Amos 1:14

"But I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, and it shall devour the palaces thereof, with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind; and their king shall go into captivity, he and his princes together, saith Jehovah.

Note that the announcement of God's judgment is uttered in each instance by formal, stylized pronouncements which are quite effective. "The shouting mentioned here is that of the assailants."[45] The figure of a tempest, or storm, is used to convey the fury and suddenness of their destruction.

"Their king ..." Some have noted that in some versions, a proper name is used here, signifying "Malcam, or Milcom, the god of the Ammonites."[46] If so, the dramatic meaning is that the worshippers of the god of destruction, along with their god, shall be destroyed.

Who can deny that it happened exactly as Amos had foretold? The cuneiform inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser, the great Assyrian king, relate how Ahaz of Judah, "Sanipu king of Ammon" both appear in a list of kings who paid tribute to him.[47] Also, some forty years later, "Buduilu of Ammon (along with others) paid Sennacherib tribute and kissed his feet."[48] Both of these destructions of Ammon occurred at substantial time periods subsequent to Amos' prophecy. "Their last stand seems to have been against Judas Maccabeus (1 Maccabees 5:6)."[49]

"The wall of Rabbah ..." Dean has a very interesting account of the strength of the remarkable wall of Rabbah:

"The massive walls, some of which remain in ruins, rise from the precipitous sides of the cliff ... I bent over them and looked sheer down about three hundred feet into one wady, and four hundred feet into the other. I did not wonder at its having occurred to King David that the leader of a charge against these ramparts would have met with certain death, consequently assigning the position to Uriah!"[50]

This indicates how unbelievable the prophecy of Amos must have seemed to his first hearers. Nevertheless, the word of the Lord came to pass exactly as the great prophet had declared.

Regarding the repeated formula, "For three transgressions of ... yea, for four," see the note at end of Amos 2.

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