The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 1 — Section 233

moreover, hwnility of speech WIIB not whflt a.nother," they atte.cked even thoir young shoots God hod been for months requiring of Phamob, and their bark." "They are particularly in- but submission in net. Ho would not ree.lly jurious to the pa.Im-trees," writes a third; " humble himsolf " until he gove the oft- " these they strip of every le11f and green demanded permission to the Israelites, that particle, the trees remaining like skeletons they might deport from Egypt. with be.re branches." A fourth notes that Ver. 4. -To-morrow. ~a.in a warning is " the bushes were eaten quite be.re, though the given, and o space of time mterposed, during animals could not he.ve been long on the spot. which the king may repent and submit him- They sat by hundreds on a. bush, gnawing the self, if ho chooses. The locusta. The species rind and the woody fibr~s." (See Pusey's intended is probably either the A cridium MittrYT Prophets, p. 106.) peregrinum or the <Edipoda tnigratCYTia. Ver. 6.-They shall fill thy houses. Com- Both ore common in Arabia and Syria, and po.re Joel ii. 9. The witness of modern both ore known in Egypt. They are said to travellers is to the same effect. Morier says- be equolly destructive. The Hebrew name, " They entered the inmost recesses of the arbeh, points to the " multitudinous " charncter houses, were found in every comer, stuck to of the visit.ation. A traveller in Syria says- onr clothes, and infested our food " ( Second. " It is difficult to express the effect produced J01J,rney, p. 100). Burckhar<lt observes- on us by the sight of the whol.e atmosphere " They overwhelm the province of Nedjd filled on all Bides and to a great height by sometimes to such e. degree that, having an innumerable quantity of these insects, destroyed the harvest, they penetrate by whose flight was slow and uniform, and whose thousands into the private dwellings, and noise resembled the.t of rain ; the sky was devour whatsoever they can find, even the darkened, and the light of the sun consider- leather of the water vessels" (Notes, vol. ii. ably weakened. In a moment the terraces of p. 90). An older traveller, Beauplan, writes the houses, the streets, and oJl the fields were as follows :-" In J Uile 1646, at Novgorod, it covered by these insects." (Ollivier, Voyage we.s prodigious to behold them, because they dans l' Empire Ottoman, vol. ii. p. 424.) Into were hatched there that spring, and being e.s thy coe.st-i.e. "across thy border, into thy yet scarce able to fly, the ground was ell territories." The locust is only an occasional c0vered, and the air so fall of them that I visitant in Egypt, and seems always to arrive conld not eat in my chamber without a candle, from some foreign country. ell the houses being fnll of them, even the Ver. 5.-They shall cover ;the face of the stables, be.ms, chambers, garrets, and cellars. ea.rth, that one cannot be able to see the I caused cannon-powder and snlphnr to be earth. This is one of the points most fre- burnt to expel them, but all to no purpose ; quently noticed by tre.vellers. "The ground for when the door was opened, an inftnite is covered with them for several lee.gnes," se.ys number ea.me in, and the others went flutter- Valney. "The steppes," says Clarke," were ing about; and it we.s a troublesome thing, entirely covered by their bodies." "Over an when a man went a.broad, to be hit on the face aree. of 1600 or 1800 square miles," observe.~ by those creatures, on the nose, eyes, or cheeks, Barrow, "the whole surface might literally be so that there we.s no opening one ·s month but said to be covered with them." They shall some would get in. Yet ell this we.s nothing ; eat the residue of that which escaped. for when we were to ee.t they gave us no Locusts ee.t every a.tom of verdure in the respite; and when we went to cut a piece of district attacked by them. "In A.D. 1004," meat, we cnt a locust with it, and when a so.ye Be.rhebrmus, "a le.rge swe.rm of locasts man opened his month to put in e. morsel, he e.ppee.red in the land of Mosnl and Baghde.d, we.s sure to chew one of them." Oriental and it was very grievous in Shiraz. It left houses, it is to be borne in mind, have no no herb nor even leaf on the trees." "When better protection thw lattice-work in the their swarms appee.r," T.Tites Volney, "every- windows, so that locusts have free access to thing green vanishes instantaneously from the the apartments, even when the doors e.re shut. fields, as if a curtain were rolled up ; the trees Whioh neither thy fathers, nor thy fathers' and plants stand lee.fless, and nothing is seen fathers have seen. Inroads of locusts are not but naked boughs and st.alks." And shall eat common in Egypt. Only one reference has every tree, The damage done by locusts to been found to them in the native records. trees is very grea.t. "He ( the locust) has laid When they occur, they are as destructive Sl my vine waste, a.nd be.rked my fig-tree ; he hath elsewhere. Denon witnessed one in the ee.rlv ma.de it clean bare and east it away; the po.rt of the present century. Two others were bro.nches thereof e.re me.de white" (Joel i. 7). witnessed by Carsten Niebuhr and Forskil.l in Tre.vellers constantly notice this fa.et. " When 1761 and 1762 (Description de l'.Jrabie, p. they have devoured all other vegetables," says 148); and another by Tischendorf compara- one, " they atto.ek the trees, consuming first tively recently. The meaning in the text is the lee.vos, then the bark." "After having prob11bly that no BUch visite.tion e.s that now consumed herbage, fruit, leaves of trees," says sent ha.d been seen previously, not that Egypt  'l'HE BOOK OF EXODUS. (err. x. 7-15.