--- title: "Amos 7 - Study King James Bible with barnes notes on the whole bible" description: "Read Amos 7 with barnes notes on the whole bible commentary. 1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me; and, behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the" image: "/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg" url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/barnes-notes-on-the-whole-bible/amos/7" --- [ Read](/kjv/amos/7)[ Commentary](/study/amos/7)[ Interlinear](/interlinear/amos/7) Audio 1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me; and, behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, *it was* the latter growth after the king’s mowings.* 2 And it came to pass, *that* when they had made an end of eating the grass of the land, then I said, O Lord GOD, forgive, I beseech thee: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he *is* small.* 3 The LORD repented for this: It shall not be, saith the LORD. 4 ¶ Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and, behold, the Lord GOD called to contend by fire, and it devoured the great deep, and did eat up a part. 5 Then said I, O Lord GOD, cease, I beseech thee: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he *is* small.* 6 The LORD repented for this: This also shall not be, saith the Lord GOD. 7 ¶ Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall *made* by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand. 8 And the LORD said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more: 9 And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. 10 ¶ Then Amaziah the priest of Beth-el sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words. 11 For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land. 12 Also Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: 13 But prophesy not again any more at Beth-el: for it *is* the king’s chapel, and it *is* the king’s court.** 14 ¶ Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I *was* no prophet, neither *was* I a prophet’s son; but I *was* an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit:* 15 And the LORD took me as I followed the flock, and the LORD said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.* 16 ¶ Now therefore hear thou the word of the LORD: Thou sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, and drop not *thy word* against the house of Isaac. 17 Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land. [Amos 6](/study/amos/6) [Amos 8](/study/amos/8) ## Commentary To verse 1 **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](/kjv/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](/kjv/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](/kjv/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. 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