The Inner Meaning of the Prophets and Psalms # 205
205. Internal Meaning of Amos, Chapter 5
1-3 Lamentation over the church because it has been successively devastated. (2)
4-9 Exhortation to seek the Lord, that all things of the church may not perish through evils and falsities. (2)
10-13 They reject truths because they are in self-intelligence. (2)
14-15 Exhortation to be converted. (2)
16-20 Lamentation over the destruction of the church, and over their own destruction, when the Lord comes. (3)
21-22 Their worship cannot be accepted. (2)
23-25 It will be accepted if they have good and truth. (2)
26-27 Otherwise they are deprived of all knowledge [cognitio] of truth and good. (2)
Amos 5:4-9
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For thus says Yahweh to the house of Israel: "Seek me, and you will live;
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but don't seek Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and don't pass to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing.
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Seek Yahweh, and you will live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, and there be no one to quench it in Bethel.
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You who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth:
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seek him who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns the shadow of death into the morning, and makes the day dark with night; who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth, Yahweh is his name,
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who brings sudden destruction on the strong, so that destruction comes on the fortress.