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Joel 1-2
The present is indeed the standard Scripture passage on the subject; and we therefore give this evening to it, although it has already, in a slight measure, engaged our attention. Note: Morning Series: Fifteenth Week—Friday. To illustrate this, one of the noblest passages of Hebrew poetry, adequately, in all the details which it offers, would require scarcely less than half of one of our volumes. We may, therefore, be content to produce a few remarks in explanation of some of the more remarkable points, chiefly to show the minute accuracy of the expressions employed by the prophet.
In one place, Note: Joe_1:6. he says that the locust’s “teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a great lion.” Laborde says, that “this comparison is just, regard being had to the proportions of the two creatures.” It is especially just with respect to the strength of the bite of the locust, or, as one may say, to the power of their jaws, which is doubtless what the prophet means by “the cheek.” No one can witness the nature, extent, and rapidity of their devastations without being aware of this.
Again, he compares them to horses, Note: Joe_2:4. a comparison also used in the Apocalypse. Note: Rev_9:7. Commentators explain this by reference to the head of the insect, which is fancied to bear considerable resemblance to that of a horse. An active imagination may make out some faint resemblance, especially to the skeleton of a horse’s head, but it is not a very obvious likeness, and would hardly occur to any one spontaneously in examining a locust. One ingenious naturalist, however, finds that a locust, covered entirely with its closed wings, with the exception of the legs, the head, and the belly, offers a complete resemblance to an Arab home with the long covering called hiran. An analogous comparison of the locust to a horse is cited by Niebuhr as in use among the Persians and Arabians. He heard, indeed, from an Arab at Basrah, a particular comparison of the locust with other animals, but which did not much arrest his attention till he heard it repeated at Baghdad, when he remembered the comparison in the Apocalypse. This man compared the head of a locust to that of a horse, the breast to that of a lion, the legs to those of a camel, the belly to that of a serpent, the tail to that of a scorpion, and the feelers (if the traveller caught the meaning rightly) to the hair of a virgin. The Spaniards have a similarly detailed comparison, derived doubtless from the Arabs. As given in a Spanish book, it stands thus: “What animal is that which resembles many others?—the locust, which has the horns of an antelope, the eyes of a cow, Note: Not a ridiculous comparison to those who remember the “ox-eyed Juno” of Homer. the face of a horse, the legs of a hawk, the neck of a serpent, and the wings of a dove.” This does not prove much, however, as it is the genius of those people to find analogies of this nature inscrutable to any but themselves. Besides, it may be no more than the Scriptural expression adopted into the Koran, and passing thence into the common discourse and ideas of the people, as is frequent in many other instances. It seems more probable that the comparison really refers, not to anything in the head or form of the creature, but to its impetuous coarse, compared to the gallop of a horse. Any one who has witnessed the progress of a locust (or, in default of that, a grasshopper, which is of the same genus) upon the ground by successive leaps, will apprehend the force of this comparison. And it is avowedly with reference to this analogy that the Germans call the grasshopper a grass-horse (Heupferde), and the Italians a little horse (cavaletta). In fact, the motion has more resemblance to the gallop of a horse than to any animal motion known to the ancients, though we find a stronger resemblance to the movements of the kangaroo, a creature formerly unknown. In fact, this comparison has often occurred to ourselves in witnessing the ground movements of locusts. In proportion to size, however, the leap of the locust is very far longer than that of the horse Eclipse, or of the kangaroo, and the amazing force of the leap we had occasion to measure by the strong and startling bounce with which, in their leaps, they would sometimes come against one’s face when it happened to intercept them.
The prophet Note: Joe_1:7. specially notices the devastation of the vines and fruit trees by the locusts; though it afterwards appeared that all the products of the field, and even of the open pastures, were also consumed. It was observed, in the great invasion of Germany by locusts in the last century, Note: The locusts have, at distant intervals, found their way further west than is usually supposed. Germany was visited by flights of locusts in the years 844, 852, 872, 873, 1544, 1733 to 1739, 1813, 1819; England in 1613, 1748; Spain in 1597, 1686, 1754, 1757; Portugal in 1602, 1755, 1757; Italy in 591, 872, 1478, 1536, 1656, 1748. Many other visitations of locusts are also recorded to have occurred in different parts of Europe. that these destructive creatures devoured the wheat, the barley, the oats, the artichokes, the leaves of trees and shrubs, but spared the vines. In the East, on the contrary, if they arrive at the time the corn is in the blade, they make this their first repast; but if this does not suffice for them, or if the corn has grown to hardness, they repair to the fruit-trees, the vines, the fig-trees, the mulberry-trees, the palms, and speedily despoil them of all their leaves, leaving them as forlorn and bare as in winter. The palm-tree is, however, an evergreen, and the aspect which it presents when stript of its leaves by the locusts is singular and striking—the tree being never naturally seen in that condition. The prophet mentioned that, in the awful visitation he described, the locusts had “barked the fig-trees;” and it is a fact that, impelled by the eagerness of their devouring hunger, they sometimes, with their saw-like teeth, strip off the bark of the young trees which they have chosen for their pasture. Shaw reports the ravages committed upon the vines of Algiers by the locusts in 1724. Anna Coommena relates, that in the time of the emperor Alexis the locusts ravaged the fig-trees, but spared the corn. Dr. E.D. Clarke states that the fields, the pastures, and the gardens in the environs of Kertsch, in Crimea, were reduced to a complete desert by the locusts before his eyes. In fact, one would think that the land they have quitted had been swept bare by a fiery wind; and never was the effect of their ravages more forcibly described than in the words of the prophet: “A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.”
The prophet repeatedly alludes to the gloom and darkness occasioned by the arrival of the locusts. In fact, they fly so closely, and in such dense masses, that the sun is obscured, and the light is reduced to that of the sun under eclipse—which is a more striking contrast to the ordinary bright, brisk, brilliant daylight of the East, than to the daylight of our own climate, where the eclipse of the sun might often pass without observation. We remember when sitting writing, on a summer afternoon at Baghdad, to have been startled by a sudden obscuration, reducing the light to that of a cloudy or foggy day in this country. This could not be accounted for from any obvious cause under the always cloudless sky of Chaldea, and we rushed out to see what was the matter—the first impression being, that there was an eclipse of the sun. It proved to be a vast and dense cloud of locusts, passing over the city, which it covered like a pall. The flight was low; and the air seemed filled with them, as with us in a heavy fall of snow. Indeed, there is nothing that will give a better idea to the English reader than this of the appearance presented and the motion observed. Only that in this case the movement was horizontal, and the flakes (formed by the body of the locusts) being opaque, seemed black between the spectator and the sun. In many parts the cloud of locusts was quite black by its thickness, which allowed not the rays of the sun to pass through; but in other parts, especially towards the outer margin, the mass was less dense, and allowed the light to penetrate. It seemed like a vast army marching onward under the direction of a leader, which was perhaps the fact. It was nearly an hour before the whole had passed—which may give some idea of their immense numbers, and of the ruin they must cause wherever they alight. The noise made by the motion of so many small wings was like that caused by the rushing of a mighty wind. The prophet quite as aptly—(Joe_2:5-6)—compares it to “the noise of chariots upon the tops of the mountains,” and “like the noise of a flame of fire.” The flight of locusts we mention did not alight, but passed on; but whether on account of the awful clamor made by the people, with shouts, aided by the beating of drums and kettles, to deter them from alighting, we know not. Many stragglers, however, alighted on the house-tops, and afforded to us the first opportunity of making the observations embodied in these remarks.