In chapter 4 of the Book of Amos, verses 1-3 are talking about people who pervert the truths of the church. They will fall into falsities in outermost things.

In the Bible, fish represent "lower" things than mammals, so we can interpret the fishhooks in verse 2 as meaning being caught and held fast in natural or lower things.

Verses 4-6 are about acts of worship such as tithes and sacrifices. These look similar to genuine worship, but are only external sorts of things. We can tell because ‘teeth’ (in verse 6) represent ultimates or outermost things (see Secrets of Heaven 6380). It follows that “cleanness of teeth” would mean outermost things that look good but only imitate genuine worship. The Lord exhorts, “Yet you have not returned to me.”

Verses 7-8. Some things true will remain, when where there are too many false ideas, the truths don't get through. This can be seen where the Lord says, “I made it rain on one city; I withheld rain from another city... where it did not rain the part withered.” Again the Lord exhorts, “Yet you have not returned to me.”

Verse 9. Afterward all things of the church are falsified, shown by blight attacking the gardens, vineyards, fig tree and olive trees. The last three represent spiritual, natural and celestial things, or all the things of spiritual life. “Yet you have not returned to me,” says the Lord.

Verses 10-11. The Lord explains the devastating things he allowed to happen: plague in Egypt, death of young men by swords, stench in the camps, Sodom and Gomorrah. This is because they are profaned by sensual knowledges. Profanation means the mixing of good and evil together. (See Secrets of Heaven 1001[2]).

This extends to all things of the church, with the church being the Lord’s kingdom on earth (Secrets of Heaven 768[3]).

With profanation “as soon as any idea of what is holy arises, the idea of what is profane joins immediately to it,” (Secrets of Heaven 301).

Now there is hardly anything left. “Yet you have not returned to Me,” says the Lord again.

Verses 12-13: Because people adamantly remain in their profane ways, they are warned, “Prepare to meet your God!”. This is the God powerful and mighty, “who forms mountains, and creates the wind,” and even more close to home, “Who declares to man what his thought is.” As intimately a knowing as that is, the Lord’s love for all humanity is contained in His exhortations for them to turn themselves to Him.

See, for example, Luke 6:44-45, and True Christian Religion 373.

7236. 'According to their armies' means in accordance with the genera and species of good within truths. This is clear from the meaning of 'an army' as the truths that constitute faith, dealt with in 3448. But forms of good in the spiritual Church are essentially nothing other than truths, since truths are called forms of good when people lead their lives in accordance with those truths. When therefore the word 'army' is used to refer to those within the spiritual Church who have been regenerated, forms of the good of truth or forms of good within truths are meant. The reason why it says that the children of Israel were to be led out 'according to their armies' is that it is speaking about the time when they will come out of Egypt - in the internal sense when they will come out of conflicts with falsities, thus after they have performed spiritual military service. The proper way to understand the command that they were to be led out 'according to their armies' is that they were to be distinguished in keeping with forms of good within truths, thus were to be divided into groups according to different kinds of good. And this was done in order that they might represent the Lord's kingdom in the heavens. There all have been divided up and allotted a place in the Grand Man in accordance with both the genus and the species of each one's good.

[2] The fact that all in heaven are divided up in accordance with their different kinds of good shows how manifold and how varied good is; it is so varied that good is never the same with one person as it is with another. Indeed if millions of people went on being multiplied forever, one person's good would still not be like another's, just as one person's face is not like another's; and in heaven furthermore good is what shapes angels' faces. The reason for the unending variety is that every form has distinct and varied constituent parts; for if two were exactly alike they could not be two but a single unit. This also explains why in the natural order no one thing ever exists which is like another in every respect.

[3] What makes good so varied is truth; when this is joined to good it gives the good specific character. One reason why truth is so manifold and varied that it can make good so greatly varied is that truths are countless, and interior truths take on a different form from exterior ones. Another reason is that false impressions gained by the outward senses attach themselves, and also false ideas that are products of evil desires. Since therefore truths are so countless one can see that when they are joined to good just as many variations are produced, so many that one form of good can never be the same as another. This is plain to anyone who knows that from merely twenty-three letters joined together in different combinations the words contained in all languages can be produced; indeed even if there were thousands of languages, an unending variety of combinations could be produced. So what will be the product of varieties numbering thousands and millions, as truths do? Confirmation of the existence of those varieties is also contained in the proverb in general use in the world that there are as many opinions as there are heads, that is, ideas are as varied as the number of people there are.