Amos 4:10

Pestilence and the sword. By the pestilence (déber) is meant what we should term an epidemic accompanied by great mortality, such as under the insalubrious sanitary conditions of Eastern life, are of frequent occurrence: it is often mentioned in the Old Testament, and frequently threatened as a judgement, especially as the concomitant of a siege; e.g. Leviticus 26:25; Deu 28:21; 1 Kings 8:37; 2 Samuel 24:15; Psalms 91:3; Psalms 91:6 ("the pestilence that walketh in darkness"); and often in Jeremiah ("the sword, the famine, and the pestilence"), as Jeremiah 14:12; Jeremiah 21:7; Jeremiah 21:9; Jeremiah 24:10; Jeremiah 29:17-18 &c., cf. Jeremiah 28:8; so in Ezekiel 5:12; Ezekiel 6:11-12; Ezekiel 7:15 ("the sword without, the pestilence and the famine within"), Ezekiel 14:21 (one of Jehovah's -four sore judgements").

in the manner of Egypt i.e. in the manner in which it is wont to visit Egypt (Isaiah 10:26 b), with the same severity and malignity. The climate of Egypt was proverbially insalubrious (Deuteronomy 7:15; Deuteronomy 28:60, cf. Deuteronomy 28:27, "the boil of Egypt," probably some malignant pestilential boil); and "throughout antiquity the north-east corner of the Delta was regarded with reason as the home of the Plague," whence often, it is probable, it was brought into Israel by Philistine traders (see G. A. Smith, Geogr., pp. 157 160). Even in modern times, according to Sir G. Wilkinson (quoted by Dr Pusey), "a violent plague used formerly to occur about once in ten or twelve years. It was always less frequent at Cairo than at Alexandria."

your young men have I slain&c. alluding, doubtless, to the many defeats which, until Jeroboam's accession brought a change of fortune, Israel had sustained during the Syrian wars: comp. 2 Kings 10:32-33; 2 Kings 13:3; 2 Kings 13:7; 2 Kings 13:22; 2 Kings 14:26.

and have taken away your horses together with the captivity of your horses(your captive horses); i.e. your captured horses were slaughtered, as well as your young men (cf. 2 Kings 13:7). Wellh. interprets as is done by A.V., though allowing that the construction is more Arabic than Hebrew.

I have made the stink of your camps to come up&c. cf. Isaiah 34:3. The corpses of the slain soldiers were so numerous that they lay unburied on the ground, defiling the air with pestilential vapours.