Amos was a prophet in ancient Israel during the reigns of Jeroboam II and Uzziah. His writings/sayings date from around 760-755 BC.

In his explanations of the inner meaning of the Word, Swedenborg summarizes the meaning of Amos's prophecies in his unpublished work, "The Inner Meaning of the Prophets and Psalms". We've used that text, and references made elsewhere by Swedenborg to these verses, and then the more general system of words and their symbolism that he described, to suggest the outlines of the internal sense of these Bible chapters.

In Amos 1:1-2, the verses describe the Lord teaching us about the Word and doctrine from the Word. In this book of the Bible, the prophet Amos symbolizes the Lord. Amos was a shepherd, and of course that metaphor is used to describe the Lord Jesus Christ, too, in the New Testament.

The book of Amos describes the Lord's anger and impatience with the Children of Israel - in the literal sense. Inside, though, it is really a story of the Lord’s great love and concern for us. This is a book of promise: The Lord will triumph over hell’s quest to dominate us and destroy the gift of salvation. This victory is not an occasional interest of the Lord’s; He has an “ardent zeal” to protect us.

In verse 2, the "roaring of the Lord from Zion" and the "uttering of His voice from Jerusalem" teach us several things about Him in this context:

- He has grievous distress for His church and people.

- He has an ardent zeal for protecting heaven and the church.

- He warns of coming vastations.

- He points to the drying up of our “Mount Carmel” and the effects this will have on our “vineyards.”

There are different ways to destroy true ideas and good loves. Verses 3-15 in this chapter describe the different ways that people do this.

Verses 3-5 are talking about people who pervert knowledges from the Word, knowledges which help us form true, useful doctrine. When people successfully corrupt knowledge from the Word, they also undermine the good that would come from that knowledge. But, people who do this will perish, spiritually.

Verses 6-8 describe people who apply the Word to create or reinforce heretical false ideas. That's not a good thing to do; they will perish, too.

Verses 9-10 address people who pervert knowledges [cognitiones] of good and truth, and thereby injure the external sense of the Word.

Verses 11-12 are about people who pervert the sense of the letter of the Word by falsity, by which doctrine perishes.

Finally, verses 13-15 describe people who falsify the truths of the sense of the letter of the Word: they do not resist in the day of combat, but destroy the truth of doctrine.

What are we to make of this? One take-away is that the Lord loves us, and wants to protect us. But how can we avoid these various falsity traps? The Lord wants us to carefully, holistically, read the Word and seek the truths in it - those in the literal sense, and those in the internal sense. From these we should form sound doctrine, and develop good loves that can be built on true ideas.

For further reading, see Arcana Coelestia 2606, 10325, and The Inner Meaning of the Prophets and Psalms 201.

5265. 'The seven good cows are seven years' means a state when truth within the interior natural is multiplied. This is clear from the meaning of 'the cows' in the good sense as the truths belonging to the interior natural, dealt with in 5198; and from the meaning of 'years' as states, dealt with in 482, 487, 488, 493, 893. There were seven because 'seven' means that which is holy and therefore adds the idea of holiness to the matter under discussion, dealt with in 395, 433, 716, 881, as well as implying a whole period from start to finish, 728. This explains why in the dream seven cows and seven heads of grain were seen, and after that why there were seven years of abundance of corn and seven years of famine. It also explains why the seventh day was made holy, why in the representative Church the seventh year was a sabbatical year, and why after seven times seven years there was a Jubilee.

[2] 'Seven' means things that are holy because of the meanings that numbers have in the world of spirits. Each number there holds some spiritual reality within it. Visual indications of numbers have appeared to me frequently, simple and compound ones, and also on one occasion a long sequence of them, when I have wondered what meanings they possessed. I have been told that they have their origin in conversations held by angels, and that it is customary from time to time to use numbers to express spiritual realities too. These numbers are not seen in heaven but in the world of spirits, where the visual presentation of such things takes place. The most ancients, who were celestial people and who talked to angels, knew all about this, which was why they used numbers to express an evaluation of the Church. The numbers used by them conveyed a general overall idea of matters for which words served to provide a detailed description. The meaning contained within every number did not however continue to be known among the descendants of these people; only the meanings of the simple numbers survived, that is to say, the meanings of two, three, six, seven, eight, twelve, and from these the meanings of twenty-four, seventy-two, and seventy-seven. In particular their descendants knew that 'seven' meant that which was most holy - that is to say, that in the highest sense 'seven' meant the Divine Himself, and in the representative sense the celestial element of love - and that the state of the celestial man was therefore meant by 'the seventh day', 84-87.

[3] It is quite evident from the numbers used plentifully in the Word that numbers mean spiritual realities, such as the following ones in John,

Let him who has intelligence reckon the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, that is, its number is six hundred and sixty-six. Revelation 13:18.

And elsewhere in the same book,

The angel measured the wall of the holy Jerusalem, a hundred and forty-four cubits, which is the measure of a man, that is, of an angel. Revelation 11:17.

The number one hundred and forty-four is twelve squared and twice seventy-two.