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Amos 4:2

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Exploring the Meaning of Amos 4

Por Helen Kennedy

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.

De obras de Swedenborg

 

Apocalypse Revealed #650

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650. 14:19 So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vintage of the vine of the earth. This symbolizes the end of the present Christian Church.

Thrusting in his sickle and gathering the vintage has the same symbolic meaning as thrusting in his sickle and reaping, but reaping is said in reference to the crop of a field, while gathering the vintage is said in reference to a vineyard. That to gather the vintage is to harvest a vineyard and gather the grapes, and to reap is to harvest a field and gather the grain, is apparent without explanation.

That a vineyard symbolizes the church which has the Word and where the Lord is thereby known, thus in this case the Christian Church, can be seen from the following passages:

(Jesus said,) "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he shall be cast out as a branch... withered... into the fire...." (John 15:5-6)

Jesus' likening the kingdom of heaven to a landowner who hired "laborers for his vineyard" (Matthew 20:1-8).

The sons who worked in a vineyard (Matthew 21:28).

The fig tree planted in a vineyard that bore no fruit (Luke 13:6-9).

Jesus' telling the following parable: A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it. And he leased it to farmers, that he might receive its fruit. But they killed the servants he sent to them, and finally killed his son (Matthew 21:33-39, Mark 12:1-9, Luke 20:9-16).

(I will) sing... a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard: My beloved has a vineyard...(which) he fenced around... and planted with a choice vine. (Isaiah 5:1-2ff.)

In that day reply to her, "A vineyard of red wine!" I, Jehovah, keep it, I water it every moment...." (Isaiah 27:2-3)

Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard... They have made it desolate. (Jeremiah 12:10-11)

Jehovah is entering into judgment with the elders... For you have set fire to the vineyard. (Isaiah 3:14)

In all vineyards there shall be wailing. (Amos 5:17-18)

In the vineyards there will be no singing or rejoicing. (Isaiah 16:10)

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.