In this fifth chapter of the Book of Amos, the first three verses (Amos 5:1-3) state the Lord's sorrow that the church - the truth from the Divine flowing into the world - has successively been devastated. (That was seen in Amos 4). When, in verse 3, it says, “The city that goes out by a thousand shall have a hundred left,” it means that very little truth is left to nourish the people. This bad state is their own doing.

In Amos 5:4-9, amid this dying out, the Lord entreats, almost anxiously, “Seek Me and live,” and then names traps, or spiritual states, that will turn people away from Him: Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba.

- The first, Bethel, here stands for falsifying knowledges.

- The second, Gilgal, signifies sensuous or external pleasures.

- The third, Beersheba, symbolized the last negative attitudes towards everything that constitutes faith and its doctrine. (See Arcana Coelestia 3923).

The next warning is to those “who turn justice into wormwood,” in Amos 5:7, i.e. they turn good into evil. (Arcana Coelestia 1488)

The Lord wants the people to return to Him, and explains clearly that He is the source of power, the one who, “made the Pleiades and Orion,” and the one who “rains ruin upon the strong”.

In Amos 5:10-13, in their love of their own intelligence, people continue to reject the Lord, to “tread down the poor,” rejecting even the little bits of truth coming to them. The people are warned, “Though you have built houses of hewn stone, yet you shall not dwell in them."

Stone meaning truths in our natural minds. (Apocalypse Explained 745). The dictionary meaning of “hewn” means a workman making something, so it can be seen as coming from ourselves, or our own intelligence. Anything like that is “devoid of life from the Divine” (Arcana Coelestia 9852).

In Amos 5:14-15, the path is shown for the way the Lord can be with us: “Seek good and not evil, that you may live.” It can’t be any plainer. In that way the Lord can reach out with His mercy, and “be gracious to the remnant of Joseph”. That remnant is a small amount of truth, and Joseph is the spiritual part of us. (Arcana Coelestia 3921).

In Amos 5:16-20, people are warned of how bad it will be for them when the day of the Lord comes. “Is not the day of the Lord darkness?”, for those who are in evil, “with no brightness in it?” A person’s suffering will be painful, “as though he went into the house, leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him,” and terrorizing, “As though a man fled from a lion and a bear met him.”

In Amos 5:21-22, God warns that people's fear-spurred worship won’t be accepted. He says, “I hate, I despise your feast days”. The strong language of the Lord is the mirror opposite of the depth of the evil the people are in.

In verses 23-25, "Take away your noisy songs and melodies," the Lord says, i.e. take away what sounds beautiful to you but is hurtful to the Divine because it lacks internal goodness and truth. In its place, in one of the Bible's memorable images, Jehovah says, "Let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mightly stream”.

Then, at the end, in verses 26-27, the warning is clear: if the people don’t return to the Lord, everything good will be taken from them, as shown in verse 27:

“Therefore I will send you into captivity beyond Damascus”.

Damascus was the furthest boundary of Canaan, or beyond where spiritual things reside. The “boundary of Damascus” is also referred to in Ezekiel 47:16-18. See also Apocalypse Explained 1088.

886. Quod ‘oliva’ significet bonum charitatis, constat non solum a significatione ‘olivae’, sed etiam a significatione ‘olei’ in Verbo. Oleum olivae erat, praeter aromata, quo ungebantur sacerdotes et reges; et oleum olivae erat pro lucernis; de illo videatur, Exod. 30:24;

de hoc Exod. 27:20;

causa quod oleum olivae adhiberetur ad unctiones et lucernas, erat quod repraesentabat omne caeleste, proinde omne bonum amoris et charitatis; oleum enim est ipsum essentiale arboris et quasi anima ejus, sicut caeleste aut bonum amoris et charitatis est ipsum essentiale seu ipsa anima fidei; inde repraesentatio. Quod ‘oleum’ significet caeleste aut bonum amoris et charitatis, multis ex Verbo confirmari potest, sed quia hic nominatur oliva, solum aliqua loca confirmantia de oliva licet afferre;

apud Jeremiam,

Olivam virentem, pulchram fructu forma, vocavit Jehovah nomen tuum, 11:16;

ubi ita appellatur Ecclesia Antiquissima seu caelestis, quae fundamentalis erat Ecclesiae Judaicae; quare omnia repraesentativa istius Ecclesiae spectabant caelestia, et per caelestia Dominum:

[2] apud Hoscheam,

Ibunt rami ejus et erit sicut oliva honor ejus, et odor illi sicut Libani, 14:7 [KJV 14:6];

ubi de Ecclesia plantanda, cujus honor est ‘oliva’, seu bonum amoris et charitatis, et ‘odor sicut Libani’ est affectio veri fidei inde; ‘Libanus’ pro cedris, quae significabant spiritualia seu vera fidei:

apud Zachariam, Duae olivae juxta candelabrum, una a dextra lecythi et una juxta sinistram illius:... hi duo filii olei puri, stantes juxta Dominum totius terrae, 4:3, 11, 14;

ubi ‘duae olivae’ pro caelesti et spirituali, ita pro amore qui est Ecclesiae caelestis, et pro charitate quae est Ecclesiae spiritualis; hae sunt ad dextram et sinistram Domini; ‘candelabrum’ significat hic, sicut repraesentabat in Ecclesia Judaica, Dominum; ‘lucernae’ caelestia, ex quibus spiritualia sicut a flamma radii lucis seu lux:

apud Davidem,

Uxor tua, sicut vitis fructifera in lateribus domus tuae; filii tui sicut plantae olivarum, Ps. 128:3;

ubi ‘uxor sicut vitis’ pro Ecclesia spirituali; ‘filii’ pro veris fidei, quae vocantur ‘plantae olivarum’ quia a bonis charitatis:

apud Esaiam,

Relinquentur in eo racemationes sicut decussio olivae, duae tresve baccae in capite rami, 17:6;

ubi de reliquiis apud hominem; ‘olivae’ pro reliquiis caelestibus:

apud Micham, Calcabis olivam, et non unges te oleo; et mustum, et non bibes vinum, 6:15:

et apud Mosen,

Vineas plantabis et coles, et vinum non bibes; ... olivae erunt tibi in omni termino tuo, et oleo non unges te, Deut. 28:39, 40;

ubi de abundantia doctrinalium de bonis et veris fidei quae, quia tales, rejiciebant. Ex his locis constare potest quod ‘folium’ significet verum fidei, et ‘oliva’ bonum charitatis; et quod similia significentur per ‘folium olivae, quod columba ferebat in ore’, hoc est, quod nunc appareret apud hominem Antiquae Ecclesiae aliquantulum veri fidei ex bono charitatis.