The Plague of Locusts

by John Thomas Lowe
(Woodruff, S.C.)

The Plague of Locusts
Exodus 10:1-6 (NIV) Par ▾


1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs of mine among them 2 that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD."
3 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, "This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go so that they may worship me. 4 If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow.5 They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields. 6 They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians—something neither your parents nor your ancestors has ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.'" Then Moses turned and left Pharaoh.
COMMENTARY
1. Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs of mine among them
The eighth plague; the Locusts. - Exodus 10:1-6. As Pharaoh's pride still refused to bend to the will of God, Moses was directed to announce another, and in some respects a more fearful, plague. At the same time, God strengthened Moses' faith by telling him that he decreed the hardening of Pharaoh and his servants, that these signs might be done among them, and that Israel might perceive by this to all generations that He was Jehovah (cf. Exodus 7:3-5). We may learn from Psalms 78 and 105 how the Israelites narrated these signs to their children and children. אתת שׁית, to set or prepare signs (Exodus 10:1), is interchanged with שׂוּם (Exodus 10:2) in the same sense (vid., Exodus 8:12). The suffix in בּקרבּו (Exodus 10:1) refers to Egypt as a country; and that in בּם (Exodus 10:2) to the Egyptians. In the expression, "thou mayest tell," Moses is addressed as the nation's representative' meaning to have to do with a person, generally in a bad sense, to do him harm (1 Samuel 31:4). "How I have put forth My might."

2. You may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them and that you may know that I am the LORD."
Moreover, that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and thy son's son. Not of his sons and grandsons only; for Moses here, as Aben Ezra observes, was in the stead of Israel; and the sense is that it should be told to their posterity in all succeeding ages:
What things I have wrought in Egypt; the plagues that he inflicted on the Egyptians:
Furthermore, my signs which I have done amongst them; meaning the same things which were signs:
That ye may know that I am the Lord; their God is the true Jehovah, and the one only living and true God; the Lord God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, infinite, and eternal.

3. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, "This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go so that they may worship me.
Moreover, Moses and Aaron came in unto Pharaoh, as the Lord commanded them, for what is before said to Moses was designed for Aaron also, his prophet and spokesman:
And said unto him, thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews; as the ambassadors of the God of Israel, and in his name said:
How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me? To acknowledge his offense, lie low before God, and be subject to his will; he had humbled himself for a moment, but then this did not continue; what God expected of him, and complains of the want of, was such a continued humiliation before him, and such subjection to him, as would issue in complying with what he had so often demanded of him, and is as follows: let my people go, that they may serve me; see Exodus 9:1.
4. If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow.
Verse 4. – Tomorrow. Again a warning is given, and a space of time interposed, during which the king may repent and submit himself if he chooses—the locusts. The species intended is probably either the Aeridium peregrinum or the Oedipoda migratoria. Both are common in Arabia and Syria and are known in Egypt. They are said to be equally destructive—the Hebrew name arbeh points to the "multitudinous" character of the visitation. A traveler in Syria says - "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." Into thy coast - i.e., "across thy border, into thy territories." The locust is only an occasional visitant in Egypt and seems always to arrive from some foreign country. Exodus 10:4

5. They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree growing in your fields. 6. And they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all thy servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians; which neither thy fathers nor thy fathers' fathers have seen, since the day that they were upon the earth unto this day. And he turned himself and went out from Pharaoh.
They shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth. This is one of the points most frequently noticed by travelers. "The ground is covered with them for several leagues," says Volney. "The steppes," says Clarke, "were entirely covered by their bodies." "Over an area of 1600 or 1800 square miles," observes Barrow, "the whole surface might be said to be covered with them." They shall eat the residue of that which escaped. Locusts eat every atom of vegetation in the district attacked by them. "In A.D.," says Barhebraeus, "a large swarm of locusts appeared in the land of Mosul and Baghdad, and it was very grievous in Shiraz. It left no herb nor even leaf on the trees. When their swarms appear," writes Volney, "everything green vanishes instantaneously from the fields as if a curtain were rolled up; the trees and plants stand leafless, and nothing is seen but naked boughs and stalks." Moreover, shall eat every tree. The damage done by locusts to trees is
They shall fill thy houses,... The king's palace and all its offices of it:
And the houses of thy servants; the palaces of his nobles and courtiers:
Moreover, the houses of all the Egyptians; of all the ordinary people, not only in the metropolis but in all the cities and towns in the kingdom; and so Dr. Shaw says, the locusts he saw in Barbary, in the years 1724 and 1725, climbed as they advanced over every tree or wall that was in their way; nay, they entered into our very houses and bedchambers, he says, like so many thieves:
Which neither thy fathers, nor thy fathers' fathers, have seen since the day they were upon the earth unto this day; for size, for numbers, and for the mischief they should do; for though they have sometimes appeared in great numbers, and have covered a large spot of ground where they have settled, and devoured all green things, yet never as to cover a whole country at once, and so large a one as Egypt, and destroy all green things in it; at least, never such a thing had been seen or known in Egypt before since it was a nation, though it was a country sometimes visited by locusts; for Pliny says, that in the country of Cyrenaica, which was near Egypt, see Acts 2:10 there was a law made for the diminishing of them, and keeping them under, to be observed three times a year, first by breaking their eggs, then destroying their young, and when they were grown up:
And he turned himself, and went out from Pharaoh; as soon as Moses had delivered his message, perceiving anger in Pharaoh's countenance, and concluding from hence and some gestures of his that he should fail, and perhaps might be bid to go away, though it is not recorded; or "he looked and went out from him")," in honor to the king, as R. Jeshuah observes, he went backward with his face to the king; he did not turn his back upon him, but went out with his face to him; and which as it was and is the manner in the eastern countries, so it is with us at this day, to go from the presence of the king, not with the back, but with the face turned toward him, so long as he is to be seen.