Woe is called upon people who seem to live a life of ease and fill it with pleasures -- for example, those who “eat lambs from the flock.” (Amos 6:4)

Using the significations mentioned elsewhere in Swedenborg’s works, this could mean “those who attribute innocence (the lamb) to themselves,” or think they are blameless when they have actually sinned.

Also, to ask, “Do horses run on rocks?”(Amos 6:12) is a great image for when our understanding is filled with only literal or external truths but doesn’t delve into deeper ones that show the Lord’s leading more clearly.

9490. 'And you shall overlay it with pure gold' means that all those aspects must be founded on good. This is clear from the meaning of 'overlaying' - when the subject is heaven, meant by 'the ark' - as founding on, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'gold' as good, dealt with in 113, 1551, 1552, 5658, 6914, 6917. The reason why 'overlaying' means founding on is that good emanating from the Lord as the Sun (for the heat from that Sun is the good of love) surrounds heaven not merely as a general whole but also every heavenly community within heaven specifically, and each angel individually too, and thereby protects them from the intrusion of evil from hell. That which surrounds in heaven serves to stabilize it; for heaven rests against it like a house on its foundation and like the surfaces of the body against the lower and upper layers of air bearing down around them. For that which surrounds also bounds, confines, and contains, and in so doing supports and sustains. From all this it is evident that 'overlaying' means founding on, and 'overlaying with gold' founding on good.