Amos 7:1 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Amos 7:1
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.
a king · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
mowings
גִּזֵּ֥יgi.Zei
H1488
a fleece (as shorn) · noun, common masculine plural construct
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Joel 1:4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the…
Amos 8:1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.
Isaiah 33:4 And your spoil shall be gathered like the gathering of the caterpiller: as the running to and fro of locusts shall he run upon them.
Joel 2:25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which…
Amos 4:9 I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the pal…
Nahum 3:15-17 There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the cankerwor…
Exodus 10:12-16 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up upon the land of Egypt, a…
Jeremiah 1:11-16 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Amos 7:1-9
We here see that God bears long, but that he will not bear always, with a provoking people, both these God here showed the prophet: Thus hath the Lord God showed me, Amo 7:1, Amo 7:4, Amo 7:7. He showed him what was present, foreshowed him what was to come, gave him the knowledge both of what he did and of what he designed; for the Lord God reveals his secret unto his servants the prophets, Amo 3:7.
I. We have here two instances of God's sparing mercy, remembered in the midst of judgment, the narratives of which are so much like one another that they will be best considered together, and very considerable they are.
1. God is here coming forth against this sinful nation, first by one judgment…
Behold, he formed grasshoppers - גבי gobai is generally understood here to signify locusts. See the notes on Joel 1 (note) and Joel 2 (note).
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.
John Gill on Amos 7:1
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 ver…
(Chapter 7, verses 1-3) The Lord God showed me these things: And behold, a swarming locust at the beginning of the late crops, after the king's mowings. And it came to pass, when it had finished consuming the grass of the land, that I said: Lord God, please be merciful, I beseech You: who will raise up Jacob, for he is small? The Lord had pity on this: it shall not be, said the Lord. LXX: Thus the Lord showed me: And behold, a swarm of locusts was coming in the morning, and behold, one Gog, the king, was a bruchus. And it shall come to pass, when it is accomplished, that it shall consume the grass of the earth. And I said: Lord God, be merciful, who shall raise up Jacob, for he is little. Be sorry for us, O Lord, upon this: and upon this let it not be, saith the Lord. The prophetic word not only predicts things that will happen in the distant future, but also those that are near and will immediately follow the prophecy. For we humans often think more about ourselves than about future generations, as Ezechias says: Let there be peace in my days (2 Kings 20). So that those who have witnessed the fulfilled events that were previously announced, may turn to the worship of God, in whom the truth of prophecy resides. Therefore, the Lord revealed that Sennacherib, the king of the Assyrians, would come with an infinite army, like a swarm of locusts, to annihilate everything, just as a locust devours all when it begins to rain late in the season, when the people of Israel needed the extreme mercy of Almighty God. However, the one who commands and creates this swarm of locusts is the Lord. The locust comes at the beginning of the late rain, when everything is green and the whole field is giving birth, and the flowers of different trees burst into their own kind of fruit. And to summarize in one word what I want to convey, they promise abundance of all things, flowers of trees, and the crops of the fields. But these locusts, which fly in early spring, are followed by countless beetles, which come after the late rain, and are called the barber or the king's barber because they devastate everything and leave nothing of the green grass on the earth. This barber, or haircut, Isaiah calls a sharp razor (Isa. VII), which will shave all the hair and the beard of the body of the children of Israel. And when, he says, I doubted what this razor was, he immediately brought in…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Grasshopper — Belongs to the class of neuropterous insects called Gryllidae. This insect is not unknown in Palestine. In Judg. 6:5; 7:12; Job 39:30; Jer. 46:23, where the Authorized Version has “grasshopper,” the…
Herb — (1.) Heb. ‘eseb, any green plant; herbage (Gen. 1:11, 12, 29, 30; 2:5; 3:18, etc.); comprehending vegetables and all green herbage (Amos 7:1, 2). (2.) Yarak, green; any green thing; foliage of trees…
Mowing — (Heb. gez), rendered in Ps. 72:6 “mown grass.” The expression “king’s mowings” (Amos 7:1) refers to some royal right of early pasturage, the first crop of grass for the cavalry (comp. 1 Kings 18:5).
Taxes — First mentioned in the command (Ex. 30:11-16) that every Jew from twenty years and upward should pay an annual tax of “half a shekel for an offering to the Lord.” This enactment was faithfully…
Mowing · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Tax · Paid in grain — Paid in grain
Visions · Mentioned in scripture: To Amos — Mentioned in scripture: To Amos
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
John Calvin on Amos 7:1-3
Amos 7:1-3
1. Thus hath the Lord God shewed [47] 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.
1. Sic ostendit mihi Dominus, et ecce formans locustas principio ascensionis herbae (hoc est, quum incipit herba ascendere: lqs, proprie significat secundam herbam, quam vocamus, Regian) et ecce herba post sectiones (vel, tonsuras, ut alii vertunt) Regis.
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.
2. Et factum est dum perficeret ad comendendu…
The first two visions. - Amo 7:1-3. The Locusts. - Amo 7:1. "Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me; and, behold, He formed locusts in the beginning of the springing up of the second crop; and, behold, it was a second crop after the king's mowing. Amo 7:2. And it came to pass, when they had finished eating the vegetable of the land, I said, Lord Jehovah, forgive, I pray: how can Jacob stand? for he is small. Amo 7:3. Jehovah repented of this: It shall not take place, saith Jehovah." The formula, "Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me," is common to this and the three following visions (Amo 7:4, Amo 7:7, and Amo 8:1), with this trifling difference, that in the third (Amo 7:7) the subject (the Lord Jehovah…
This section contains five visions. It is helpful to compare the progression of these five visions with the judgments listed in 4:6-11 (famine, drought, crop devastation, plagues, destruction).
7:1-6 The first two visions set up a mood of hopeful expectancy. God calls for judgment but then revokes it at the prophet’s intercession.
7:1 Locusts (see 4:9) were one of the plagues brought upon Egypt (Exod 10:4). Great swarms of locusts periodically invaded these lands, typically in times of drought. • king’s share: The first harvest went to the king as taxes, whereas the later harvest of the main crop fed the farmer and his family. However, if locusts devoured this crop, starvation would follow…
Thus... showed me—retribution, that He wished to bring locusts.
at the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth [Heb. לֶקֶשׁ, an expression of the latter rain (מַלְקוֹש) when the grain shoots up in its stalk.
and behold the latter growth—was growing after the king’s mowings—After they mowed the king’s grains. Before it would shoot up in its stalk, they would mow it [as] young corn (שַׁחַת) to feed the cattle, and so did Jonathan render it: [After] the king’s young corn (שַׁחֲתָא) was mown. This is a mishnaic expression. (Menachoth 10:8) “One may cut young corn (שַׁחַת) and feed the cattle.”
