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.

560. And stings were in their tails, signifies craftiness in deceiving by means of them. This is evident from the signification of "stings," as being craftiness and shrewdness in persuading as to falsities; it follows therefore that they had in them the power to hurt men, for one who deceives craftily and shrewdly is especially harmful. The stings were "in their tails," because they deceive by means of knowledges [scientifica] sensually perceived, knowledges both from the Word and from the world, which are what human learning consists of; they deceive by knowledges from the Word by explaining it sensually according to the letter, and not according to its interior sense; they deceive by knowledges from the world by using them for confirmation. It is to be known that sensual men are more crafty and shrewd than others, and thus in acutely deceiving; for as spiritual men possess intelligence and prudence, so those who are sensual and in falsities possess malice and craftiness, for all malice has its seat in evil, as all intelligence has its seat in good.

[2] It is believed in the world that those who are crafty and shrewd are also prudent and intelligent; but craftiness and malice are not prudence and intelligence, but viewed in themselves are insanity and folly; for such remove themselves from eternal happiness and cast themselves into eternal misery, and this is not the part of the prudent and intelligent but of the insane and foolish. Moreover, with such all things of heavenly and angelic wisdom are in dense darkness, and where that wisdom is thick darkness there is folly. That sensual men are crafty and shrewd can be seen from those who are in the hells, where all are merely natural and sensual; it can hardly be believed by anyone how much craftiness and shrewdness these possess (See in the work on Heaven and Hell 576-581, where the malice and wicked devices of the infernal spirits are treated of).

[3] That "stings" signify craftiness can be seen without confirmation from the Word, for in common discourse the craftiness in speech by which men are deceived are called sharp points, and the talk itself is called sharp. But "stings" signify particularly interior falsities, which are such as cannot be dispelled, because they are from the knowledges and fallacies of the senses. That such falsities are signified by "stings" (or sharp points) can be seen from representatives in the spiritual world, where interior falsities are represented in various ways by sharp things, like the points of swords, the points of arrows, and things pointed in various forms, and this when they are intended to hurt; for this reason it is also forbidden there to exhibit such things to view, for spirits when they see them become furious to inflict injury.

[4] These falsities are signified by "sharp instruments" in Amos:

Behold the days will come upon you in which they will draw you out with barbs, and your posterity with fishhooks (Amos 4:2).

"To draw out with barbs" signifies to lead away from truths by knowledges [scientifica] from the Word and from the world falsely applied; and "to draw out with fishhooks" signifies to lead away from truths by the fallacies of the senses, from which the sensual man reasons.

[5] And in Moses:

If ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom ye let remain of them shall be thorns in your eyes and pricks in your sides (Numbers 33:55).

The "inhabitants of the land whom they were to drive out," signify the evils and falsities of religion and of doctrine; for these were signified in an abstract sense by the nations of the land of Canaan. Therefore "they shall be thorns in your eyes" signifies the harm that will be done by malignant falsities to the truths of the church, and "pricks in your sides" signify the harm that will be done by malignant falsities to the goods of the church, "eyes" signifying in the Word the understanding of truth, and "sides" the things of charity, consequently goods.