Amos 7:1

Thus did the Lord Jehovah shew me The same formula, Amos 7:4; Amos 7:7, Amos 8:1. Cf. "shewed me" (also in the description of a vision), Jeremiah 24:1; Zechariah 3:1. Lit. caused me to see, the correlative of saw(râ"âh), viz. in a vision, 1 Kings 22:17; 1 Kings 22:19; Isaiah 6:1; Ezekiel 1:1; Ezekiel 1:4; Ezekiel 8:2; Zechariah 1:18; Zechariah 2:1, &c.

was forming] Properly forming as a potter, a metaphor often applied to the creative operations of God: see on Amos 4:13. The participle (the force of which is lost in the English version) represents the action as in progress, at the time when Amos saw it in vision.

locusts] Hebrew has many different terms for locust, which cannot now in all cases be exactly distinguished: the word used here (gôbay) perhaps denoted in particular locusts in the -larva"-stage, when they were first hatched (comp. the Excursus above, p. 86, No. 5). The derivation of the word is uncertain [183].

[183] In Arabic jabâis to collect, and jaba'ais said of a serpent or other animal coming forth suddenlyfrom its hole, as also of locusts coming suddenly upona country, and from each of these words is derived a name for locusts, denoting them either as collectinganything by eating it, or as coming forth suddenlywhether of their swarming forth from the ground, when the warmth of spring hatches the eggs, or of their sudden arrival in a country from elsewhere (see Lane, Arab. Lex. p. 379 a top, and pp. 372 e top, 373 a). It is possible (but not certain) that the Hebrew words referred to above are derived from one of these roots: they would be connected most easily with the first.

in the beginning of the coming up of the latter growth The precise meaning of léḳeshis uncertain: it may (as in Syriac) denote the after-math, or grass which springs up after the first crop has been cut; or it may denote the spring-cropsin general, which are matured under the influence of the malḳôsh, or "latter rain" (see on Joel 2:23), of March and April. In either case the locusts are represented as appearing at a critical moment, and destroying for the year the crops owned by private Israelites. The -king's mowings" appear to have been "a tribute in kind levied by the kings of Israel on the spring herbage, as provender for their cavalry (cf. 1 Kings 18:5). The Roman governors of Syria levied similarly a tax on pasture-land, in the month Nisan, as food for their horses: see Bruns and Sachau, Syr.-Röm. Rechtsbuch, Text L, § 121; Wright, Notulae Syriacae(1887), p. 6" (W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 228, Exodus 2, p. 246). After this tax had been paid, every one would naturally expect to be able to cut his grass for his own use. But the locusts came and devoured it.