Exodus 10:19

turned, &c. i.e. caused by a change a west wind to blow.

west wind Heb. a sea-wind. The -west" is regularly in Heb. the sea(Genesis 12:8; Genesis 13:14, &c.). The idiom must have formed itself in Palestine, where the -sea" was on the west. It is a common fate of locust swarms to be driven away by the wind, and to perish in the sea. Cf. Joel 2:20, with the writer's note (p. 60). Pliny (H.N.xi. 35) writes, -Gregatim sublatae vento in maria aut stagna decidunt." The swarm described by Denon (on v.4) was driven back by a change of wind into the desert on the East.