A NATION — a people as a political body, with a land and a name; beside am, a people as kin. ⚠ In later Hebrew goy came to mean a gentile, a non-Jew, and the plural goyim 'the nations' as against Israel is already the Bible's usual sense of the plural — but in the Bible Israel is a goy too. God promises to make Abram a great nation with it (Genesis 12:2), Sinai offers a holy nation (Exodus 19:6), and the creed says the father became a nation, great, mighty and numerous in Egypt (Deuteronomy 26:5, all already on these pages), fourteen verses before the same chapter sets that nation high above all the nations that he has made (26:19). ⭐ The word Balaam gives Amalek is the same: first of nations (Numbers 24:20). Only the plural, and only later, hardened into 'the gentiles'. → first discussed at Deut 26:5