Joel 1:4

The calamity to which the prophet has thus emphatically directed his hearers" attention: a visitation of locusts, repeated for more years than one (Joel 2:25), and of unexampled severity; what had escaped the ravages of one swarm, had been speedily devoured by a succeeding one, till the crops were completely ruined, and every chance both of harvest and vintage had been utterly destroyed.

That which the shearer (gâzâm) hath left, the swarmer (arbeh) hath eaten;

And that which the swarmer (arbeh) hath left, the lapper (yéleḳ) hath eaten;

And that which the lapper (yéleḳ) hath left, the finisher (ḥâsîl) hath eaten.

The general intention of the verse is manifestly to describe a total destruction of the herbage of the land; but as we cannot identify with certainty the kinds of locust meant, nor, if we could, should have suitable English names by which to distinguish them, it is best to translate the terms used by words expressing the ideas which they probably suggested to the Hebrew ear. Successive swarms of locusts, appearing partly, it is probable, in the same year, partly in following years, are indicated rhetorically by four distinct names, which may partly be synonymous designations of the same species (though not of the same individual insects), partly denote different species, and partly denote the ordinary locust in different stages of its development (see p. 84 f.). The gâzâmis mentioned besides only Joel 2:25; Amos 4:9. Arbehis the usual name of the locust in Hebrew, and may be presumed therefore to have been the name of the species which most commonly invades Palestine, the Acridium peregrinum. The yéleḳmay have denoted the ordinary locust in its wingless larva- or pupa-stage (in which state it is not less destructive than in its mature form): in this case the second line of the verse will describe how what the fully-grown parent insects left in April or May, when they laid their eggs, was destroyed by the young larvae hatched in June. The ḥâsîlis named beside the arbeh, as a plague to which Palestine was liable, in 1 Kings 8:37; this, therefore, was probably a distinct species, perhaps the Oedipoda migratoriaor Pachytylus, also common in Palestine [30]. See further particulars in the Excursus at the end of the Book (p. 85 ff.).

[30] The four names cannot, as Credner and (somewhat differently) Gesenius thought, denote, as they stand, locusts in four successive stages of their development, for various reasons: (1) because not more than three stages are distinguishable by an ordinary observer [yet cf. p. 90]; (2) because, upon this view, arbeh, the most usual name of the locust, would denote only the immature insect; (3) because in Joel 2:25 the four names occur in a different order; (4) because, as swarms of locusts always move onwards, a swarm in one stage of its development could not be said to have devoured what it had left in a previous stage, since it would be upon entirely new ground. (Of course the last objection does not hold in the particular case of the larvae emerging from eggs, assumed above to represent the yéleḳ.)

In illustration of the allusions to locusts, contained in this and the following chapter, numerous passages from the descriptions of naturalists and travellers have been collected by Credner (ad locc. and pp. 261 313), and after him by Dr Pusey, a selection from which (with some additions from more recent authorities) is reprinted here. In the Excursus (p. 87 ff.) will be found also some continuous descriptions, by different observers, of the invasion of a country by locusts.