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Behold, he formed grasshoppers - גבי gobai is generally understood here to signify locusts. See the notes on Joel 1 (note) and Joel 2 (note).

The shooting up of the latter growth - The early crop of grass had been already mowed and housed. The second crop or rowing, as it is called in some places, was not yet begun. By the king's mowings we may understand the first crop, a portion of which the king probably claimed as being the better hay; but the words may signify simply the prime crop, that which is the best of the whole. Houbigant thinks the shearing of the king's sheep is meant.

And behold He formed - (that is, He was forming.) The very least things then are as much in His infinite Mind, as what we count the greatest. He has not simply made “laws of nature,” as people speak, to do His work, and continue the generations of the world. He Himself was still framing them, giving them being, as our Lord saith, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” John 5:17. The same power of God is seen in creating the locust, as the universe. The creature could as little do the one as the other. But further, God was “framing” them for a special end, not of nature, but of His moral government, in the correction of man. He was “framimg the locust,” that it might, at His appointed time, lay waste just those tracts which He had appointed to them. God, in this vision, opens our eyes, and lets us see Himself, framing the punishment for the deserts of the sinners, that so when hail, mildew, blight, caterpillars, or some other hitherto unknown disease, (which, because we know it not, we call by the name of the crop which it annihilates), waste our crops, we may think, not of secondary causes, but of our Judge. Lap.: “Fire and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind, fulfill His word, Psalm 148:8, in striking sinners as He wills. To be indignant with these, were like a dog who bit the stone wherewith it was hit, instead of the man who threw it.” Gregory on Job L. xxxii. c. 4. L.: “He who denies that he was stricken for his own fault, what does he but accuse the justice of Him who smiteth?”

Grasshoppers - that is, locusts. The name may very possibly be derived from their “creeping” simultaneously, in vast multitudes, from the ground, which is the more observable in these creatures, which, when the warmth of spring hatches the eggs, creep forth at once in myriads. This first meaning of their name must, however, have been obliterated by use (as mostly happens), since the word is also used by Nahum of a flying locust.

The king‘s mowings - must have been some regalia, to meet the state-expenses. The like custom still lingers on, here and there, among us, the “first mowth” or “first vesture,” that with which the fields are first clad, belonging to one person; the pasturage afterward, or “after-grass,” to others. The hay-harvest probably took place some time before the grain-harvest, and the “latter grass,” “after-grass,” (לקשׁ leqesh ) probably began to spring up at the time of the “latter rain” (מלקושׁ malqôsh ). Had the grass been mourn after this rain, it would not, under the burning sun of their rainless summer, have sprung up at all. At this time, then, upon which the hope of the year depended, “in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter grass,” Amos saw, in a vision, God form the locust, and “the green herb of the land” (the word includes all, that which is “for the service of man” as well as for beasts,) destroyed. Striking emblem of a state, recovering after it had been mown down, and anew overrun by a numerous enemy! Yet this need but be a passing desolation. Would they abide, or would they carry their ravages elsewhere? Amos intercedes with God, in words of that first intercession of Moses, “forgive now” Numbers 14:19. “By whom,” he adds, “shall Jacob arise?” literally, “Who shall Jacob arise?” that is, who is he that he should arise, so weakened, so half-destroyed? Plainly, the destruction is more than one invasion of locusts in one year. The locusts are a symbol (as in Joel) in like way as the following visions are symbols.

God bears long, but he will not bear always with a provoking people. The remembrance of the mercies we formerly received, like the produce of the earth of the former growth, should make us submissive to the will of God, when we meet with disappointments in the latter growth. The Lord has many ways of humbling a sinful nation. Whatever trouble we are under, we should be most earnest with God for the forgiveness of sin. Sin will soon make a great people small. What will become of Israel, if the hand that should raise him be stretched out against him? See the power of prayer. See what a blessing praying people are to a land. See how ready, how swift God is to show mercy; how he waits to be gracious. Israel was a wall, a strong wall, which God himself reared as a defence to his sanctuary. The Lord now seems to stand upon this wall. He measures it; it appears to be a bowing, bulging wall. Thus God would bring the people of Israel to the trial, would discover their wickedness; and the time will come, when those who have been spared often, shall be spared no longer. But the Lord still calls Israel his people. The repeated prayer and success of the prophet should lead us to seek the Saviour.