There are more than 30 mentions of locusts in the Bible, in 17 books of the Old and New Testaments. In Exodus, Psalms, Jeremiah, Joel, and Revelation are biblical passages with detailed images of locusts and historical accounts of locusts’ devastation of crops.
A memorable mention of locusts in the Bible is a frightening metaphor, we hope, found in Revelation, in which a menacing army is described as a huge swarm of locusts. “And opened the abyss; and smoke went up from the well, like the smoke from a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the well. And locusts came out of the smoke on the earth, and power was given to them, like the scorpions of the earth. can. And they were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree; but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And it was given to them that they should not be put to death, but that they should be tormented for five months; and his torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. And in those days men will seek death and will not find it; and they will wish to die, and death will flee from them. And the forms of the locusts were similar to horses prepared for battle; and on their heads they had crowns like gold, and their faces were like men’s faces. And they had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like dandelions. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was like the sound of many-horse chariots rushing into battle. And they had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails, and their power was to smite men for five months.” Revelation 9:2-10 (KJV).
This is indeed a terrifying “woe to the inhabitants of the earth” in an end times prophecy (Revelation 8:13b KJV).
What are locusts in the Bible?
A locust is a special type of grasshopper that adapts its body and behavior to swarm when environmental conditions are right, usually when there is a lot of rain. Then their remarkable transformation in brain, color, size, and mutual attraction draws them into swarms that damage crops over wide areas of land.
A scary fact about lobsters is that the number of locusts increases 10 to 16 times. numbers is produced from one generation to the next. African countries are now experiencing their worst locust infestations in decades. Desert locusts in Africa and Asia swarm with up to 150 million locusts per square kilometer and fly in the direction of the prevailing wind. They can travel up to 150 kilometers in a day. A very small one kilometer swarm of locusts can eat the same amount of food in one day as about 35,000 people. Pesticides and biological control measures have some effect on population control. Locusts live up to a year without population control.
The closest I’ve ever been to a swarm of locusts was at a Tigers baseball game, within a year there was a plague of cicadas, a locust-like flying insect. I remember hitting the big, screeching creatures that were circling above the stands.
Where are locusts found in the Bible?
Probably the most familiar biblical description of locusts is found in Exodus. . When Moses asks Pharaoh to “let my people go” (Exodus 10:3b)—for the Israelites to leave their miserable slavery in Egypt—and Pharaoh doesn’t respond, God takes over and unleashes ten plagues on Egypt. The eighth plague is an attack by locusts.
The plagues are designed by God to show his power, “. . . that you may know that I am the Lord” (Exodus 10:2b) and convince Pharaoh to listen to Moses’ request. The plague of locusts sits between the plague of hail, which devastates important ancient Egyptian crop plants like flax and barley, and the plague of darkness, which makes the bare land even more desolate. Moses warns the Egyptian leaders before the eighth plague:
“If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts to your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the earth so that it cannot be seen. They will eat what little you have left after the hail, even everything that is growing in your fields. They will fill your houses and those of all your princes and all the Egyptians, something that neither you nor your ancestors have seen from the day you inhabited this land until now ” Exodus 10:4-6.
A locust invasion is a death sentence for the people of Egypt, an agrarian society that relied on their crops and trees for survival. They would and did experience starvation without the produce of their crops. Locusts may also have invaded homes and devoured wooden furniture and building structures, as Moses mentions. The damage done by the locust in Egypt was brutal.
With this ancient plague a part of the common history of the ancient biblical world, the “weeping prophet” Jeremiah uses locust imagery in his warnings to the lost. Israelites. In Jeremiah, a locust attack is a metaphor for an attack by a rival tribe. “They will cut down your forest,” declares the Lord, “even though it is dense. They are more numerous than locusts, they cannot be counted” (Jeremiah 46:23). Like an invasion of locusts, Jeremiah prophesies that an army will come to destroy the Israelites. “The Lord Almighty has sworn by himself: Surely I will fill you with troops, as with a swarm of locusts, and they will shout triumphantly over you. (Jeremiah 51:14).
The benign evangelical description of locusts is very different from the Old Testament and Revelation images of locusts as soldiers ready to attack. In the refreshing world of the New Testament gospels, John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey. He was a natural man who lived alone in the desert. Eating locusts, rich in protein and other beneficial nutrients, sustained him in his ministry of paving the way for a Savior of the people. The metaphor of locusts as a terrifying, life-destroying force changes to a life-giving food source in Matthew 3:4 and Mark 1:6. John the Baptist’s diet of locusts is also in accordance with Jewish law recorded in Leviticus 11:22. This section of the Mosaic Law gives the ancient Hebrews permission to eat large insects, including locusts.
What do locusts represent in the Bible?
Due to their incredible ability to destroy crops and property, locust swarms are used as a symbol of evil forces throughout the Bible. Clearly, Old Testament locust outbreaks and attacks on people’s property represent destruction and devastation. In a more hopeful vein, the second chapter of Joel poetically depicts an attack by an army of soldiers in imagery like those found in Revelation and Jeremiah, where an apocalyptic world is invaded by an army of locust-like soldiers. However, there is a promise of relief from the bad times brought on by the locusts in Joel 2:25: “I will give you back the years that the lobster ate.” If locust outbreaks represent bad times, whether social or personal, this verse gives us hope. A bad time, for example, a period of low mood, loss of a job or a bad relationship, will end and our spirit will be restored according to Joel 2:25. God speaks through the prophet Joel with the promise to “restore” happiness. There are many good years of farming, of living when locusts aren’t swarming.
In addition to representing a sudden stroke of bad luck, an outbreak of locusts can represent the frustration of loss after much personal effort, the futility of working without God’s blessing. In a lengthy Old Testament warning listing the curses for the Israelites’ disobedience to God, the Bible says: “You will sow much seed in the field, but you will reap little, because the locusts will devour it” (Deuteronomy 28:38). Psalm 105:34-35 describes the heartache of the eighth Egyptian plague before the exodus of the Israelites: “(God) spoke and locusts came, grasshoppers without number; they ate everything green in their land, they ate the produce of their soil.”
In a different context, a passage from the Bible disparages the materialistic culture of ancient Nineveh, with evil businessmen swarming like locusts, consuming the interests and fortunes of the people: “You have increased the number of your merchants until they are more numerous than the stars in the sky, but like locusts despoil the earth and then fly” (Nahum 3:16).
A plague, a large-scale adverse event like a locust attack, is also evidence of God’s power manifested in nature. There is much chaos in God’s creation. Locust swarms are one of the many elements of nature that are beyond human control. Winds send locusts on long, swirling flights. Locusts can’t even control their own direction or distance. The power of God represented by locusts is amazing and unknowable to people. Pesticides take a toll on locust numbers, but nothing completely stops the path of their destruction.
What do these insects mean for the end times?
The plagues of the Old Testament take new forms in the 21st century. The COVID pandemic has the characteristics of a plague. Instead of a swarm of locusts destroying crops, an infectious disease attacks our bodies and has killed more than 300,000,000 people on Earth as of early 2021.
Health and environmental crises require us to diligently care for ourselves and our aging planet. . The book of Revelation graphically describes end-time health and environmental devastation: boils on people, waters turning to blood, drought, darkness, a global earthquake. . . In an article titled “Apocalypse Now: Floods, Tornadoes, Locusts: Is Violent Weather Around the World a Sign of a Coming Apocalypse?” by Susan Donaldson James for ABC News (2008), writes: “The wrath of God seems to act these days, as the heavens and the Earth have unleashed earthquakes in China, a cyclone in Burma, killer tornadoes and record floods in the US. .plague of locusts (cicadas) in New England. The article “Apocalypse Now” states that “Although tsunamis, hurricanes, and heat waves may not be God’s punishment, history teaches that events in the physical world trigger upheavals in society. Civilizations have risen and fallen due to drought, famine and water wars.”
Stephen B. Chapman, associate professor of the Old Testament at Duke University Divinity School, comments in the article “Revelation”: “. . . The Bible has much to say about man’s relationship with the…