Amos 1:14

So I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah,
and it shall devour her strongholds,
with shouting on the day of battle,
with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind;


Because of this heartlessness God would set fire to the walls (cf. vv. 7, 10) of Rabbah, Ammon’s capital city. Amid the engulfing flames the inhabitants would hear the war cries (cf. 2:2) of the attackers as they fell on their victims. Violent winds, symbolizing God’s own awesome power (cf. Ps. 83:15; Jer. 23:19; 30:23), would lash at the city. And the enemy would take both king and officials (cf. Amos 2:3) into exile (cf. 1:5). This judgment was fulfilled through the Assyrian conquest under Tiglath-Pileser III in 734 b.c.

As a punishment for this, their capital was to be burned, and the king, with the princes, to wander into exile, and consequently their kingdom was to be destroyed. Rabbâh, i.e., the great one, is the abbreviated name of the capital; Rabbah of the children of Ammon, which has been preserved in the ruins of Aurân (see at Deut. 3:11). The threat is sharpened by the clause בִּתְרוּעָה וגו׳, at the war-cry on the field of battle, i.e., an actual fact, when the enemy shall take the city by storm. בְּסַעַר וגו׳ is a figurative expression applied to the storming of a city carried by assault, like בְּסוּפָה in Num. 21:14. The reading מַלְכָּם, “their (the Ammonites’) king,” is confirmed by the LXX and the Chaldee, and required by וְשָׂרָיו (cf. Amos 2:3), whereas Μαλχόμ, Melchom, which is found in Aq., Symm., Jerome, and the Syriac, rests upon a false interpretation.

The fire of war would be unleashed against Rabbah, the capital of Ammon. The forces of nature would assist the armies in dashing the place to pieces. The royal family of Ammon would be taken into captivity. Nothing moves God to punish so much as wanton cruelty to the helpless (1:14–15).2

Rabbah, “the Great,” or Rabbath-Ammon, the capital of Ammon, was situated on the southern arm of the Jabbok, and was a place of remarkable strength (see Deut. 3:11; 2 Sam. 11:1; 12:26, etc.; 1 Chron. 20:1–3). “For picturesqueness of situation, I know of no ruins to compare with Ammon. The most striking feature is the citadel, which formerly contained not merely the garrison, but an upper town, and covered an extensive area. The lofty plateau on which it was situated is triangular in shape; two sides are formed by the valleys which diverge from the apex, where they are divided by a low neck, and thence separating fall into the valley of the Jabbok, which forms the base of the triangle, and contained the lower town. Climbing up the citadel, we can trace the remains of the moat, and, crossing it, find ourselves in a maze of ruins. The massive walls—the lower parts of which still remain, and which, rising from the precipitous sides of the cliff, rendered any attempt at scaling impossible—were evidently Ammonite. As I leant over them and looked sheer down about three hundred feet into one wâdy, and four hundred feet into the other, I did not wonder at its having occurred to King David that the leader of a forlorn hope against these ramparts would meet with certain death, and consequently assigning the position to Uriah. … Joab afterwards took the lower city, which he called ‘the city of waters,’ indicating very probably that the Jabbok was dammed into a lake near the lower city, to which the conformation of the valley would lend itself” (Oliphant, ‘Land of Gilead,’ p. 259, etc.). There is a sketch of the citadel-hill in the ‘Dictionary of the Bible,’ ii. 985. The city was taken by Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 27:3, 6; 49:2, 3), either at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, or in the course of his Egyptian campaign (Josephus, ‘Ant.,’ x. 9. 7). The expression, I will kindle a fire (not “send,” as elsewhere), possibly implies, as Pusey suggests, a conflagration from within. The shouting is the battle-cry of the opposing host, which adds to the horror of the scene (Job 39:25). With a tempest. The idea is that the walls should fall before the invaders, as if they were tents swept away in a whirl-wind.