Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me. By an inward illumination (comp. Amos 7:4, Amos 7:7; and Amos 8:1; Jeremiah 24:1-3). He formed grasshoppers; rather, locusts (Nahum 3:17). This points to the moral government of God, who uses nature to work his purposes, "wind and storm fulfilling his word."
In the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; when the aftermath was beginning to grow under the influence of the latter rains. If the herbage was destroyed then, there would be no hope of recovery in the rest of the year.
After the king's mowings. It is deduced from this expression that the first crop on certain grounds was taken for the king's use—a kind of royal perquisite, though there is no trace of such a custom found in Scripture, the passage in 1 Kings 18:5, where Ahab sends Obadiah to search for pasture, having plainly nothing to do with it; and in this case, as Keil remarks, the plague would seem to fall upon the people only, and the guilty king would have escaped.
But to interpret the expression entirely in a spiritual sense, with no substantial basis, as "Jehovah's judgments," destroys the harmony of the vision, ignoring its material aspect altogether. It is quite possible that the custom above mentioned did exist, though it was probably limited to certain lands, and did not apply to the whole pasturage of the country.
It is here mentioned to define the time of the plague of locusts—the time, in fact, when its ravages would be most irremediable. The LXX; by a little change of letters, render, ἰδοὺ βροῦχος εἷς γὼν ὁ βασιλεύς, by which they imply that the locusts would be as innumerable as the army of Gog.
The whole version is, "Behold, a swarm of locusts coming from the East; and behold, one caterpillar, King Gog." The vision is thought to refer to the first invasion by the Assyrians, when Pul was bribed by Menahem to withdraw.