Amos 4:10-11

I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt I have sent such pestilence among you as I formerly sent upon Egypt: Or, such as has frequently taken place in Egypt. “The unwholesome effluvia, on the subsiding of the Nile, caused some peculiarly malignant diseases in this country.” Newcome. Maillet also tells us, (Lamentations 1. page 14,) that “the air is bad in those parts, where, when the inundations of the Nile have been very great, this river, in retiring to its channel, leaves marshy places, which infect the country round about. The dew is also very dangerous in Egypt.” Your young men have I slain, &c. I have caused your young men to fall in battle with your enemies. And have taken away your horses Have enabled your enemies to take them from you. Horses being very scarce in the land of Israel, the loss of them was a great affliction. I have made the stink of your camps, &c. I have sent diseases into your camps; so that they have been rendered quite noisome by the smell of the dead carcasses, or so great has been the slaughter in your camps, that there were not a sufficient number left alive to bury the slain. The Syrians made frequent incursions on the Israelites, which obliged the latter to be often encamped. I have overthrown some of you, &c. Some of your cities I have caused to be burned with fire and utterly consumed, as Sodom and Gomorrah were. And ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning Those that remained very narrowly escaped. A proverbial expression, used both by sacred and profane authors, to signify a narrow escape out of imminent danger.