Amos 4:10 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

I have sent; you have died of plague, but I commissioned the disease, I sent it, and it swept you away in such manner that any observant eye might have seen the hand of God against you in it, and might have read the commission. The pestilence; arrow of God, that walketh in the dark, that wasteth at noon-day. After the manner of Egypt; in which there was somewhat extraordinary, it swept away both men and beasts, say some; probably it was this disease which by the stroke of the angel seized the first-born in Egypt. Others interpret this with particular respect to the death of them in going down to seek aid of Egypt, or in their return from Egypt, as if the prophet minded them of many that died on the way to or from Egypt; but the phrase in the way is better rendered by our translators after the manner. Your young men have I slain; God was their enemy, and slew their young men, the choice of their strength and hope. With the sword; in war, and by their neighbouring enemies in Jehoahaz's time, and Syrians since that too, 2 Kings 13:3, and 2Ki 15 2Ki 16, and 2Ki 17 compared. Have taken away your horses; not by murrain, but by what was worse to you, by the hand of those who did ride them; and these being slain the horses were taken by the enemy, and added to their strength, and your danger. I have made the stink of our camps to come up unto your nostrils; so great slaughter hath been made in your camp, that there were not sufficient to bury the slain before they stunk and offended you.