Locust

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LOCUST
(1) ’arbeh (root = ‘to multiply’) occurs more than 20 times; in Jdg_6:5; Jdg_7:12, Job_39:20, and Jer_46:23 it is, however, tr. [Note: translate or translation.] ‘grasshopper’ in AV [Note: Authorized Version.] .
(2) châgâb (tr. [Note: translate or translation.] AV [Note: Authorized Version.] and RV [Note: Revised Version.] ‘locust’ in 2Ch_7:13, elsewhere ‘grasshopper’), possibly a small locust: see Lev_11:22, Num_13:33, Ecc_12:5, Isa_40:22.
(3) gçbîm (pl.), Amo_7:1, AV [Note: Authorized Version.] ‘grasshoppers,’ RV [Note: Revised Version.] ‘locusts,’ AVm [Note: Authorized Version margin.] ‘green worms’; gôbai, Nah_3:17, AV [Note: Authorized Version.] great grasshoppers,’ RV [Note: Revised Version.] ‘swarms of grasshoppers.’
The remaining words are very uncertain. (4) gâzâm, tr. [Note: translate or translation.] ‘palmer worm’ (i.e. caterpillar). (5) yeleq, tr. [Note: translate or translation.] (RV [Note: Revised Version.] ) ‘canker-worm.’ (6) châsîl, tr. [Note: translate or translation.] ‘caterpillar.’ (Joe_1:4; Joe_2:25 etc.) may all be stages in the development of the locust, or they may, more probably, be some varieties of grasshoppers. (7) chargôl, Lev_11:22 (mistranslated in AV [Note: Authorized Version.] ‘beetle’; RV [Note: Revised Version.] ‘cricket’), and (8) Sol‘âm, Lev_11:22. (tr. [Note: translate or translation.] AV [Note: Authorized Version.] and RV [Note: Revised Version.] ‘bald locust’), are also some varieties of locust or grasshopper (it is impossible to be certain of the varieties specified). (9) tsělâtsal, Deu_28:42, from a root meaning ‘whirring,’ may refer to the cicada, which fills the countryside with its strident noise all through the hot summer.
Locusts and grasshoppers are included in the family Acrididæ. The latter are always plentiful, but the locusts fortunately do not appear in swarms, except at intervals of years. The most destructive kinds are Acridium peregrinum and Ædipoda migratoria. When they arrive in their countless millions, they darken the sky (Exo_10:15). The poetical description in Joe_2:1-11 is full of faithful touches; particularly the extraordinary noise they make (v. 5) when they are all feeding together. Their voracious onslaught is referred to in Isa_33:4, and their sudden disappearance when they rise in clouds to seek new fields for destruction is mentioned in Nah_3:17. They clear every green thing in their path (Exo_10:15). No more suitable figure can be conceived for an invading army (Jdg_6:5; Jdg_7:12, Jer_46:23). When, some forty years ago, the Anezi Bedouin from E. of the Jordan swarmed on to the Plain of Esdraelon, an eye-witness looking from Nazareth described the plain as stripped utterly bare, ‘just as if the locusts had been over it.’ When locusts are blown seaward, they fall into the water in vast numbers (Exo_10:19). The present writer has seen along the N. shore of the Dead Sea a continuous ridge of dead locusts washed up. The smell of piles of rotting locusts is intolerable. The feebleness and insignificance of these little insects, as viewed individually, are referred to in Num_13:33, Psa_109:23, Isa_40:22. Locusts are still eaten (cf. Mat_3:4). See Food, 8.
E. W. G. Masterman.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

(See JOEL.) The arbeh is the migratory devastating locust. The gowb, "grasshopper," is a species of gryllus, with voracity like the migratory locust, but small in size (Smith's Bible Dictionary makes gowb the nympha state of the locust): Amo_7:1. Nah_3:17; "the great grasshoppers (Hebrew: "the locust of locusts") which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth flee away," etc. The locust lays its eggs under shelter of hedges; they are hatched by the sun's heat in the spring; by June the young are so matured as to be able to flee away. So Assyria shall disappear. The chagab is another of the Gryllidae (Num_13:33; Ecc_12:5); Isa_40:22, "grasshopper," thus gowb = chagab. They all are Orthoptera with four wings; jaws strong and formed for biting.
The hind limbs of the saltatoria are largely developed, the thighs long and thick, the shanks still longer; thus "they have legs (the tibiae, so placed) above their feet to leap withal upon the earth" (Lev_11:21). The migratory locust is two inches and a half long, the forewings brown and black, and the thorax crested. Their devastations are vividly depicted (Exo_10:15; Joe_2:3; Joe_2:5; Joe_2:10). The 'arbeh and the sol'am ("the bald, smooth headed, locust," nowhere else mentioned; some of the winged orthopterous saltatoria; the Hebrew is related to the Egyptian for "locust") and the grasshopper (chagab) might be eaten (Leviticus 11). They are generally thrown alive into boiling water with salt, the wings, legs, and heads being pulled off; the bodies taste like shrimps, and are roasted, baked, fried in butter, ground, pounded, and mixed with flour for cakes, or smoked for after rise.
For "beetle" (Lev_11:22) translate "chargowl," some kind of the locust or grasshopper "saltatoria", from the Arabic hardjal "to leap." The tsaltsal occurs only in Deu_28:42, the locust that makes a shrill noise, from a root "to sound" (Gesenius), very destructive: one of the Cicadae. The "palmerworm" (gazam) is probably the larva state of the locust (Gesenius): Amo_4:9; Joe_1:4; Joe_2:25. Septuagint translated "caterpillar" by which KJV translated chaciyl, which is rather one of the winged Gryllidae ("the consuming locust".) Gazam is the gnawing locust, 'arbeh the swarming locust, yeleq the licking locust (in Jer_51:27 "the rough caterpillars" refer to the spinous nature of the tibiae) which is translated "caterpillar" also in Psa_105:34, elsewhere "cankerworm."
Locusts appear in swarms extending many miles and darkening the sunlight (Joe_2:10); like horses, so that the Italians call them "cavaletta", "little horse" (Joe_2:4-5; Rev_9:7; Rev_9:9); with a fearful noise; having no king (Pro_30:27); impossible to withstand in their progress; entering dwellings (Exo_10:6; Joe_2:8-10); not flying by night (Nah_3:17; Exo_10:13 "morning".) Birds, as the locust bird, which is thought to be the rose-colored starling, devour them; the sea destroys more (Exo_10:19). Their decaying bodies taint the air (Joe_2:20). Barrow (Travels, 257) says the stench of the bodies on the shore was smelt 150 miles off. Joel's phrase "the northern army" implies that he means human invaders from the N., the point of entrance to the Assyrians and Babylonians.
Reichardt (Jewish Intelligence, Feb., 1867) notices the Hebrew letters of gazam = 50, exactly the number of years that the Chaldees ruled the Jews from the temple's destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, 588 B.C., to Babylon's overthrow by Cyrus, 538 B.C. 'arbeh = 208, the period of Persia's dominion over the Jews from 538 to 330 B.C., when Alexander overthrew Persia. yeleq = 140, the period of Greek rule over the Jews from 330 to 190 B.C., when Antiochus Epiphanes, Israel's persecutor, was overcome by the Roman L. Scipio. chaciyl = 108, the exact number of years between 38 B.C., when Rome placed the Idumean Herod on the throne, and A.D. 70, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish nationality. Thus, the four successive world empires and the calamities which they inflicted on Israel are the truths shadowed forth by the four kinds of locusts in Joel.
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.

Locust. A well-known insect, of the grasshopper family, which commits terrible ravages on vegetation in the countries which it visits. "The common brown locust is about three inches in length, and the general form is that of a grasshopper."
The most destructive of the locust tribe that occur in the Bible lands are the Edipoda migratoria and the Acridium peregrinum; and as both these species occur in Syria and Arabia, etc., it is most probable that one or other is denoted in those passages which speak of the dreadful devastations committed by these insects.
Locusts occur in great numbers, and sometimes obscure the sun. Exo_10:15; Jdg_6:5; Jer_46:23. Their voracity is alluded to in Exo_10:12; Exo_10:15; Joe_1:4; Joe_1:7. They make a fearful noise in their flight. Joe_2:5; Rev_9:9. Their irresistible progress is referred to in Joe_2:8-9. They enter dwellings, and devour even the woodwork of houses. Exo_10:6; Joe_2:9-10. They do not fly in the night. Nah_3:17. The sea destroys the greater number. Exo_10:19; Joe_2:20.
The flight of locusts is thus described by M. Olivier (Voyage dans l' Empire Othoman, ii. 424): "With the burning south winds (of Syria), there comes, from the interior of Arabia and from the most southern parts of Persia, clouds of locusts, (Acridium peregrinum), whose ravages to these countries are as grievous and nearly as sudden as those of the heaviest hail in Europe.
We witnessed them twice. It is difficult to express the effect produced on us, by the sight of the whole atmosphere filled on all sides and to a great height, by an innumerable quantity of these insects, whose flight was slow and uniform, and whose noise resembled that of rain: the sky was darkened, and the light of the sun considerably weakened.
In a moment, the terraces of the houses, the streets, and all the fields were covered by these insects, and in two days, they had nearly devoured all the leaves of the plants. Happily, they lived but a short time, and seemed to have migrated only to reproduce themselves and die; in fact, nearly all those we saw the next day had paired, and the day following, the fields were covered with their dead bodies."
"Locusts have been used as food from the earliest times. Herodotus speaks of a Libyan nation, who dried their locusts in the sun and ate them with milk. The more common method, however, was to pull off the legs and wings and roast them in an iron dish. Then they thrown into a bag, and eaten like parched corn, each one taking a handful, when he chose." ? Biblical Treasury.
Sometimes the insects are ground and pounded, and then mixed with flour and water and made into cakes, or they are salted and then eaten; sometimes smoked; sometimes boiled or roasted; again, stewed, or fried in butter.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863

ארבה . The word is probably derived from רבה , which signifies to multiply, to become numerous, &c; because of the immense swarms of these animals by which different countries, especially in the east, are infested. See this circumstance referred to, Jdg_6:5; Jdg_7:12; Psa_105:34; Jer_46:23; Jer_51:14; Joe_1:4; Nah_3:15; Jdt_2:19-20; where the most numerous armies are compared to the arbeh, or locust.
The locust, in entomology, belongs to a genus of insects known among naturalists by the name of grylli. The common great brown locust is about three inches in length, has two antennae about an inch long, and two pairs of wings. The head and horns are brown; the mouth, and insides of the larger legs, bluish; the upper side of the body, and upper wings, brown; the former spotted with black, and the latter with dusky, spots. The back is defended by a shield of a greenish hue; the under wings are of a light brown hue, tinctured with green, and nearly transparent. The general form and appearance of the insect is that of the grasshopper so well known in this country. These creatures are frequently mentioned in the Old Testament. They were employed as one of the plagues for the punishment of the Egyptians; and their visitation was threatened to the Israelites as a mark of the divine displeasure. Their numbers and destructive powers very aptly fit them for this purpose. When they take the field, they always follow a leader, whose motions they invariably observe. They often migrate from their native country, probably in quest of a greater supply of food. On these occasions they appear in such large flocks as to darken the air; forming many compact bodies or swarms, of several hundred yards square. These flights are very frequent in Barbary, and generally happen at the latter end of March or beginning of April, after the wind has blown from the south for some days. The month following, the young brood also make their appearance, generally following the track of the old ones. In whatever country they settle, they devour all the vegetables, grain, and, in fine, all the produce of the earth; eating the very bark off the trees; thus destroying at once the hopes of the husbandman, and all the labours of agriculture: for though their voracity is great, yet they contaminate a much greater quantity than they devour; as their bite is poisonous to vegetables, and the marks of devastation may be traced for several succeeding seasons. There are various species of them; which consequently have different names; and some are more voracious and destructive than others, though all are most destructive and insatiable spoilers. Bochart enumerates ten different kinds which he thinks are mentioned in the Scripture.
Writers in natural history bear abundant testimony to the Scriptural account of these creatures. Dr. Shaw describes at large the numerous swarms and prodigious broods of those locusts which he saw in Barbary. Dr. Russel says, “Of the noxious kinds of insects may well be reckoned the locusts, which sometimes arrive in such incredible multitudes, that it would appear fabulous to give a relation of them; destroying the whole of the verdure wherever they pass.” Captain Woodroffe, who was for some time at Astrachan, a city near the Volga, sixty miles to the north-west of the Caspian Sea, in latitude 47 , assures us, that, from the latter end of July to the beginning of October, the country about that city is frequently infested with locusts, which fly in such prodigious numbers as to darken the air, and appear at a distance as a heavy cloud. As for the Mosaic permission to the Jews of eating the locusts, Lev_11:22, however strange it may appear to the mere English reader, yet nothing is more certain than that several nations, both of Asia and Africa, anciently used these insects for food; and that they are still eaten in the east to this day. Niebuhr gives some account of the several species of locusts eaten by the Arabs, and of their different ways of dressing them for food. “The Europeans,” he adds, “do not comprehend how the Arabs can eat locusts with pleasure; and those Arabs who have had no intercourse with the Christians will not believe, in their turn, that these latter reckon oysters, crabs, shrimps, cray- fish, &c, for dainties. These two facts, however, are equally certain.” Locusts are often used figuratively by the prophets, for invading armies; and their swarms aptly represented the numbers, the desolating march of the vast military hordes and their predatory followers, which the ancient conquerors of the east poured down upon every country they attacked.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

lō?kust: The translation of a large number of Hebrew and Greek words:

1. Names:
(1) אתבּה, 'arbeh from the root רבה, rābhāh, ?to increase? (compare Arabic raba', ?to increase?). (2) סלעם, sāl'ām, from obsolete root סלעם, ṣal'am, ?to swallow down,? ?to consume.? (3) חרגּל, ḥargōl (compare Arabic ḥarjal, ?to run to the right or left,? ḥarjalat, ?a company of horses? or ?a swarm of locusts,? ḥarjawan, a kind of locust). (4) חגב, ḥāghābh (compare Arabic ḥajab, ?to hide,? ?to cover?). (5) גּזם, gāzām (compare Arabic jazum, ? to cut off?) (6) ילק, yeleḳ, from the root לקק, lāḳaḳ ?to lick? (compare Arabic laḳlaḳ, ?to dart out the tongue? (used of a serpent)). (7) חסיל, ḥāṣı̄l, from the root חסל, ḥaṣāl, ?to devour? (compare Arabic ḥauṣal, ?crop? (of a bird)). (8) גּוב, gōbh, from the obsolete root גּבה, gābhāh (compare Arabic jâbı̂, ?locust,? from the root jaba', ?to come out of a hole?). (9) גּב, gēbh, from same root. (10) צלצל, celācal from root צלל, cālal (onomatopoetic), ?to tinkle,? ?to ring? (compare Arabic ṣall, ?to give a ringing sound? (used of a horse's bit); compare also Arabic ṭann, used of the sound of a drum or piece of metal, also of the humming of flies). (11) ἀκρίς, akrı́s (genitive ἀκρίδος, akrı́dos; diminutive ἀκρίδιον, akrı́dion, whence Acridium, a genus of locusts).

2. Identifications:
(1), (2), (3) and (4) constitute the list of clean insects in Lev_11:21 f, characterized as ?winged creeping things that go upon all fours, which have legs above their feet, wherewith to leap upon the earth.? This manifestly refers to jumping insects of the order Orthoptera, such as locusts, grasshoppers and crickets, and is in contrast to the unclean ?winged creeping things that go upon all fours,? which may be taken to denote running Orthoptera, such as cockroaches, mole-crickets and ear-wigs, as well as insects of other orders.
'Arbeh (1) is uniformly translated ?locust? in the Revised Version (British and American). the King James Version has usually ?locust,? but ?grasshopper? in Jdg_6:5; Jdg_7:12; Job_39:20; Jer_46:23. Septuagint has usually ἀκρίς, akrı́s, ?locust?; but has βροῦχος, broúchos, ?wingless locust,? in Lev_11:22; 1Ki_8:37 (akris in the parallel passage, 2Ch_6:28); Nah_3:15; and ἀττέλεβος, attélebos, ?wingless locust,? in Nah_3:17. 'Arbeh occurs (Ex 10:4-19) in the account of the plague of locusts; in the phrase ?as locusts for multitude? (Jdg_6:5; Jdg_7:12); ?more than the locusts ... innumerable? (Jer_46:23);
?The locusts have no king,
Yet go they forth all of them by bands? (Pro_30:27).
'Arbeh is referred to as a plague in Deu_28:38; 1Ki_8:37; 2Ch_6:28; Psa_78:46; in Joel and in Nahum. These references, together with the fact that it is the most used word, occurring 24 times, warrant us in assuming it to be one of the swarming species, i.e. Pachtylus migratorius or Schistocerca peregrina, which from time to time devastate large regions in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
Ṣāl‛ām (2), English Versions of the Bible ?bald locust,? occurs only in Lev_11:22. According to Tristram, NBH, the name ?bald locust? was given because it is said in the Talmud to have a smooth head. It has been thought to be one of the genus Tryxalis (T. unguiculata or T. nasuta), in which the head is greatly elongated.
Ḥargōl (3), the King James Version ?beetle,? the Revised Version (British and American) ?cricket,? being one of the leaping insects, cannot be a beetle. It might be a cricket, but comparison with the Arabic (see supra) favors a locust of some sort. The word occurs only in Lev_11:22. See BEETLE.
Hāghābh (4) is one of the clean leaping insects of Lev_11:22 (English Versions of the Bible ?grasshopper?). The word occurs in four other places, nowhere coupled with the name of another insect. In the report of the spies (Num_13:33), we have the expression, ?We were in our own sight as grasshoppers?; in Ecc_12:5, ?The grasshopper shall be a burden?; in Isa_40:22, ?It is he that sitteth above the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.? These three passages distinctly favor the rendering ?grasshopper? of the English Versions of the Bible. In the remaining passage (2Ch_7:13), ?...if I command the locust (English Versions) to devour the land,? the migratory locust seems to be referred to. Doubtless this as well as other words was loosely used. In English there is no sharp distinction between the words ?grasshopper? and ?locust.?
The migratory locusts belong to the family Acridiidae, distinguished by short, thick antennae, and by having the organs of hearing at the base of the abdomen. The insects of the family Locustidae are commonly called ?grasshoppers,? but the same name is applied to those Acridiidae which are not found in swarms. The Locustidae have long, thin antennae, organs of hearing on the tibiae of the front legs, and the females have long ovipositors. It may be noted that the insect known in America as the seventeen-year locust, which occasionally does extensive damage to trees by laying its eggs in the twigs, is a totally different insect, being a Cicada of the order Rhynchota. Species of Cicada are found in Palestine, but are not considered harmful.
The Book of Joel is largely occupied with the description of a plague of locusts. Commentators differ as to whether it should be interpreted literally or allegorically (see JOEL). Four names 'arbeh (1), gāzām (5), yeleḳ (6) and ḥāṣı̄l (7), are found in Joe_1:4 and again in Joe_2:25.
For the etymology of these names, see 1 above. Gāzām (Amo_4:9; Joe_1:4; Joe_2:25) is in the Revised Version (British and American) uniformly translated ?palmer-worm? Septuagint κάμπη, kámpē, ?caterpillar?). Ḥāṣı̄l in the Revised Version (British and American) (1Ki_8:37; 2Ch_6:28; Psa_78:46; Isa_23:4; Joe_1:4; Joe_2:25) is uniformly translated ?caterpillar.? The Septuagint has indifferently brouchos, ?wingless locust,? and ἐρυσίβη, erusı́bē, ?rust? (of wheat). Yeleḳ (Psa_105:34; Jer_51:14, Jer_51:27; Joe_1:4; Joe_2:25; Nah_3:15, Nah_3:16) is everywhere ?canker-worm? in the Revised Version (British and American), except in Psa_105:34, where the American Standard Revised Version has ?grasshopper.? the King James Version has ?caterpillar? in Psalms and Jeremiah and ?canker-worm? in Joel and Nahum. Septuagint has indifferently akris and brouchos. ?Palmerworm? and ?canker-worm? are both Old English terms for caterpillars, which are strictly the larvae of lepidopterous insects, i.e. butterflies and moths.
While these four words occur in Joe_1:4 and Joe_2:25, a consideration of the book as a whole does not show that the ravages of four different insect pests are referred to, but rather a single one, and that the locust. These words may therefore be regarded as different names of the locust, referring to different stages of development of the insect. It is true that the words do not occur in quite the same order in 14 and in Joe_2:25, but while the former verse indicates a definite succession, the latter does not. If, therefore, all four words refer to the locust, ?palmer-worm,? ?canker-worm,? ?caterpillar? and the Septuagint erusibē, ?rust,? are obviously inappropriate.
Gōbh (8) is found in the difficult passage (Amo_7:1), ?...He formed locusts (the King James Version ?grasshoppers,? the King James Version margin ?green worms,? Septuagint akris) in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth?; and (Nah_3:17) in ?...thy marshals (are) as the swarms of grasshoppers (Hebrew gōbh gōbhay; the King James Version ?great grasshoppers?), which encamp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are.? The related gēbh (9) occurs but once, in Isa_33:4, also a disputed passage, ?And your spoil shall be gathered as the caterpillar (ḥāṣı̄l) gathereth: as locusts (gēbhı̄m) leap shall men leap upon it.? It is impossible to determine what species is meant, but some kind of locust or grasshopper fits any of these passages.
In Deu_28:42, ?All thy trees and the fruit of thy ground shall the locust (English Versions of the Bible) possess,? we have (10) celācal, Septuagint erusibē). The same word is translated in 2Sa_6:5 and Psa_150:5 bis ?cymbals,? in Job_41:7 ?fish-spears,? and in Isa_18:1 ?rustling.? As stated in 1, above, it is an onomatopoetic word, and in Deu_28:42 may well refer to the noise of the wings of a flight of locusts.
In the New Testament we have (11) akris, ?locust,? the food of John the Baptist (Mat_3:4; Mar_1:6); the same word is used figuratively in Rev_9:3, Rev_9:1; and also in the Apocrypha (Judith 2:20; The Wisdom of Solomon 16:9; and see 2 Esdras 4:24).

3. Habits:
The swarms of locusts are composed of countless individuals. The statements sometimes made that they darken the sky must not be taken too literally. They do not produce darkness, but their effect may be like that of a thick cloud. Their movements are largely determined by the wind, and while fields that are in their path may be laid waste, others at one side may not be affected. It is possible by vigorous waving to keep a given tract clear of them, but usually enough men cannot be found to protect the fields from their ravages.
Large birds have been known to pass through a flight of locusts with open mouths, filling their crops with the insects. Tristram, NHB, relates how he saw the fishes in the Jordan enjoying a similar feast, as the locusts fell into the stream. The female locust, by means of the ovipositor at the end of her abdomen, digs a hole in the ground, and deposits in it a mass of eggs, which are cemented together with a glandular secretion. An effective way of dealing with the locusts is to gather and destroy these egg-masses, and it is customary for the local governments to offer a substantial reward for a measure of eggs. The young before they can fly are frequently swept into pits or ditches dug for the purpose and are burned.
The young are of the same general shape as the adult insects, differing in being small, black and wingless. The three distinct stages in the metamorphosis of butterflies and others of the higher insects are not to be distinguished in locusts. They molt about six times, emerging from each molt larger than before. At first there are no wings. After several molts, small and useless wings are found, but it is only after the last molt that the insects are able to fly. In the early molts the tiny black nymphs are found in patches on the ground, hopping out of the way when disturbed. Later they run, until they are able to fly.
In all stages they are destructive to vegetation. Some remarkable pictures of their ravages are found in Joe_1:6, Joe_1:7, ?For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number; his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the jaw-teeth of a lioness. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my figtree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white? (see also Joe_2:2-9, Joe_2:20).

4. Figurative:
Locusts are instruments of the wrath of God (Ex 10:4-19; Deu_28:38, Deu_28:42; 2Ch_7:13; Psa_78:46; Psa_105:34; Nah_3:15-17; The Wisdom of Solomon 16:9; Rev_9:3); they typify an invading army (Jer_51:14, Jer_51:27); they are compared with horses (Joe_2:4; Rev_9:7); in Job_39:20, Yahweh says of the horse: ?Hast thou made him to leap as a locust?? the King James Version ?Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper?? Locusts are among the ?four things which are little upon the earth, but ... are exceeding wise? (Pro_30:27). Like the stars and sands of the sea, locusts are a type of that which cannot be numbered (Jdg_6:5; Jdg_7:12; Jer_46:23; Judith 2:20). Grasshoppers are a symbol of insignificance (Num_13:33; Ecc_12:5; Isa_40:22; 2 Esdras 4:24).

5. Locusts as Food:
The Arabs prepare for food the thorax of the locust, which contains the great wing muscles. They pull off the head, which as it comes away brings with it a mass of the viscera, and they remove the abdomen (or ?tail?), the legs and the wings. The thoraxes, if not at once eaten, are dried and put away as a store of food for a lean season. The idea of feeding upon locusts when prepared in this way should not be so repellent as the thought of eating the whole insect. In the light of this it is not incredible that the food of John the Baptist should have been ?locusts and wild honey? (Mat_3:4). See INSECTS.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

There are ten Hebrew words which appear to signify 'locust' in the Old Testament. It has been supposed, however, that some of these words denote merely the different states through which the locust passes after leaving the egg, viz. the larva, the pupa, and the perfect insect?all which much resemble each other, except that the larva has no wings, and that the pupa possesses only the rudiments of those members, which are fully developed only in the adult locust (Michaelis, Supplem. ad Lex. Hebr. ii. 667, 1080). But this supposition is manifestly wrong with regard to four of the terms, because, in Lev_11:22, the word 'after his kind,' or species, is added after each of them (comp. Lev_11:14-16). It is most probable, therefore, that all the rest are also the names of species, but we know not how to distinguish the several species from each other.
Locusts, like many other of the general provisions of nature, may occasion incidental and partial evil; but upon the whole they are an immense benefit to those portions of the world which they inhabit; and so connected is the chain of being that we may safely believe that the advantage is not confined to those regions. 'They clear the way for the renovation of vegetable productions which are in danger of being destroyed by the exuberance of some particular species, and are thus fulfilling the law of the Creator, that of all which he has made should nothing be lost. A region which has been choked up by shrubs and perennial plants and hard half-withered unpalatable grasses, after having been laid bare by these scourges, soon appears in a far more beautiful dress, with new herbs, superb lilies, fresh annual grasses, and young and juicy shrubs of perennial kinds, affording delicious herbage for the wild cattle and game.' Meanwhile their excessive multiplication is repressed by numerous causes. Contrary to the order of nature with all other insects, the males are far more numerous than the females. It is believed that if they were equal in number they would in ten years annihilate the vegetable system. Besides all the creatures that feed upon them, rains are very destructive to their eggs, to the larvae, pupa, and perfect insect. When perfect, they always fly with the wind, and are therefore constantly being carried out to sea, and often ignorantly descend upon it as if upon land. Myriads are thus lost in the ocean every year, and become the food of fishes. On land they afford in all their several states sustenance to countless tribes of birds, beasts, reptiles, etc.; and if their office as the scavengers of nature, commissioned to remove all superfluous productions from the face of the earth, sometimes incidentally and as the operation of a general law, interferes with the labors of man, as do storms, tempests, etc., they have, from all antiquity to the present hour, afforded him an excellent supply till the land acquires the benefit of their visitations, by yielding him in the meantime an agreeable, wholesome, and nutritious aliment. They are eaten as meat, are ground into flour, and made into bread. They are even an extensive article of commerce. Diodorus Siculus mentions a people of Ethiopia who were so fond of eating them that they were called Acridophagi, 'eaters of locusts.' Whole armies have been relieved by them when in danger of perishing. Their great flights occur only every fourth or fifth season. Those locusts which come in the first instance only fix on trees, and do not destroy grain: it is the young before they are able to fly which are chiefly injurious to the crops. Nor do all the species feed upon vegetables; one, comprehending many varieties, the truxalis, feeds upon insects. Latreille says the house-cricket will do so. 'Locusts,' remarks a very sensible tourist, 'seem to devour not so much from a ravenous appetite as from a rage for destroying.' Destruction, therefore, and not food, is the chief impulse of their devastations, and in this consists their utility; they are in fact omnivorous. The most poisonous plants are indifferent to them; they will prey even upon the crowfoot, whose causticity burns the very hides of beasts. They simply consume everything without predilection, vegetable matter, linen, woolen, silk, leather, etc.; and Pliny does not exaggerate when he says, 'and even the doors of houses,' for they have been known to consume the very varnish of furniture. They reduce everything indiscriminately to shreds, which become manure. It might serve to mitigate popular misapprehensions on the subject to consider what would have been the consequence if locusts had been carnivorous like wasps. All terrestrial beings, in such a case, not excluding man himself, would have become their victims. There are, no doubt, many things respecting them yet unknown to us which would still further justify the belief that this, like 'every' other 'work of God is good'?benevolent upon the whole.




The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.

Psa_109:23 (a) This is emblematic of the weakness and the helplessness of our blessed Lord as He was sent from one persecutor to another just as the wind blows the locusts about.

Pro_30:27 (c) This is a figure used to illustrate the blessedness of mutual fellowship regardless of leadership. Also that the problems of life require united effort though there be no adequate leadership.

Rev_9:3 (c) Here we see a type of some form of curse which GOD will send upon the earth against His enemies.
Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types
press 1957.

Locust
a well-known insect, which commits terrible devastation to vegetation in the countries which it visits. In the East it is especially prevalent, and at times commits such ravages as to produce famine and render the district almost uninhabitable.
I. There are ten Hebrew words which appear to signify locust in the Old Testament, while in the Greek the general term is ἀκρίς, which is employed in the New Testament. It has been supplosed that some of these words denote merely the different states through which the locust passes after leaving the egg, viz. the larva, the pupa, and the perfect insect — all which much resemble each other, except that the larva has no wings, and that the pupa possesses only the rudiments of those members, which are fully developed only in the adult locust (Michaelis, Supplem. ad Lex. Hebr. 2:667, 1080). But this supposition is manifestly wrong with regard to several of these terms, because, in Lev_11:22, the word לַמַינוֹ, "after his kind," or species, is added after each of them (compare Lev_11:14-16). It is most probable, therefore, that all the rest are also the names of species. But the problem is to ascertain the particular species intended by them respectively.
(1.) ARBEH' (אִרְבֶּה, occurs in Exo_10:4; Sept. ἀκρίδα πολλήν, a vast flight of locusts, or perhaps indicating that several species were employed, Vulg. locustam; and in Exo_10:12-14; Exo_10:19, ἀκρις and locusta, Eng. "locusts;" Lev_11:22, βροῦχον, bruchus, "locust;" Deu_28:38, ἀκρίς, locustae, "locust;" Jdg_6:5; Jdg_7:12; ἀκρίς, locustarum, "grasshoppers;" 1Ki_8:37, βροῦχος, locssta, "locust;" 2Ch_6:28, ἀκρίς, locusta, "locusts;" Job_39:20, ἀκρίδες, locustas, "grasshopper;" Psa_78:46, ἀκρίδι, Symm. σκώληκι, locustae, "locust;" Psa_105:34, ἀκρίς, locusta, "locusts;" Psa_109:23, ἀκρίδες, locustae, "locust;" Pro_30:27, ἀκρίς, locusta, "locusts;" Jer_46:23, ἀκρίδα, locusta, "grasshoppers;" Joe_1:4; Joe_2:25, ἀκρίς, locustar, "locust;" Nah_3:15, βροῦχος, bruchus, "locusts;" Nah_3:17, ἀττέλαβος, locusts, "locusts"). In almost every passage where arbeh occurs, reference is made to its terribly destructive powers.
It is the locust of the Egyptian plagues described in Exodus 10, where, as indeed everywhere else, it occurs in the singular number only, though it is there associated with verbs both in the singular and plural (Exo_10:5-6), as are the corresponding words in the Sept. and Vulgate. This it might be as a noun of multitude, but it will be rendered probable that four species were employed in the plague on Egypt, of which this is named first (Psa_78:46-47; Psa_105:34). These may all have been brought into Egypt from Ethiopia (which has ever been the cradle of all kinds of locusts), by what is called in Exodus " the east wind," since Bochart proves that the word which properly signifies "east" often means "soth" also. The word arbeh may be used in Lev_11:22 as the collective name for the locust, and be put first there as denoting also the most numerous species; but in Joe_1:4, and Psa_78:46, it is distinguished from the other names of locusts, and is mentioned second, as if of a different species; just, perhaps, as we use the word fly, sometimes as a collective name, and at others for a particular species of insect, as when speaking of the hop, turnip, meat fly, etc. When the Hebrew word is used in reference to a particular species, it has been supposed, for reasons which will be given, to denote the Gryllus gregarius or migratorius. Moses, therefore, in Exodus, refers Pharaoh to the visitation of the locusts, as well known in Egypt; but the plague would seem to have consisted in bringing them into that country in unexampled numbers, consisting of various species never previously seen there (comp. Exo_10:5-6; Exo_10:15).
It is one of the flying creeping creatures that were allowed as food by the law of Moses (Lev_11:21). In this passage it is clearly the representative of some species of winged saltatorial orthoptera, which must have possessed indications of form sufficient to distinguish the insect from the three other names which belong to the same division of orthoptera, and are mentioned in the same context. The opinion of Michaelis (Suppl. 667, 910), that the four words mentioned in Lev_11:22 denote the same insect in four different ages or stages of its growth, is quite untenable, for, whatever particular species are intended by these words, it is quite clear from Lev_11:21 that they must all be winged ortholptera. The Septulagint word βροῦχος there clearly shows that the translator uses it for a winged species of locust, contrary to the Latin fathers (as Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, etc.), who all define the bruchus to be the untledged young or larva of the locust, and who call it attelabus when its wings are partially developed, and locusta when able to fly; although both Sept. and Vulg. ascribe flight to the bruchus here, and in Nah_3:17. The Greek fathers, on the other hand, uniformly ascribe to the βροῦχος both wings and flight, and therein agree with the descriptions of the ancient Greek naturalists. Thus Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, who, with his preceptor, was probably contemporaneous with the Septuagint translators of the Pentateuch, plainly speaks of it as a distinct species, and not a mere state: "The ἀκρίδες (the best ascertained general Greek word for the locust) are injurious, the ἀττέλαβοι still more so, and those most of all which they call βροῦχοις (De Aniin).
The Sept. seems to recognize the peculiar destructiveness of the βροῦχος in 1Ki_8:37 (but has merged it in the parallel passage, 2 Chronicles), and in Nah_3:15, by adopting it for arbeh. In these passages the Sept. translators may have understood the G. migratorius or greguarius (Linn.), which is usually considered to be the most destructive species (from βρώσκω, I devour). Yet, in Joe_1:4; Joe_2:2, they have applied it to the yelek, which, however, appears there as engaged in the work of destruction. Hesychius, in the 3d century, explains the βροῦχος as "a species of locust," though, he observes, applied in his time by different nations to different species of locusts, and by some to the ἀττελαβος. May not his testimony to this effect illustrate the various uses of the word by the Sept. in the minor prophets? Our translators have wrongly adopted the word "grasshopper" in Judges and Jer_46:23, where "locusts" would certainly have better illustrated the idea of "innumerable multitudes;" and here, as elsewhere, have departed from their professed rule "not to vary from the sense of that which they had translated before, if the word signified the same in both places" (translators to the reader, ad finern).
The Hebrew word in question is usually derived from, רבה, "to multiply," or "be numerous," because the locust is remarkably prolific; which, as a general name, is certainly not inapplicable; and it is thence also inferred that it denotes the G. migratorius, because that species often appears in large numbers. However, the largest flight of locusts upon record, calculated to have extended over five hundred miles, and which darkened the air like an eclipse, and was supposed to come from Arabia, did not consist of the G. nigratorius, but of a red species (Kirby and Spence, Introd. to Entomology, 1:210); and, according to Forskal, the species which now chiefly infests Arabia, and which he names G. gregarius, is distinct from the G. migratorius of Linn. (Encyc. Brit. art. Entomology, page 193). Others derive the word from אָרִב, "to lie hid" or "in ambush," because the newly-hatched locust emerges from the ground, or because the locust besieges vegetables. Rosenmüller justly remarks upon such etymologies, and the inferences made from them (Scholia in Joe_1:4), "How precarious truly the reasoning is, derived in this manner from the e mere etymology of the word, everybody may understand for himself. Nor is the principle otherwise in regard to the rest of the species."
He also remarks that the references to the destructiveness of locusts, which are often derived from the roots, simply concur in this, that locusts consume and do mischief. Illustrations of the propriety of his remarks will abound as we proceed. Still, it by no means follows from a coincidence of the Hebrew roots, in this, or any other meaning, that the learned among the ancient Jews did not recognize different species in the different names of locusts. The English word fly, from the Saxon fleon, the Heb. עוֹŠ, and its representative "fowl," in the English version (Gen_1:20, etc.), all express both a general and specific idea. Even a modern entomologist might speak of "the flies" in a room, while aware that from fifty to one hundred different species annually visit our apartments. The Scriptures use popular language; hence "the multitude," "the devourer," or "the darkener," may have been the familiar appellations for certain species of locusts. The common Greek words for locusts and grasshoppers, etc., are of themselves equally indefinite, yet they also served for the names of species, as ἀκρίς, the locust generally, from the tops of vegetables, on which the locust feeds; but it is also used as the proper name of a particular species, as the grasshopper: τετραπτερυλλίς, "four-winged," is applied sometimes to the grasshopper; τρωξαλλίς, from τρώγω, "to chew," sometimes to the caterpillar. Yet the Greeks had also distinct names restricted to particular species, as ὄνος, μολουρίς, κερκώτη, etc. The Hebrew names may also have served similar purposes.
(2.) GEB (גֵּב, Isa_33:4; Sept. ἀκρίδες, Vulgate omits, Engl. "locusts"), or GoB (גּוֹב, Amo_7:1, ἐπιγονὴ ἀκρίδων; Aquila, βοράδον [voratrices], locustae, "grasshoppers;" Nah_3:17, ἀττέλαβος, locusts, "grasshoppers"). Here the lexicographers, finding no Hebrew root, resort to the Arabic, גָּבָא, "to creep out" (of the ground), as the locusts do in spring. But this applies to the young of all species of locusts, and Bochart's quotations from Aristotle and Pliny occur unfortunately in general descriptions of the locust. Castell gives another Arabic root, גָּאִב, "to cut" or "tear," but this is open to a similar objection. Parkhurst proposes גִּב, anything gibbous, curved, or arched, and gravely adds, "The locust in the caterpillar state, so called from its shape in general, or from its continually hunching out its back in moving." The Sept. word in Nahum, ἀττέλαβος, has already been shown to mean a perfect insect and species. Accordingly, Aristotle speaks of its parturition and eggs (Hist. Amim 5:29; so also Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir.). It seems, however, not unlikely that it means a wingless species of locust, genus Podisma of Latreille. Grasshoppers, which are of this kind, he includes under the genus Tettix. Hesychius defines the ἀττέλαβος as "a small locust," and Pliny mentions it as “the smallest of locusts, without wings" (Histor. Nat. 29:5). Accordingly, the Sept. ascribes only leaping to it. In Nahum we have the construction גּוֹב גּוֹבִי, locust of the locusts, which the lexicons explain as a vast multitude of locusts. Archbishop Newcome suggests that "the phrase is either a double reading where the scribes had a doubt which was the true reading, or a mistaken repetition not expunged."
He adds, that we may suppose גּוֹבִיthe contracted plural for גּוֹבַים(Improved Version of the Minor Prophets, Pontefr. 1809, page 188). Henderson understands the reduplication to express "the largest and most formidable of that kind of insect" (Comment. on the Minor Prophets, ad loc.). Some writers, led by this passage, have believed that the gob represents the larva state of some of the large locusts; the habit of halting at night, however, and encamping under the hedges, as described by the prophet, in all probability belongs to the winged locust as well as to the larvae; see Exo_10:13 : "The Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts." Mr. Barrow (1:257-8), speaking of some species of South African locusts, says that when the larvae, which are still more voracious than the parent insect, are on the march, it is impossible to make them turn out of the way, which is usually that of the wind. At sunset the troop halts and divides into separate groups, each occupying in bee-like clusters the neighboring eminences for the night. It is quite possible that the gôb may represent the larva or nymnpha state of the insect; nor is the passage from Nahum, "When the sun ariseth they flee away," any objection to this supposition, for the last stages of the larva differ but slightly from the nympha, both which states may therefore be comprehended under one name; the gob of Nah_3:17 may easily have been the nymphae (which in all the Ametabola continue to feed as in their larva condition) encamping at night under the hedges, and, obtaining their wings as the sun arose, are then represented as flying away (so too Kitto, Pict. Bible, note on Nah_3:17). It certainly is improbable that the Jews should have had no name for the locust in its larva or nymphs state, for they must have been quite familiar with the sight of such devourers of every green thing, the larvae being even more destructive than the imago; perhaps some of the other nine names, all of which Bochart considers to be the names of so many species, denote the insect in one or other of these conditions. SEE GRASSHOPPER.
(3.) GAZAM' (גָּזָם, Joe_1:4; Joe_2:25; Amo_4:9; in all which the Sept. reads κάμπη, the Vulg. eruca, and the English "palmer-worm"). Bochart observes that the Jews derive the word from גָּוּזor גָּזִז, "to shear" or "clip," though he prefers גָּזִם, "to cut," because, he observes, the locust gnaws the tender branches of trees as well as the leaves. Gesenius urges that the Chaldee and Syriac explain it as the young unfledged bruchus, which he considers very suitable to the passage in Joel, where the gazam begins its ravages before the locusts; but Dr. Lee justly remarks that there is no dependence to be placed on this. Gesenius adds that the root גָּזִםin Arabic and the Talmud is kindred with כָּסִם, "to sher" — a derivation which, however, applies to most species of locusts. Michaelis follows the Sept. and Vulgate, where the word in each most probably means the caterpillar, the larvae of the lepidopterous tribes of insects (Supplema. ad Lex. 290, compared with Recueil de Quest. page 63). We have, indeed, the authority of Columella, that the creatures which the Latins call erucae are by the Greeks called κάμπαι, or caterpillars (11:3), which he also describes as creeping upon vegetables and devouring them. Nevertheless, the depredations ascribed to the gazam, in Amos, better agree with the characteristics of the locust, as, according to Bochart, it was understood by the ancient versions. The English word "palmer-worm," in our old authors, means properly a hairy caterpillar, which wanders like a palmer or pilgrim, and, from its being rough, called also "beareworm" (Mouffet, Insectorum Theatrum, page 186). SEE PALMERWORM.
(4.) CHAGAB' (חָגָב, Lev_11:22; Num_13:33; Isa_40:22; Ecc_12:5, and 2Ch_7:13, in all which the Sept. reads ἀκρίς, Vulg. locusta, and Engl. "grasshopper," except the last, where the Engl. has "locusts." The manifest impropriety of translating this word "grasshoppers" in Lev_11:22, according to the English acceptation of the word, appears from its description there as being winged and edible; in all the other instances it most probably denotes a species of locust. Our translators have, indeed, properly rendered it "locust" in 2 Chronicles; but in all the other places "grasshopper," probably with a view to heighten the contrast described in those passages, but with no real advantage. Oedman (Vern. Samml. 2:90) infers, from its being so often used for this purpose, that it denotes the smallest species of locust; but in the passage in Chronicles voracity seems its chief characteristic. An Arabic root, חָגִב, signifying "to hide," is usually adduced, because it is said that locusts fly in such crowds as to hide the sun; but others say, from their hiding the ground when they alight. Even Parkhurst demurs that "to veil the sun and darken the air is not peculiar to any kind of locust;" and with no better success proposes to understand the cucullated, or hoode, or veiled species of locust. Tychsen (Conmment. de Locust. page 76) supposes that chadab denotes the Gryllus coronatus, Linn.; but this is the Acanthodis coronatus of Aud. Serv., a South American species, and probably colnfined to that continent. Michaelis (Supplem. 668), who derives the word from an Arabic root signifying "to veil," conceives that chagab represents either a locust at the fourth stage of its growth, "ante quartas exuvias quod adhuc velata est," or else at the last stage of its growth, "post quartas exuvias, quod jam volans solem coelumque obvelat."
To the first theory the passage in Leviticus 11 is opposed. The second theory is more reasonable, but châgâb is probably derived not from the Arabic, but the Hebrew. From what has been stated above, it will appear better to own our complete inability to say what species of locust châgâb denotes, than to hazard conjectures which must be grounded on no solid foundation. In the Talmud châgâb is a collective name for many of the locust tribe, no less than eight hundred kinds of châgâbim being supposed by the Talmud to exist! (Lewysohn, Zoolog. des Talm. § 384). Some kinds of locusts are beautifully marked, and were sought after by young Jewish children as playthings, just as butterflies and cockchafers are nowadays. M. Lewysohn says (§ 384) that a regular traffic used to be carried on with the chagâbim, which were caught in great numbers, and sold after wine had been sprinkled over them; he adds that the Israelites were only allowed to buy them before the dealer had thus prepared them. SEE GRASSHOPPER.
(5.) CHANAMAL' (חֲנָמָל, occurs only in Psa_78:47; Sept. πάχνη; Aq. ἐν κρύει; Vulg. in pruina; Eng. "frost"). Notwithstanding this concurrence of Sept, Vulg., and Aquila, it is objected that "frost" is nowhere mentioned as having been employed in the plagues of Egypt, to which the Psalmist evidently alludes; but that, if his words be compared with Exo_10:5; Exo_10:15, it will be seen that the locusts succeeded the hail. The Psalmist observes the same order, putting the devourer after the hail (comp. Mal_3:11). Hence it is thought to be another term for the locust. If this inference be correct, and assuming that the Psalmist is describing facts, this would make a fourth species of locust employed against Egypt, two of the others, the arbeh and chasil, being mentioned in the preceding verse. Proposed derivation, חָנָה, to set'le, and מוּל, to cut off, because where locusts settle they cut off leaves, etc., or as denoting some non-migrating locust which settles in a locality (see Bochart, in voc.). Michaelis (Supplem. 846) suggests the signification of ants, comparing the Arabic name for that insect, with חprefixed. Gesenius regards it as a quadriliteral, and argues from the term בָּרָד, hail, in the parallel member, that it denotes something peculiarly destructive to trees. See FROST.
(6.) CHASIL' (חָסַיל. 1Ki_8:37; 2Ch_6:28; Psa_78:46; Isa_23:4; Joe_1:4; Joe_2:25; Septuag. ἀκρίς, but in 2 Chronicles βροῦχος; Vulg. rubigqo, bruchus, cerugo; Engl. always "caterpillar"). Gesenius derives it from the root חָסִל, to eat off; Deu_32:38. It thus points to the same generic idea of destructiveness prominent in all this genus. SEE CATERPILLAR.
(7.) CHARGOL' (חִרְגֹּל, only in Lev_11:22; Septuag. ὀφιομάχης,Vulg. ophionsmachus, Auth. Vers. "beetle"), derived by Gesenius from the Arabic quadriliteral root חִרְגִּל, to gallop, as a horse, and applied by the Arabs to a flight of wingless locusts, but thought by him to indicate in Leviticus a winged and edible locust. Beckmann has arrived at the conclusion that some insect of the sphex or ichneumon kind was meant (apud Bochaxt, a Rosenmüller, 3:264). The genus of locusts called Truxalis, said to live upon insects, has been thought to answer the description. But is it a fact that the genus Truxalis is an exception to the rest of the Acridites, and is pre-eminently insectivorous? Serville (Orthopt. p. 579) believes that in their manner of living the Truxalides resemble the rest of the Acridites, but seems to allow that further investigation is necessary. Fischer (Orthop. Europ. page 292) says that the nutriment of this family is plants of various kinds. It is some excuse for the English rendering "beetle" in this place, that Pliny classes one species of grylhsis, the house-cricket, G. domesticus, under the scarabaei (Hist. Nat. 11:8). The Jews interpret chargôl to mean a species of grasshopper, German heuschrecke, which M. Lewysohn identities with Locusta viridissima, adopting the etymology of Bochart and Gesenius. The Jewish women used to carry the eggs of the chargol in their ears to preserve them from the earache (Buxtorf, Lex. Chald. et Rabbin. s.v. Chargol). SEE BEETLE.
(8.) YE'LEK (יֶלֶק, Psa_105:34, βροῦχος, bruchus, "caterpillars;" Jer_51:14; Jer_51:27, ἀκρίς, bruchus, "caterpillars;" and in the latter passage the Vulgate reads bruchus aculeatus, and some copies horripilantes; Joe_1:4; Joe_2:25, βροῦχος, bruchus, "canker-worm;" Nah_3:15-16, ἀκρίς and βροῦχος, "canker-worm"). Assuming that the Psalmist means to say that the yelek was really another species employed in the plague on Egypt, the English word caterpillar in the common acceptation cannot be correct, for we can hardly imagine that the larvae of the Papilionidae tribe of insects could be carried by "winds." Canker-worm means any worm that preys on fruit. Βροῦχοςcould hardly be understood by the Sept. translators of the minor prophets as an unfledged locust, for in Nah_3:16 they give the βροῦχος away. As to the etymology, the Arabic יָלִק, to be white, is offered; hence the white locust or the chafer-worm, which is white (Michaelis, Recueil de Quest. page 64; Supp. ad Lex. Heb. 1080). Others give לָקִק, to lick off; as Gesenius, who refers to Num_22:4, where this root is applied to the ox "licking" up his pasturage, and which, as descriptive of celerity in eating, is supposed to apply to the yelek. Others suggest the Arabic וָלִק, to hasten, alluding to the quick motions of locusts. The passage in Jer_51:27 is the only instance where an epithet is applied to the locust, and there we find סָמָר יֶלֶק, "rough caterpillars." As the noun derived from this descriptive term (מִסְמֵר) means "nails," "sharp-pointed spikes," Michaelis refers it to the rough, sharp-pointed feet of some species of chafer (ut supra). Oedman takes it for the G. cristatus of Linn. Tychsen, with more probability, refers it to some rough or bristly species of locust, as the G. haematopus of Linn., whose thighs are ciliated with hairs. Many grylli are furnished with spines and bristles; the whole species Acheta, also the pupa species of Linn., called by Degeer Locusta pupa spinosa, which is thus described: Thorax ciliated with spines, abdomen tuberculous and spinous, posterior thighs armed beneath with four spines or teeth; inhabits Ethiopia. The allusion in Jeremiah is to the ancient accoutrement of war- horses, bristling with sheaves of arrows. SEE CANKER-WORM.
(9.) SALAM' (סִלְעָם), only in Lev_11:22, ἀττάκη, attacus, "the bald locust." A Chaldee quadriliteral root is given by Bochart, סִלְעִם, to devour. Another has been proposed, סֶלִע, a rock or stone, and עָלָה, to go up; hence the locust, which climbs up stones or rocks; but, as Bochart observes, no locust is known answering to this characteristic. Others give סֶלֵע, a stone, and עָמִםto hide under; equally futile. Tychsen, arguing from what is said of the salam in the Talmud (Tract, Cholin), viz. that "this insect has a smooth head, and that the female is without the sword-shaped tail," conjectures that the species here intended is Gryllus eversor (Asso), a synonyme that it is difficult to identify with any recorded species. From the text where it is mentioned it only appears that it was some species of locust winged and edible.
(10.) TSELATSAL' (צְלָצִל, as the name of an insect only in Deu_28:42, ἐρυσίβη, rubigo, "locust"). The root commonly assigned is צָלִל, to sound (whence its use for a whizzing of wings, Isa_18:1; for cymbals, 2Sa_6:5; Psa_150:5; or any ringing instrument, as a harpoon, Job_41:7); hence, says Gesenius, a species of locust that makes a shrill noise. Dr. Lee says a tree-cricket that does so. Tychsen suggests the G. stridulus of Linn. The song of the gryllo- talpa is sweet and loud. On similar principles we might conjecture, although with perhaps somewhat less certainty, a derivation from the Chald. צְלָא, to pray, and thence infer the Mantis religiosa, or Prier Iieu, so called from its singular attitude, and which is found in Palestine (Kitto's Physical History, page 419). The words in the Septuag. and Vulgo properly mean the mildew on corn, etc., and are there applied metaphorically to the ravages of locusts. This mildew was anciently believed by the heathens to be a divine chastisement; hence their religious ceremony called Rubigalia (Pliny, Hist. Na. 18:29). The word is evidently onomatopoietic, and is here perhaps a synonyme for some one of the other names for locust. Michaelis (Supplem. 2094) believes the word is identical with chasil, which he says denotes perhaps the molecricket, Gryllus talpiformis, from the stridulous sound it produces. Tychsen (pages 79, 80) identifies it with the Gryllus stridulus, Linneus ( — Edipoda stridula, Aud. Serv.). The notion conveyed by the Hebrew word will, however, apply to almost any kind of locust, and, indeed, to many kinds of insects; a similar word, tsalsalza, was applied by the Ethiopians to a fly which the Arabs called zimb, apparently identical with the tsetse fly of Dr. Livingstone and other African travelers. In the passage in Deuteronomy, if an insect be meant at all, it may be assigned to some destructive species of grasshopper or locust.
(11.) The Greek term for the locust is ἀκρίς, which occurs in Rev_9:3; Rev_9:7, with undoubted allusion to the Oriental devastating insect, which is represented as ascending from the smoke of the infernal pit, as a type of the judgments of God upon the enemies of Christianity. They are also mentioned as forming part of the food of John the Baptist (Mat_3:4; Mar_1:6), where it is not, as some have supposed, any plant that is intended, but the insect, which is still universally eaten by the poorer classes in the East, both in a cooked and raw state (Hackett's Illustra. Of Script. page 97).
II. Locusts belong to that order of insects known by the term Orthoptera (or straight-winged). This order is divided into two large groups or divisions, viz. Cursoria and Saltatoria. The first, as the name imports, includes only those families of Orthoptera which have legs formed for creeping, and which are considered unclean by the Jewish law. Under the second are comprised those whose two posterior legs, by their peculiar structure, enable them to move on the ground by leaps. This group contains, according to Serville's arrangement, three families, the Gryllides, Locustariae, and the Acridites, distinguished one from the other by some peculiar modifications of structure. The common housecricket (Gryllus domesticus, Oliv.) may be taken as an illustration of the Gryllides; the green grasshopper (Locusta viridissima, Fabr.), which the French call Sauterelie verte, will represent the family Locustariae; and the Acridites may be typified by the common migratory locust (OEldipoda migratoria, Aud. Serv.), which is an occasional visitor to Europe (see the Gentleman's Magazine July, 1748, pages 331-414; also The Times, October 4, 1845). Of the Gryllides, G. cerisyi has been found in Egypt, and G. domesticus, on the authority of Dr. Kitto, in Palestine; but doubtless other species also occur in these countries. Of the Locustariae, Phaneroptera falcata, Serv. (G. falc. Scopoli), has also, according to Kitto, been found in Palestine, Bradyporus dasypus in Asia Minor, Turkey, etc., Saga Natoliae near Smyrna. Of the locusts proper, or Acridites, four species of the genus Truxalis are recorded as having been seen in Egypt, Syria, or Arabia, viz. T. nasuta, T. variabilis, T. procera, and T. miniata. The following kinds also occur: Opsomala pisciformis, in Egypt, and the oasis of Harrat; Paekiloceros hieroglyphicus, P. bufonius, P. punctiventris, P. vulcanus, in the deserts of Cairo; Dericorys albidula in Egypt and Mount Lebanon. Of the genus Acridium, A. maestum, the most formidable perhaps of all the Acridites, A. lineola (= G. AEgypt. Linn.), which is a species commonly sold for food in the markets of Bagdad (Serv. Orthop. 607), A. semifasciatum, A. peregrinum, one of the most destructive of the species, and A. morbosum, occur either in Egypt or Arabia. Calliptamus serapis and Chrotogonus lugubris are found in Egypt, and in the cultivated lands about Cairo; Eremobia carinata, in the rocky places about Sinai. E. cisti, E. pulchripennis, (Edipoda octofasciata, and OEd. migratoria (=G. migrat. Linn.), complete the list of the Saltatorial Orthoptera of the Bible lands.
Of one species M. Olivier (Voyage dans l'Empire Othoman, 2:424) thus writes: "With the burning south winds (of Syria) there come from the interior of Arabia and from the most southern parts of Persia clouds of locusts (Acridium peregrinum), whose ravages to these countries are as grievous and nearly as sudden as those of the heaviest hail in Europe. We witnessed them twice. It is difficult to express the effect produced on us by the sight of the whole atmosphere filled on all sides and to a great height by an innumerable quantity of these insects, whose flight was slow and uniform, and whose noise resembled that of rain: the sky was darkened, and the light of the sun considerably weakened. In a moment the terraces of the houses, the streets, and all the fields were covered by these insects, and in two days they had nearly devoured all the leaves of the plants. Happily they lived but a short time, and seemed to have migrated only to reproduce themselves and die; in fact, nearly all those we saw the next day had paired, and the day following the fields were covered with their (lead bodies." This species is found in Arabia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia. The ordinary Syrian locust greatly resembles the common grasshopper, but is larger and more destructive. It is usually about two inches and a half in length, and is chiefly of a green color, with dark spots. It is provided with a pair of antennae or "feelers" about an inch in length, projecting from the head. The mandibles or jaws are black, and the wingcoverts are of a bright brown, spotted with black. It has an elevated ridge or crest upon the thorax, or that portion of the body to which the legs and wings are attached. The legs and thighs of these insects are so powerful that they can leap to a height of two hundred times the length of their bodies; when so raised they spread their wings, and fly so close together as to appear like one compact moving mass.
Locusts, like many other of the general provisions of nature, may occasion incidental and partial evil, but, upon the whole, they are an immense benefit to those portions of the world which they inhabit; and so connected is the chain of being that we may safely believe that the advantage is not confined to those regions. "They clear the way for the renovation of vegetable productions which are in danger of being destroyed by the exuberance of some particular species, and are thus fulfilling the law of the Creator, that of all which he has made should nothing be lost. A region which has been choked up by shrubs, and perennial plants, and hard, half-withered, impalatable grasses, after having been laid bare by these scourges, soon appears in a far more beautiful dress, with new herbs, superb lilies, fresh annual grasses, and young and juicy shrubs of perennial kinds, affording delicious herbage for the wild cattle and game" (Sparman's Voyage, 1:367). Meanwhile their excessive multiplication is repressed by numerous causes. Contrary to the order of nature with all other insects, the males are far more numerous than the females. It is believed that if they were equal in number they would in ten years annihilate the vegetable system. Besides all the creatures that feed upon them, rains are very destructive to their eggs, to the larvae, pupae, and perfect insect. When perfect they always fly with the winds, and are therefore constantly carried out to sea, and often ignorantly descend upon it as if' upon land. (See below, III.) Myriads are thus lost in the ocean every year, and become the food of fishes. On land they afford in all their several states sustenance to countless tribes of birds, beasts, reptiles, etc.; and if their office as the scavengers of nature, commissioned to remove all superfluous productions from the face of the earth, sometimes incidentally and as the operation of a general law, interferes with the labors of man, as do storms, tempests, etc., they have, from all antiquity to the present hour, afforded him an excellent supply till the land acquires the benefit of their visitations, by yielding him in the mean time an agreeable, wholesome, and nutritious aliment.
There are different ways of preparing locusts for food: sometimes they are ground and pounded, and then mixed with flour and water and made into cakes, or they are salted and then eaten; sometimes smoked; boiled or roasted; stewed, or fried in butter. Dr. Kitto (Pict. Bible, note on Lev_11:21), who tasted locusts, says they are more like shrimps than anything else; and an English clergyman, some years ago, cooked some of the green grasshoppers, Locusta viridissima, boiling them in water half an hour, throwing away the head, wings, and legs, and then sprinkling them with pepper and salt, and adding butter: he found them excellent. How strange, then, nay, "how idle," to quote the words of Kirby and Spence (Entom. 1:305), "was the controvey concerning the locusts which formed part of the sustenance of John the Baptist,... and how apt even learned men are to perplex a plain question from ignorance of the customs of other countries!" They are even an extensive article of commerce (Sparman's Voyage, 1:367, etc.). Diodorus Siculus mentions a people of Ethiopia who were so fond of eating them that they were called Acridophagi, "eaters of locusts" (24:3). Whole armies have been relieved by them when in danger of perishing (Porphyrius, De Abstinentia Carnis). We learn from Aristophanes and Aristotle that they were eaten by the inhabitants of Greece (Aristoph. Acharnen. 1116, 1117, edit. Dind.; Aristotle, Hist. Anin. 5:30, where he speaks of them as delicacies). (See below, III.) That they were eaten in a preserved state by the ancient Assyrians is evident from the monuments (Layard, Bab. and Nin. page 289).
Birds also eagerly devour them (Russell, Natural History of Aleppo, page 127; Volney, Travels, 1:237; Kitto's Physical History of Pal. page 410). The locust-bird referred to by travelers, and which the Arabs call smurmur, is no doubt, from Dr. Kitto's description, the "rose-colored starling," Pastor roseus. The Reverend H.B. Tristram saw one specimen in the orange-groves at Jaffa in the spring of 1858, but makes no allusion to its devouring locusts. Dr. Kitto in one place (page 410) says the locust-bird is about the size of a starling; in another place (page 420) he compares it in size to a swallow. The bird is about eight inches and a half in length. Yarrell (British Birds, 2:51, 2d ed.) says "it is held sacred at Aleppo because it feeds on the locust;" and Colossians Sykes bears testimony to the immense flocks in which they fly. He says (Catalogue of the Birds of Dakhan) "they darken the air by their numbers... forty or fifty have been killed at a shot." But he says "they prove a calamity to the husbandman, as they are as destructive as locusts, and not much less numerous."
The great flights of locusts occur only every fourth or fifth season. Those locusts which come in the first instance only fix on trees, and do not destroy grain: it is the young, before they are able to fly, which are chiefly injurious to the crops. Nor do all the species feed upon vegetables; one, comprehending many varieties, the truxalis, according to some authorities, feeds upon insects. Latreille says the house-cricket will do so. "Locusts," remarks a very sensible tourist, "seem to devour not so much from a ravenous appetite as from a rage for destroying." Destruction, therefore, and not food, is the chief impulse of their devastations, and in this consists their utility; they are, in fact, omnivorous. The most poisonous plants are indifferent to them; they will prey even upon the crowfoot, whose causticity bursts the very hides of beasts. They simply consume everything without predilection, vegetable matter, linen, woolen, silk, leather, etc.; and Pliny does not exaggerate when he says, "Fores quoque tectorum," "and even the doors of houses" (11:29), for they have been known to consume the very varnish of furniture. They reduce everything indiscriminately to shreds, which become manure. It might serve to mitigate popular misapprehensions on the subject to consider what would have been the consequence if locusts had been carnivorous like wasps. All terrestrial beings, in such a case, not excluding man himself, would have become their victims. There are, no doubt, many things respecting them yet unknown to us which would still further justify the belief that this, like " every" other "work of God, is good" — benevolent upon the whole (see Dillon's Trav. in Spain, page 256, etc., London, 1780, 4to).
III. The general references to locusts in the Scriptures are well collected by Jahn (Bibl. Archaeol. § 23), while Wemyss gives many of the symbolical applications of this creature (Clavis Symbolica, s.v.). It is well known that locusts live in a republic like ants. Agur, the son of Jakeh, correctly says, "The locusts have no king." But Mr. Horne gives them one (Introduction, etc., 1839, 3:76), and Dr. Harris speaks of their having "a leader whose motions they invariably observe" (Nat. Hist. of the Bible, London, 1825). See this notion refuted by Kirby and Spence (2:16), and even by Mouffet (Theat. Insect. page 122, Lond. 1634). It is also worthy of remark that no Hebrew root has ever been offered favoring this idea. Our translation (Nah_3:17) represents locusts, "great grasshoppers," as "camping in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth as fleeing away." Here the locust, gob, is undoubtedly spoken of as a perfect insect, able to fly, and as it is well known that at evening the locusts descend from their flights and form camps for the night, may not the cold day mean the cold portion of the day, i.e., the night, so remarkable for its coldness in the East, the word יוֹם being used here, as it often is, in a comprehensive sense, like the Gr. ἡμέρα and Lat. dies? Gesenius suggests that גְּדֹרוֹת, "hedges," should here be understood like the Gr. αἱμασιά, shrubs, brushwood, etc. (See above, 1, 2.) With regard to the description in Joel (chapter 2), it is considered by many learned writers as a figurative representation of the ravages of an invading "army" of human beings, as in Rev_9:2-12, rather than a literal account, since such a devastation would hardly, they think, have escaped notice in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Some have abandoned all attempt at a literal interpretation of Lev_11:22, and understand by the four species of locusts there mentioned, Shalmaneser, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, and the Romans. Theodoret explains them as the four Assyrian kings, Tiglathpileser, Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Nebuchadnezzar; and Abarbanel, of the four kingdoms inimical to the Jews, viz. the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans (Pococke's Works, 1:214, etc., Lond. 1740; Rosenmüller, Scholia in Joel. c. 1).
From the Scriptures it appears that Egypt, Palestine, and the adjacent countries were frequently laid waste by vast bodies of migrating locusts, which are especially represented as a scourge in the hand of divine Providence for the punishment of national sins; and the brief notices of the inspired writers as to the habits of the insects, their numbers, and the devastation they cause, are amply borne out by the more labored details of modern travelers.
1. Locusts occur in great numbers, and sometimes obscure the sun (Exo_10:15; Jer_46:23; Jdg_6:5; Jdg_7:12; Joe_2:10; Nah_3:15; compare Livy, 42:2: AElian, N.A. 3:12; Pliny, N.H. 11:29; Shaw, Travels, page 187 [fol. 2d ed.] ; Ludolf, Hist. AEthiop. 1:13, and De Locustis, 1:4; Volney, Travels in Syria, 1:236).
2. Their voracity is alluded to in Exo_10:12; Exo_10:15; Joe_1:4; Joe_1:7; Joe_1:12; Joe_2:3; Deu_28:38; Psa_78:46; Psa_105:34; Isa_33:4 (comp. Shaw, Travels, page 187, and travelers in the East, passim).
3. They are compared to horses (Joe_2:4; Rev_9:7. The Italians call the locust "Cavaletta;" and Ray says, "Caput oblongum, equi instar prona spectans." Compare also the Arab's description to Niebuhr, Descr. die l'Arabie).
4. They make a fearful noise in their flight (Joe_2:5; Rev_9:9; comp. Forskal, Descr. page 81: "Transeuntes grylli super verticem nostrum sono magnae cataractae fervebant;" Volney, Trav. 1:235).
5. Their irresistible progress is referred to in Joe_2:8-9 (comp. Shaw, Trav. page 187).
6. They enter dwellings, and devour even the wood-work of houses (Exo_10:6; Joe_2:9-10; comp. Pliny, N.H. 11:29).
7. They do not fly in the night (Nah_3:17; comp. Niebuhr, Descr. de l'Arabie, page 173).
8. The sea destroys the greater number (Exo_10:19; Joe_2:20; compare Pliny, 11:35; Hasselquist, Trav. page 445 [Engl. transl. 1766]; also Iliad, 21:12).
9. Their dead bodies taint the air (Joe_2:20; comp. Hasselquist, Trav. page 445).
10. They are used as food (Lev_11:21-22; Mat_3:4; Mar_1:6; compare Pliny, N.H. 6:35; 11:35; Diod. Sic. 3:29; Aristoph. Achar. 1116; Ludolf, II. AEtiol). page 7 [Gent's transl.]; Jackson, Marocco, page 52; Niebuhr, Descr. (de l'Arabie, page 150; Sparman, Trav. 1:367, who savs the Hottentots are glad when the locusts come, for they fatten upon them; Hasselquist, Travels, pages 232, 419: Kirby and Spence, Entom. 1:305). There are people at this day who gravely assert that the locusts which formed part of the food of the Baptist were not the insect of that name, but the long, sweet pods of the locust-tree (Ceratonia siliqua), Johannis brodt, "St. John's bread," as the monks of Palestine call it. For other equally erroneous explanations, or unauthorized alterations of ἀκρίδες, see Celsii Hierob. 1:74.
IV. The following are some of the works which treat of locusts: Ludolf, Dissertatio de Locustis (Francof. ad Moen. 1694) [this author believes that the quails which fed the Israelites in the wilderness were locusts (vid. his Diatriba qua sententia nova de Selavis sive Locustis de enditur, Francof. 1694), as do the Jewish Arabs to this day. So does Patrick, in his Comment. on Numbers. A more absurd opinion was that held by Norrelius, who maintained that the four names of Lev_11:22 were birds (see his Schediassma de Avibus sacris, Arbeh, Chagab, Solam, et Chargol, Upsal. 1746, and in the Bibl. Barem, 3:36)]; Faber, De Locustis Biblicis, et sigillatim de Avibus Quadrupedibus, ex Lev_11:20 (Wittenb. 1710-11); Asso, Abhlandlung von den Heuschrecken (Rostock, 1787; usually containing also Tychsen's Comment. de Locustis); Oedman, Vermischte Sammlung, volume 2, c. 7; Kirby and Spence, Introduction to Entomology, 1:305, etc.; Bochart, Hierozoicon, 3:251, etc., ed. Rosenmüller; Kitto, Phys. History of Palestine, pages 419, 420; Harris, Natural Hist. of the Bible, s.v. (1833); Harmer, Observations (Lond. 1797); Fabricius, Entomol. System. 2:46 sq.; Credner, Joel, page 261 sq.; Thomson, Land and Book, 2:102 sq.; Tristram, Nat. Hist. of the Bible, page 306 sq.; Wood, Bible Aninmals, page 596 sq.; Hackett. Illustra. of Script. page 97; Serville, Aonograph in the Suites a Blufon; Fischer, Orthoptera Europcea; Suicer, Thesaurus, 1:169,179; Gutherr, De Victu Johannis (Franc. 1785); Rathleb, Akridotheologie (Hanover, 1748); Rawlinson, Five Ancient Monarchies, 2:299, 493; 3:144.

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