Amos 6:14

But - (For,) - it was a non-thing, a nonexistent thing, a phantom, whereat they rejoiced; “for behold I raise up a nation.” God is said to “raise up,” when, by His Providence or His grace, He calls forth those who had not been called before, for the office for which He designs them. Thus, He raised up judges Judges 2:16, delivers Judges 3:9, prophets , Nazarites Amos 2:11, priests 1 Samuel 2:35, kings 2 Samuel 7:8, calling each separately to perform what He gave them in charge. So He is said to “raise up” even the evil ministers of His good Will, whom, in the course of His Providence, He allows to raise themselves up aloft to that eminence, so often as, in fulfilling their own bad will, they bring about, or are examples of, His righteous judgment. Thus God “raised up Hadad” as “an adversary” 1 Kings 11:14 to Solomon, and again Rezon 1 Kings 11:23; and the Chaldees Habakkuk 1:6.

So again God says to Pharaoh, “For this have I raised thee up Exodus 9:16, to show in thee My power.” So here He says, “I will raise up against you a nation, and they shall afflict you from the entering in of Hamath.” Israel, under Jeroboam II, had recovered a wider extent of territory, than had, in her northern portion, belonged to her since the better days of Solomon. Jeroboam “recovered Damascus and Hamath” 2 Kings 14:28, 2 Kings 14:25, which belonged to “Judah, unto Israel. He restored,” as God promised him by Jonah, “the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain. The entering of Hamath” expresses the utmost northern boundary promised to Israel Numbers 34:8. But this does not in itself express whether Hamath itself was included. Hamath however, and even Damascus itself, were incorporated in the bounds of Israel. The then great scourge of Israel had become part of its strength. Southward, Ammon and even Moab, had been taken into its borders. All the country on the other side of Jordan was theirs from Hamath and Damascus to the south of the Dead Sea, a space including four degrees of Latitude, as much as from Portsmouth to Durham. Amos describes the extension of the kingdom of Israel in the self-same terms as the Book of Kings; only he names as the southern extremity, “the river of the wilderness,” instead of “the sea of the wilderness.” The sea of the wilderness, that is, the Dead Sea, might in itself be either its northern or its southern extremity. The word used by Amos, defines it to be the southern. For his use of the name, “river of the wilderness,” implies:

(1) That it was a well-known boundary, a boundary as well-known to Israel on the south , “as the entering in of Hamath” was on the north.

(2) As a boundary-river, it must have been a river on the east of the Jordan, since Benjamin formed their boundary on the west of Jordan, and mountain passes, not rivers, separated them from it.

(3) From its name, ‘river of the wilderness, or the Arabah,” it must, in some important part of its course, have flowed in the ‘Arabah.

The ‘Arabah, (it is now well known,) is no other than that deep and remarkable depression, now called the Ghor, which extends from the lake of Gennesareth to the Red Sea . The Dead Sea itself is called by Moses too “the sea of the Arabah” Deuteronomy 3:17; Deuteronomy 4:49, lying, as it does, in the middle of that depression, and dividing it into two, the valley of the Jordan above the Dead Sea, and the southern portion which extends uninterrupted from the Dead to the Red Sea; and which also (although Scripture has less occasion to speak of it) Moses calls the ‘Arabah . A river, which fell from Moab into the Dead Sea without passing through the Arabah, would not be called “a river of the Arabah,” but, at the most “a river of the sea of the Arabah.” Now, besides the improbability that the name, “the river of the Arabah,” should have been substituted for the familiar names, the Arnon or the Jabbok, the Arnon does not flow into the Arabah at all, the Jabbok is no way connected with the Dead Sea, the corresponding boundary in the Book of Kings. These were both boundary-rivers, the Jabbok having keen the northern limit of what Moab and Ammon lost to the Amorite; the Arnon being the northern border of Moab. But there is a third boundary-river which answers all the conditions.

Moab was bounded on the south by a river, which Isaiah calls “the brook of the willows,” ערבים נחל nachal ‛ârâbı̂ym Isaiah 15:7, across which he foretells that they should transport for safety all which they had of value. A river, now called in its upper part the Wadi-el-Ahsa, and then the Wadi-es-Safieh, which now too “has more water than any south of the Yerka” (Jabbok), “divides the district of Kerek from that of Jebal, the ancient Gebalene” (that is, Moab from Idumaea). This river, after flowing from east to west and so forming a southern boundary to Moab, turns to the north in the Ghor or Arabah, and flows into the south extremity of the Dead Sea . This river then, answering to all the conditions, is doubtless that of which Amos spoke, and the boundary, which Jeroboam restored, included Moab also, (as in the most prosperous times of Israel,) since Moab’s southern border was now his border.

Israel, then, had no enemy, west of the Euphrates. Their strength had also, of late, been increasing steadily. Jehoash had, at the promise of Elisha, thrice defeated the Syrians, and recovered cities which had been lost, probably on the west also of Jordan, in the heart of the kingdom of Israel. What Jehoash had begun, Jeroboam II, during a reign of 41 years, continued. prophets had foretold and defined the successes of both kings, and so had marked them out the more to be the gift of God. Israel ascribed it to himself; and now that the enemies, whom Israel had feared, were subdued, God says, “I will raise up an enemy, and they shall afflict thee from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of the wilderness.” The whole scene of their triumphs should be one scene of affliction and woe. This was fulfilled after some 45 years, at the invasion of Tiglath-pileser.