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.

647. 14:17 Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. This symbolizes the heavens of the Lord's spiritual kingdom, and the Word's Divine truth in them.

In the highest sense an angel symbolizes the Lord, and also the angelic heaven, and likewise the Divine truth emanating from the Lord (see nos. 5, 65, 170, 258, 342-344, 415, 465 above). Here, however, the angel symbolizes the heavens of the spiritual kingdom, and consequently the Divine truths there, because we are told in the next verse that another angel came out from the altar, who symbolizes the heavens of the Lord's celestial kingdom, thus the Divine goodness there, as shown in the next number.

All the heavens are divided into two kingdoms - the spiritual kingdom and the celestial kingdom. The spiritual kingdom is the kingdom of the Lord's wisdom, because the angels in it are in a state of wisdom gained from Divine truths received from the Lord; and the celestial kingdom is the kingdom of the Lord's love, because the angels there are prompted by love received from the Lord and so possess every kind of goodness.

That all the heavens are divided into two kingdoms may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell (London, 1758), nos. 20-28. Also in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom (Amsterdam, 1763), nos. 101, 381.

A temple symbolizes the whole of heaven, as in no. 644 above; but because it is called here the temple which is in heaven, and after that mention is made of the altar, the temple symbolizes the heaven of the Lord's spiritual kingdom, as said just above. And the sharp sickle symbolizes Divine truth in the Word, as in nos. 643, 645 above.

[2] Previously the text said that He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle and the earth was reaped, and now that an angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle, and he thrust it into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth; and the reason is that the earth which was reaped by Him who sat on the cloud, or the Lord, symbolizes the church throughout the world, while the vine of the earth symbolizes the church in the Christian world.

This description includes elements similar to those in what the Lord foretold in the parable of the sower and his gathering in of the harvest in Matthew 13, which we quoted above at the end of no. 645. There we said that the harvest is the culmination of the age, that is, the end of the church, and that the reapers are angels who symbolize Divine truths. For angels are not sent to reap, that is, to perform the actions symbolized, but the Lord accomplishes the actions through the Divine truths in His Word. As the Lord says, "the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day" (John 12:48). See nos. 233, 273 above.