as little as the royal prerogative. Well for him was it that over all those serried ranks of authority, those fanatic crowds, that lavish splendour, another vision commanded his eyes. _I saw the Lord standing over the altar, and He said, Smite._ Amos told the pilgrims at Bethel that the first events of his time in which he felt a purpose of God in harmony with his convictions about Israel's need of punishment were certain calamities of a physical kind. Of these, which in chapter iv. he describes as successively drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence and earthquake, he selected at Bethel only two--locusts and drought--and he began with the locusts. It may have been either the same visitation as he specifies in chapter iv., or a previous one; for of all the plagues of Palestine locusts have been the most frequent, occurring every six or seven years. _Thus the Lord Jehovah caused me to see: and, behold, a brood_[189] _of locusts at the beginning of the coming up of the spring crops._ In the Syrian year there are practically two tides of verdure: one which starts after the early rains of October and continues through the winter, checked by the cold; and one which comes away with greater force under the influence of the latter rains and more genial airs of spring.[190] Of these it was the later and richer which the locusts had attacked. _And, behold, it was after the king's mowings._ These seem to have been a tribute which the kings of Israel levied on the spring herbage, and which the Roman governors of Syria used annually to impose in the month Nisan.[191] _After the king's mowings_ would be a phrase to mark the time when everybody else might turn to reap their green stuff. It was thus the very crisis of the year when the locusts appeared; the April crops devoured, there was no hope of further fodder till December. Still, the calamity had happened before, and had been survived; a nation so vigorous and wealthy as Israel was under Jeroboam II. need not have been frightened to death. But Amos felt it with a conscience. To him it was the beginning of that destruction of his people which the spirit within him knew that their sin had earned. So _it came to pass, when_ the locusts _had made an end of devouring the verdure of the earth, that I said, Remit, I pray Thee,_ or _pardon_--a proof that there already weighed on the prophet's spirit something more awful than loss of grass--_how shall Jacob rise again? for he is little_.[192] The prayer was heard. _Jehovah repented for this: It shall not be, said Jehovah._ The unnameable _it_ must be the same as in the frequent phrase of the first chapter: _I will not turn It back_--namely, the final execution of doom on the people's sin. The reserve with which this is mentioned, both while there is still chance for the people to repent and after it has become irrevocable, is very impressive.