Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 6:14

"For, behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel, saith Jehovah, the God of hosts; and they shall afflict you from the entrance of Hamath unto the brook of the Arabah." — Amos 6:14 (ASV)

For, it was a non-thing, a nonexistent thing, a phantom, at which 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 previously been called, for the office He intends for them. Thus, He raised up judges (Judges 2:16–18), deliverers (Judges 3:9–15), prophets, Nazarites (Amos 2:11), priests (1 Samuel 2:35), and kings (2 Samuel 7:8), calling each separately to perform the tasks He assigned them.

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 to that eminence, whenever, in fulfilling their own evil will, they bring about His righteous judgment or serve as examples of it. 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 you up, to show in you My power” (Exodus 9:16). 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 in its northern portion than had belonged to it since the better days of Solomon. Jeroboam “recovered Damascus and Hamath” (2 Kings 14:28; compare to 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). However, this does not in itself indicate whether Hamath itself was included.

However, Hamath, and even Damascus itself, were incorporated within the borders of Israel. What was then the great scourge of Israel had become part of its strength. To the south, Ammon and even Moab had been brought within its borders. All the country on the other side of the Jordan was theirs, from Hamath and Damascus to the south of the Dead Sea—a territory spanning four degrees of latitude, comparable to the distance from Portsmouth to Durham. Amos describes the extension of the kingdom of Israel in the very 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) could in itself be either its northern or its southern extremity. The term used by Amos defines it as the southern extremity.

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 (as is now well known) is none other than that deep and remarkable depression, now called the Ghor, which extends from the Lake of Gennesaret to the Red Sea. The Dead Sea itself is also called by Moses “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 parts: the Jordan Valley north of the Dead Sea, and the southern portion that extends uninterrupted from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea. Moses also calls this southern portion the ‘Arabah (although Scripture has less occasion to speak of it).

A river that 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 unlikelihood that the name “the river of the Arabah” would have been substituted for the familiar names Arnon or Jabbok, the Arnon does not flow into the Arabah at all. The Jabbok is in no way connected with the Dead Sea, which is the corresponding boundary in the Book of Kings. These were both boundary-rivers, the Jabbok having been the northern limit of what Moab and Ammon had lost to the Amorites; the Arnon being the northern border of Moab. But there is a third boundary river that meets 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 that 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 southern extremity of the Dead Sea. This river, then, meeting all the conditions, is undoubtedly the one of which Amos spoke. The boundary that Jeroboam restored included Moab also (as in the most prosperous times of Israel), since Moab’s southern border was now Israel's border.

Israel, then, had no enemy west of the Euphrates. Their strength had also recently been increasing steadily. Jehoash had, at the promise of Elisha, thrice defeated the Syrians and recovered cities that 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 more clearly as the gift of God. Israel ascribed it to itself; and now that the enemies whom Israel had feared were subdued, God says, “I will raise up an enemy, and they shall afflict you from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of the wilderness.” The entire scene of their triumphs would become one of affliction and woe.

This was fulfilled some 45 years later, at the invasion of Tiglath-pileser.