Amos 7:4-6

The second vision. The devouring fire.

called to contend by fire Jehovah arraigns His people: and fire is the agent which he summons against them (cf. to dispute, or litigate, with fire, Isaiah 66:16). For the idea of Jehovah's contending(in a forensic sense) with His people, comp. Isaiah 3:13; Jeremiah 2:9; Hosea 4:1; Micah 6:2 (where the corresponding substantive is rendered controversy); and for calleth, comp. on Amos 7:8.

and it devoured the great deep, and would have devoured the portion] The imagery is suggested, no doubt, by the conflagrations which, in the East, break out in field and forest during the dry season (Joel 1:19-20), and spread with alarming rapidity (comp. Psalms 83:14; Isaiah 9:18; and see Thomson, The Land and the Book, ii. 291 293). So fierce was the flame thus kindled that it even dried up the -great deep" (Genesis 7:11), the subterranean waters upon which the Hebrews imagined the earth to rest (Genesis 1:7; Exodus 20:4; Psalms 24:2), and whence they supposed all its springs and fountains to have their supply; when these were exhausted, "it seemed as if the solid framework of the land, described with very apt pathos as the Portion(i.e. the portion[Micah 2:3, &c. assigned by God to His people), would be the next to disappear" (G. A. Smith, p. 111). The judgement is thus a more severe one than that of the locusts.