The Bible

 

Amos 8

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1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.

2 And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.

3 And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence.

4 Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,

5 Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?

6 That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?

7 The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.

8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.

9 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day:

10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:

12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.

13 In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.

14 They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beer-sheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.

   

Commentary

 

Summer

  

In Genesis 8:22, this signifies, with winter, the state of the regenerate man in his new will, the alternations of which are like Summer and Winter. (Arcana Coelestia 930)

In Matthew 24:32, this signifies the full state of the church. (Divine Love and Wisdom 73)

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #73

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73. The Divine is present through all time independently of time. As the Divine is present through all space independently of space, so it is present through all time independently of time. For no property of nature can be predicated of the Divine, and space and time are properties of nature.

Space in nature is measurable, and so, too, is time. Time is measured in terms of days, weeks, months, years and centuries, and a day then in terms of hours, a week and month in terms of days, a year in terms of the four seasons, and centuries in terms of years.

Nature has this measurement from the apparent orbital motion and cycling of the world's sun.

[2] The same is not the case, however, in the spiritual world. Progressions of life there in similar manner appear to take place in time, since people live in that world with each other as people in this world do, which is not possible without an appearance of time; but time there is not distinguished into periods as in the world, for their sun stands constantly in their east, never moving, because it is the Lord's Divine love that appears to them as the sun. Consequently they do not have days, weeks, months, years, or centuries, but instead of these states of life, which result in transitions, transitions which cannot be called transitions of time but transitions of state.

So it is that angels do not know what time is, and when they hear time referred to, they perceive instead a reference to state. Moreover, when state is what determines time, time is only an appearance; for a state of delight causes time to seem short, and a state devoid of delight causes time to seem long.

From this it is apparent that time in the spiritual world is nothing other than a quality of state.

[3] It is owing to this that hours, days, weeks, months and years in the Word symbolize states and their progressions in their sequence and in their entirety. Thus when times are mentioned in reference to a church, by its morning is meant its first state, by its noon or midday its fullness, by its evening its decline, and by its night its end. The same stages are meant by the four seasons of the year, namely spring, summer, fall, and winter.

  
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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.