阿摩司书 7:1

Chinese Union (Simplified)

主 耶 和 华 指 示 我 一 件 事 ： 为 王 割 菜 （ 或 译 ： 草 ） 之 後 ， 菜 又 发 生 ； 刚 发 生 的 时 候 ， 主 造 蝗 虫 。

Parallel Translations

Chinese NCV (Simplified)
蝗災的異象主耶和華向我這樣顯示：看哪！替王收割之後，田產又開始生長時，主造出一群蝗蟲。

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

showed: Amos 7:4, Amos 7:7, Amos 8:1, Jeremiah 1:11-16, Jeremiah 24:1, Ezekiel 11:25, Zechariah 1:20

he: Amos 4:9, Exodus 10:12-16, Isaiah 33:4, Joel 1:4, Joel 2:25, Nahum 3:15-17

grasshoppers: or, green worms, Govai in Arabic gabee "locusts," probably in their caterpillar state, in which they are most destructive. This is supposed to have been an emblem of the first invasion of the Assyrians.

mowings: Or rather, feedings or grazings, as the people of the East make no hay. This was probably in the month of March, which is the only time of the year that the Arabs to this day feed their horses with grass.

Reciprocal: Deuteronomy 28:38 - for the locust Deuteronomy 28:42 - thy trees 2 Samuel 21:14 - God 1 Kings 8:38 - prayer 2 Kings 6:10 - saved 2 Kings 8:10 - the Lord Psalms 78:46 - gave also Psalms 105:16 - Moreover Jeremiah 27:2 - saith the Lord Malachi 3:11 - rebuke 1 John 5:16 - he shall ask

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Thus hath the Lord showed unto me,.... What follows in this and the two chapters, before the prophet delivered what he heard from the Lord; now what he saw, the same thing, the ruin of the ten tribes, is here expressed as before, but in a different form; before in prophecy, here in vision, the more to affect and work upon the hearts of the people:

and, behold, he formed grasshoppers; or "locusts" u, as the word is rendered, Isaiah 33:4; and so the Septuagint here, and other versions. Kimchi interprets it, and, behold, a collection or swarm of locusts; and the Targum, a creation of them. Though Aben Ezra takes the word to be a verb, and not a noun, and the sense to be, agreeably to our version, he showed me the blessed God, who was forming locusts; it appeared to Amos, in the vision of prophecy, as if the Lord was making locusts, large and great ones, and many of them; not that this was really done, only visionally, and was an emblem of the Assyrian army, prepared and ready to devour the land of Israel; see Joel 1:4. And this was

in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, [it was] the latter growth after the king's mowings; when the first grass was mowed down, and the first crop gathered in, for the use of the king's cattle; as the later grass was just springing up, and promised a second crop, these grasshoppers or locusts were forming, which threatened the destruction of it. This must be towards the close of the summer, and when autumn was coming on, at which time naturalists tell us that locusts breed. So Aristotle w says, they bring forth at the going out of the summer; and of one sort of them he says, their eggs perish in the waters of autumn, or when it is a wet autumn; but in a dry autumn there is a large increase of them: and so Pliny says x, they breed in the autumn season and lie under the earth all the winter, and appear in the spring: and Columella observes y, that locusts are most suitably and commodiously fed with grass in autumn; which is called "cordum", or the latter grass, that comes or springs late in the year; such as this now was. The Mahometans speak z much of God being the Maker of locusts; they say he made them of the clay which was left at the formation of Adam; and represent him saying, I am God, nor is there any Lord of locusts besides me, who feed them, and send them for food to the people, or as a punishment to them, as I please: they call them the army of the most high God, and will not suffer any to kill them; Joel 1:4- :; whether all this is founded on this passage of Scripture, I cannot say; however, there is no reason from thence to make the locusts so peculiarly the workmanship of God as they do, since this was only in a visionary way; though it may be observed, that it is with great propriety, agreeable to the nature of these creatures, that God is represented as forming them at such a season of the year. Some, by "the king's mowings", understand the carrying captive the ten tribes by Shalmaneser king of Assyria; so Ribera; after which things were in a flourishing state, or at least began to be so, in the two tribes under Hezekiah, when they were threatened with ruin by the army of Sennacherib, from which there was a deliverance: but as this vision, and the rest, only respect the ten tribes of Israel, "the king's mowings" of the first crop may signify the distresses of the people of Israel, in the times of Jehoahaz king of Israel, by Hazael and Benhadad kings of Syria, 2 Kings 13:3; when things revived again, like the shooting up of the later grass, in the reign of Joash, and especially of Jeroboam his son, who restored the coast of Israel, the Lord having compassion on them, 2 Kings 13:25; but after his death things grew worse; his son reigned but six months, and he that slew him but one; and in the reign of Menahem, that succeeded him, an invasion of the land was made by Pul king of Assyria, 2 Kings 15:19; which is generally thought to be intended here. Or else, as others, it may refer to the troubles in the interregnum, after the death of Jeroboam, to his son's mounting the throne, the space of eleven years, when, and afterwards, Israel was in a declining state.

u גבי "ecce fictor locustarum", Pagninus, Montanus; so Munster, Vatablus, Cocceius, Burkius. w Hist. Animal. l. 5. c. 28, 29. x Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 29. y Apud Bochart. Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 4. c. 6. col. 484. z Vid. Bochart, ib. col. 486.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

And behold He formed - (that is, He was forming.) The very least things then are as much in His infinite Mind, as what we count the greatest. He has not simply made “laws of nature,” as people speak, to do His work, and continue the generations of the world. He Himself was still framing them, giving them being, as our Lord saith, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” John 5:17. The same power of God is seen in creating the locust, as the universe. The creature could as little do the one as the other. But further, God was “framing” them for a special end, not of nature, but of His moral government, in the correction of man. He was “framimg the locust,” that it might, at His appointed time, lay waste just those tracts which He had appointed to them. God, in this vision, opens our eyes, and lets us see Himself, framing the punishment for the deserts of the sinners, that so when hail, mildew, blight, caterpillars, or some other hitherto unknown disease, (which, because we know it not, we call by the name of the crop which it annihilates), waste our crops, we may think, not of secondary causes, but of our Judge. Lap.: “Fire and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind, fulfill His word, Psalms 148:8, in striking sinners as He wills. To be indignant with these, were like a dog who bit the stone wherewith it was hit, instead of the man who threw it.” Gregory on Job L. xxxii. c. 4. L.: “He who denies that he was stricken for his own fault, what does he but accuse the justice of Him who smiteth?”

Grasshoppers - that is, locusts. The name may very possibly be derived from their “creeping” simultaneously, in vast multitudes, from the ground, which is the more observable in these creatures, which, when the warmth of spring hatches the eggs, creep forth at once in myriads. This first meaning of their name must, however, have been obliterated by use (as mostly happens), since the word is also used by Nahum of a flying locust .

The king’s mowings - must have been some regalia, to meet the state-expenses. The like custom still lingers on, here and there, among us, the “first mowth” or “first vesture,” that with which the fields are first clad, belonging to one person; the pasturage afterward, or “after-grass,” to others. The hay-harvest probably took place some time before the grain-harvest, and the “latter grass,” “after-grass,” (לקשׁ leqesh) probably began to spring up at the time of the “latter rain” (מלקושׁ malqôsh). Had the grass been mourn after this rain, it would not, under the burning sun of their rainless summer, have sprung up at all. At this time, then, upon which the hope of the year depended, “in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter grass,” Amos saw, in a vision, God form the locust, and “the green herb of the land” (the word includes all, that which is “for the service of man” as well as for beasts,) destroyed. Striking emblem of a state, recovering after it had been mown down, and anew overrun by a numerous enemy! Yet this need but be a passing desolation. Would they abide, or would they carry their ravages elsewhere? Amos intercedes with God, in words of that first intercession of Moses, “forgive now” Numbers 14:19. “By whom,” he adds, “shall Jacob arise?” literally, “Who shall Jacob arise?” that is, who is he that he should arise, so weakened, so half-destroyed? Plainly, the destruction is more than one invasion of locusts in one year. The locusts are a symbol (as in Joel) in like way as the following visions are symbols.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

CHAPTER VII

In this chapter God represents to Amos, by three several

visions, the judgments he is about to bring on Israel. The

first is a plague of locusts, threatening to cut of the hopes

of the harvest by attacking it in the time of the second

growth; the first luxuriances of the crop being probably mowed

for the king's horses, 1-3.

The next vision threatens a judgment by fire, which would

consume a great part, 4-6;

and the third a total overthrow of Israel, levelling it as it

were by a line, 7-9.

The rest of the chapter is a denunciation of heavy judgments

against Amaziah, priest of Beth-el, who had brought an

accusation to the king against the prophet, 10-17.

NOTES ON CHAP. VII

Verse Amos 7:1. Behold, he formed grasshoppers — גבי gobai is generally understood here to signify locusts. See the notes on Joel 1:1-32.

The shooting up of the latter growth — The early crop of grass had been already mowed and housed. The second crop or rowing, as it is called in some places, was not yet begun. By the king's mowings we may understand the first crop, a portion of which the king probably claimed as being the better hay; but the words may signify simply the prime crop, that which is the best of the whole. Houbigant thinks the shearing of the king's sheep is meant.