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Amos 8

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1 Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me: and, behold, a basket of summer fruit.

2 And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said Jehovah unto me, The end is come upon my people Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.

3 And the songs of the temple shall be wailings in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah: the dead bodies shall be many: in every place shall they cast them forth with silence.

4 Hear this, O ye that would swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail,

5 saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit;

6 that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat?

7 Jehovah hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.

8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? yea, it shall rise up wholly like the River; and it shall be troubled and sink again, like the River of Egypt.

9 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.

10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning for an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord Jehovah, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah.

12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of Jehovah, and shall not find it.

13 In that day shall the fair virgins and the young men faint for thirst.

14 They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, As thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, As the way of Beer-sheba liveth; they shall fall, and never rise up again.

   

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Virgin

  
This painting by Richard Cook  of the newborn baby Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, evokes the spiritual power of this long-awaited advent.

The word 'virgin' shows up in many places, where it symbolizes the Lord's kingdom and the church and therefore anyone who is a kingdom of the Lord, or who is a church. (Arcana Coelestia 3081)

In Genesis 24:16, a virgin signifies purity from all falsity.

In Leviticus 21:13 and Ezekiel 44:22, virgins signify the celestial church and people of the church who love the neighbor from their love of the Lord. That this might be represented in the Jewish Church, the priests were enjoined to marry virgins or the widow of another priest. (Arcana Coelestia 2362[4])

'Virgins,' as in Revelation 14:4, signify people who love truths because they are truths, so from a spiritual affection.

'Virgin' signifies the church as a spouse, who desires to be conjoined to the Lord, and to become a wife. The church that desires this union loves truths because they are truths. When life lived according to truths conjoins. This is why Israel, Zion, and Jerusalem, in the Word, are called 'virgins' and 'daughters' because they represent the church.