persons.  It was not yet grown so great and potent as not to be terrified at the preaching of Jonah, and to fear being invaded by its neighbours and ruined within forty days:  it had some time before got free from the dominion of Egypt, and had got a King of its own; but its King was not yet called King of Assyria, but only King of Nineveh, Jonah iii. 6, 7. and his proclamation for a fast was not published in several nations, nor in all Assyria, but only in Nineveh, and perhaps in the villages thereof; but soon after, when the dominion of Nineveh was established at home, and exalted over all Assyria properly so called, and this Kingdom began to make war upon the neighbouring nations, its Kings were no longer called Kings of Nineveh but began to be called Kings of Assyria.

Amos prophesied in the Reign of Jeroboam the Son of Joash King of Israel, soon after Jeroboam had subdued the Kingdoms of Damascus and Hamath, that is, about ten or twenty years before the Reign of Pul:  and he [345] thus reproves Israel for being lifted up by those conquests; Ye which rejoyce in a thing of nought, which say, have we not taken to us horns by our strength?  But behold I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel_, saith the Lord the God of Hosts, and they shall afflict you from the entring in of Hamath unto the river of the wilderness_.  God here threatens to raise up a nation against Israel; but what nation he names not; that he conceals ’till the Assyrians should appear and discover it.  In the prophesies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah and Zechariah, which were written after the Monarchy grew up, it is openly named upon all occasions; but in this of Amos not once, tho’ the captivity of Israel and Syria be the subject of the prophesy, and that of Israel be often threatned:  he only saith in general that Syria should go into captivity unto Kir, and that Israel, notwithstanding her present greatness, should go into captivity beyond Damascus; and that God would raise up a nation to afflict them:  meaning that he would raise up above them from a lower condition, a nation whom they yet feared not:  for so the Hebrew word [Hebrew:  mqm] signifies when applied to men, as in Amos v. 2. 1 Sam. xii. 11. Psal. cxiii. 7. Jer. x. 20. l. 32. Hab. i. 6. Zech. xi. 16.  As Amos names not the Assyrians; at the writing of this prophecy they made no great figure in the world, but were to be raised up against Israel, and by consequence rose up in the days of Pul and his successors:  for after Jeroboam had conquered Damascus and Hamath, his successor Menahem destroyed Tiphsah