marriage on earth, with every variation involved in these, 685, 917, 3815, 4121, 'his peoples' therefore means the truths which govern concordant communities, that is, communities which abide in those truths. As regards 'peoples' meaning truths, see 1259, 1260, 2928, 3295, 3581.