Exodus 10:4

Else, if thou refuse to let my people go,.... He threatens him with the following plague, the plague of the locusts, which Pliny (x) calls "denrum irae pestis": behold, tomorrow will I bring the

Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast: Tomorrow will I bring the locusts.

Exodus 10:4 Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast:Ver. 4. Else, if thou refuse.] Men should look up with David, and see the punishing angel over their heads with a drawn sword, and submit. And if not, Balaam’ s ass shall condemn them for their desperate lewdness: for he fell down before the angel. I will bring the locusts.] God hath treasuries of plagues for the obstinate; neither can he be, as the poet feared of his Jupiter, possibly exhausted. Si quoties peccent homines, &c.

(4) To morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast.—Locusts, as already observed, are not indigenous to Egypt, but only occasional visitants. Consequently they always enter the country from some other, as Nubia, Abyssinia, Syria, or Arabia. On the quarter from which the present plague came, see the comment on Exodus 10:13.

The EIGHTH plague - the LOCUSTS Verse 4. To-morrow will I bring the locusts] The word ארבה arbeh, a locust, is probably from the root רבה rabah, he multiplied, became great, mighty, c. because of the immense swarms of these animals by which different countries, especially the east, are infested. The locust, in entomology, belongs to a genus of insects known among naturalists by the term GRYLLI; and includes three species, crickets, grasshoppers, and those commonly called locusts; and as they multiply faster than any other animal in creation, they are properly entitled to the name ארבה arbeh, which might be translated the numerous or multiplied insect. See this circumstance referred to, Judges 6:5; Judges 7:12; Psalms 105:34; Jeremiah 46:23; Jeremiah 51:14; Joe 1:6; Nahum 3:15; Judith 2:19, 20; where the most numerous armies are compared to the arbeh or locust. The locust has a large open mouth; and in its two jaws it has four incisive teeth, which traverse each other like scissors, being calculated, from their mechanism, to grip or cut. Mr. Volney, in his Travels in Syria, gives a striking account of this most awful scourge of God: - "Syria partakes together with Egypt and Persia, and almost all the whole middle part of Asia, in the terrible scourge, I mean those clouds of locusts of which travellers have spoken; the quantity of which is incredible to any person who has not himself seen them, the earth being covered by them for several leagues round. The noise they make in browsing the plants and trees may be heard at a distance, like an army plundering in secret. Fire seems to follow their tracks. Wherever their legions march the verdure disappears from the country, like a curtain drawn aside; the trees and plants, despoiled of their leaves, make the hideous appearance of winter instantly succeed to the bright scenes of spring. When these clouds of locusts take their flight, in order to surmount some obstacle, or the more rapidly to cross some desert, one may literally say that the sun is darkened by them." Baron de Tott gives a similar account: "Clouds of locusts frequently alight on the plains of the Noguais, (the Tartars,) and giving preference to their fields of millet, ravage them in an instant. Their approach darkens the horizon, and so enormous is their multitude, it hides the light of the sun. They alight on the fields, and there form a bed of six or seven inches thick. To the noise of their flight succeeds that of their devouring actively, which resembles the rattling of hail-stones; but its consequences are infinitely more destructive. Fire itself eats not so fast; nor is there any appearance of vegetation to be found when they again take their flight, and go elsewhere to produce new disasters." Dr. Shaw, who witnessed most formidable swarms of these in Barbary in the years 1724 and 1725, gives the following account of them: "They were much larger than our grasshoppers, and had brown-spotted wings, with legs and bodies of a bright yellow.

1–20. The eighth plague. The locusts. From J, with short passages from E.

The locusts - The locust is less common in Egypt than in many eastern countries, yet it is well known, and dreaded as the most terrible of scourges.

4. I bring the locusts into thy coast — The destruction of all herbage by locusts is as complete as by fire over all the area which they cover, and they have been known to spread over from one to two thousand square miles.