“Locusts,” says Daubuz, “begin to appear in spring, about a month after the equinox, and are only seen at most during five months. They are wont to arise in such vast companies, that they form a kind of cloud which eclipses the sun and darkens the sky; and make so great a noise with their wings as that, according to some, the sound thereof may be heard at six miles distant. Wherever they fall they make a most terrible havoc of all the fruits of the earth; and therefore the people, when they see them flying, are in the greatest consternation. Pliny says, “That they were looked upon as a plague proceeding from the wrath of the gods.”
The head of the locust resembles that of the horse; and therefore the Italians, who are often troubled with them, call them cavalette, as it were little horses.
“The Arabians, who know them well, say that the locusts have the thigh of a camel, the legs of an ostrich, the wings of an eagle, the breast of a lion, their tails are like a viper’s, and the appearance of horns adorns their heads and countenance.” As to the teeth of the locusts, Pliny observes that “nothing can resist them.” For the reasons above given, locusts are the symbol of an army of enemies coming in great multitudes, with great speed and swiftness to make an excursion in order to plunder and destroy.
“It is further to be observed, that locusts are generated in the pits of the earth, out of which the new progeny arises in the spring. ” Volney ob-
The Locusts (Revelation 9)
The devastation caused by a plague of locusts is depicted by these illustrations. The tree above was quickly denuded of all foliage in a very short time. The photo below illustrates the extent of locust swarms during a plague.
serves, that “the inhabitants of Syria have remarked that locusts come constantly from the desert of Arabia.” Indeed, etymologically, an and a locust are almost the same in radicals, and in pronunciation — arbeh, signifying a locust; and arbi, an Arab. In Judg. 6:5, in the original, the locust is used to designate the number and character of invading Arab hosts — “they (the Midianite Arabs and children of the east) came as locusts for multitude.” In a work styled Mohammedanism Unveiled, the writer says: “In the Bedoween Romance of Antar, the locust is introduced as the national emblem of the Ishmaelites.” He adds: “It is a remarkable coincidence with these illustrative facts, that Mohammedan tradition speaks of locusts having dropped into the hands of Mohammed, bearing on their wings their inscription, ‘We are the army of the Great God’. ”
The Saracen Locusts
9:7).
A drawing illustrating the symbolism of the locusts. A bad plague will darken the sun like smoke (Rev. 9:2). The appearance of locusts is so like that of horses that Italians call them cavelette — cavalry (see Rev.
It is evident from the entomology of the insect, that the apocalyptic locusts were not literally such. The locusts of the first woe had faces of men, and tresses as those of women, and a king over them. These and other characteristics show that they were armies of men, whose main force consisted of cavalry, invincible, licentious, and tormenting; analogous in their destructive operations to clouds of locusts. They were fitly styled locusts as coming from Arabia, the native country of the locust, whose name, with the change of a single letter as arabah for arbeh, signifies a desert— the Arab desert between the Dead and Red Seas. As of the locust so of the “scorpion,” whose native locality was considered by the Jews to be the Arabian desert. And they had good reason for this; for they were reminded by Moses on emerging from it, that it was “a great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions.” “And who know not,” says Elliott, “if facts so notorious be worth mentioning, that it is Arabia, still Arabia, that is regarded by naturalists as the original country of the horse; and its wildernesses are the haunts also of the lion. The entomology of the hieroglyphic is all Arabian. ”