Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, Vol. 1

by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

A closer examination proves that the whole explanation of the names of the locusts, upon which the hypothesis is built, is untenable. It appears, then, that the prophet knows of only one kind of locusts, which he divides into four hosts; and that, with the exception of ארבה, the names are not those of natural history, but poetical, and taken from the qualities of the locusts.

Let us first demonstrate that the interpretation of ילק, upon which Credner founds that of the other names, is inadmissible. This interpretation, he maintains (S. 295), is put beyond all doubt by the passage, Nah. iii. 16: "The ילק casts its skin and flies away." The merchants, who constituted the principal part of the population of Nineveh, are, according to him, compared to a ילק which flies away, after having cast his skin for the third or last time. But this passage of Nahum, when minutely examined and correctly interpreted, is by itself sufficient to refute that opinion concerning the ילק. In ver. 15, it is said concerning Nineveh: "There shall the fire devour thee, the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up, as the licker (כילק): make thyself many as the lickers, make thyself many as the locusts. Ver. 16: Thou hast multiplied thy merchants like the stars of heaven; lickers broke through and flew away. Ver. 17: Thy princes are like locusts, and thy captains are as a host of grasshoppers, which camp on the hedges in the day of cold. The sun has risen, and they flee away, and their place is not known where they are." This passage just proves that ילק must be winged locusts. The inhabitants of Nineveh are numerous like the locusts; numerous are her rich merchants; but suddenly there cometh upon them a numberless host of locusts, who rob them of everything, and fly away. They who rob and fly away, in ver. 16, are not the merchants, but the enemies. This becomes quite evident from the comparison of ver. 15, where quite the same antithesis is found between—"The sword shall eat thee up as the lickers" (Nominat.), and "Make thyself many as the lickers." The verb פשט, in its common signification, irruit, invasit ad praedam agendam, is here, in reference to the merchants, very significant. But what is decisive against the explanation of Credner is this:—that the signification "to cast the skin" cannot be established at all, and that the whole sense is utterly unsuitable. For the discourse is not here, by any means, of mercenaries or foreign traders, but of the native merchants of Nineveh, just as, in the subsequent verses, the discourse is about her own nobles. How then could that image be suitable, which must certainly denote a safe transition from one state into a better?—Credner moreover refers to Jer. li. 27, where to ילק the quality סמר, horridus, is ascribed. This, according to him, is to be referred to the rough, horn-like coverings of the wings of the young locusts. But, according to the context, and to the analogy of the parallel passage, li. 14, we should rather expect that "horrid" is here a designation of the multitude. (Compare the ὡς ἀκρίδων πλῆθος of the LXX.) But it is still more natural to give to סמר the signification of "awful," "terrible." (Compare Ps. cxix. 120, where the verb occurs with the meaning "to shudder.")—That by ילק, not the young brood, but the winged locusts are to be understood, appears also from a comparison of Ps. cv. 34 with Exod. x. 12 ff. In Exod. a single army of flying locusts overspread Egypt; the Psalmist, in recalling this event to memory, says: "He spake, and the locusts came, and ילק without number." From this passage, especially when compared with Ps. lxxvii. 46, where, instead of חסיל ,ילק is interchanged with ארבה, which alone is found in Exod., it is very clearly seen that ילק, the licker, is nothing else than a poetical epithet of the locusts. It never occurs, indeed, in prose; and this can be the less accidental, as גזם, the gnawer, is also never found in prose writings, and חסיל only once, in the prayer of Solomon, 1 Kings viii. 37—as that which it is in reality, as a mere attribute to ארבה. That ילק has its name from the eating, is shown by Nah. iii. 15: "The sword shall eat thee up as the ילק." And, in addition to this, we may further urge, that the exposition of ארבה is altogether fictitious, and contradicted by all the passages;—that the prophet in ii. 25 inverts the order, and puts the גזם last, from which it is certainly to be safely inferred that the arrangement in i. 4 is not a chronological one;—that Credner himself, by his being obliged to grant that גזם and חסיל do not signify a particular kind of locusts, raises suspicions against his interpreting the two other names of particular kinds;—and that if this interpretation were to be considered as correct, גזם and חסיל must denote the locusts as fully grown. But that is by no means the case. The origin of the name גזם is, moreover, clearly shown by Amos iv. 9: "Your vineyards, your fig-trees, and your olive-trees,—הגזם devours them." As regards the corn, other divine means of destruction had been mentioned immediately before; the trees alone then remained for the locusts, and they received a name corresponding to this special destination, viz., הגזם, the gnawer.—The verb חסל is, in Deut. xxviii. 38, used of the devouring of the locusts, and חסיל never occurs excepting where the locusts are viewed in this capacity. (Besides the passages already quoted, compare Is. xxxiii. 4.)

The following also may be considered. The description of the ravages of the second brood is, according to Credner, to begin in chap. ii. 4. But the suffix in ver. 4 refers directly to the winged locusts spoken of in vers. 1-3; and in the verb ירוצון they are the subject.

And now, every one may judge what value is to be attached to a hypothesis which has everything against it, and nothing in its favour, and the essential suppositions of which—such as the departure of the swarms, their leaving their eggs behind, their death in the Red Sea—are, as the author of the hypothesis himself confesses, passed over in silence by the prophet.

We may now proceed to the solution of our proper problem. There are no general reasons, either against the figurative, or against the literal interpretation; neither of them has any unfavourable prejudice which can be urged against it. A devastation by real locusts is threatened, in the Pentateuch, against the transgressors of the law, Deut. xxviii. 38, 39; against the Egyptians, the Lord actually made use of this, among other methods of punishment; and a devastation in Israel by locusts is, in Amos iv. 9, represented as an effect of divine anger.— On the other hand, figurative representations of that kind are of very common occurrence. In Isaiah, e.g., the invading Assyrians and Egyptians appear, in a continuous description, as swarms of flies and bees. The comparison of hostile armies with locusts is very common, not only on account of their multitude (from which circumstance the locusts received their name in Hebrew), but also on account of the sudden surprise, and the devastation: compare Judges vi. 5; Jer. xlvi. 23, li. 27; Judith ii. 11. Several times a hostile invasion also is represented under the image and symbol of the plague of the locusts. In Nah. iii. 15-17, the Assyrians appear in the form of locusts,—and that this is not only on account of their numbers, but also on account of the devastations which they make, is shown by the comparison with the ילק in ver. 15;—and just in the same manner are the enemies described who accomplish their overthrow. And,—what is completely analogous,—in Amos vii. 1-3, the prophet beholds the approaching divine judgment under the image of a swarm of locusts, just as, in ver. 4, under that of a fire, and in ver. 7, under that of a plumb-line. All these three images are in substance identical; their meaning is expressed in ver. 9 by the words: "The high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be destroyed." The locusts denote destroying hostile armies; the fire denotes war; and the plumb-line, the destruction to be accomplished by the enemies. It was so much the more natural to represent the divine judgment under the image of a devastation by locusts—as is done also in Rev. ix. 3 ff.—because, formerly, it had actually manifested itself in this way in Egypt. The figurative representation had therefore a significant substratum in the history of the past. But it is, throughout, the custom of the prophets to describe the future under the image of the analogous past, which, as it were, is revived in it.—It ought to be still further remarked, that we must, a priori, be the less indisposed to admit a detailed symbolical representation in Joel, as the two prophets, betwixt whom he is placed, have likewise such symbolical portions.

The decision depends, therefore, upon the internal character of the description itself. An allegory must betray itself as such, by significant hints; where these are wanting, it is arbitrary to assume its existence. Following the order of the text, we shall bring together everything of this kind which we find in it.

The words, even, of the introduction,—Hath any such thing happened in your days, and in the days of your fathers? Of it you shall tell your sons, and your sons to their sons, and their sons to the succeeding generation,"—scarcely permit us to think of a devastation by locusts in the literal sense. It could only be by means of the grossest exaggeration—which, if it were far from any prophet, was certainly so from the simple and mild Joel—that he could represent, as the greatest disaster which ever befell, or should ever befall the nation, a devastation by locusts which was, after all, only a transitory evil. For it is the greatness of the disaster which is implied in the call to relate it to the latest posterity; no later suffering should be so great as to cause this one to be forgotten.

We must not overlook the expression in ver. 6: "For a nation (גוי) has come up over my land." "Nation," according to most interpreters, is thought to signify the mere multitude; but in that case, עם would certainly have been used, as is done in Prov. xxx. 25, 26, concerning the ants. In גוי there is implied not only the idea of what is hostile—this Credner too acknowledges—but also of what is profane. This, indeed, is the principal idea; and, on this account, even the degenerate Covenant-people several times receive the name גוי. That this principal idea is here likewise applicable, is evident from the antithesis: "Over my land." It is true, that the suffix cannot be referred to Jehovah, as is done by J. H. Michaelis and others, although the antithesis would thus most strikingly appear; but as little can we refer it, as is done by modern interpreters, to the prophet as an individual; for, in this case the antithesis would be lost altogether. The comparison of vers. 7 and 19 clearly shows that, according to a common practice (compare the Introduction to Micah, and the whole prophecy of Habakkuk), the prophet speaks in the name of the people of God. A strange, unheard-of event! A heathen host has invaded the land of the people of God! The antithesis is in ii. 18: "Then the Lord was jealous for His land, and spared His people." We do not think that the prophet loses sight of his image. He designates the locust as the heathen host; but he would not have chosen this designation, which, when literally understood, is very strange, unless the matter had induced him to do so. If it be understood figuratively, Amos vi. 14 entirely harmonizes with it.—In the same verse (Joel i. 6) it is said: "His teeth, the teeth of a lion, cheek teeth of a lion to him;" on which Rev. ix. 8 is to be compared. This comparison is quite suitable to figurative locusts, to furious enemies (compare Is. v. 29; Nah. ii. 12, 13; Jer. ii. 15, iv. 7, xlix. 19; Ezek. xxxii. 2; Dan. vii. 4), but not to natural locusts; for the lion cannot possibly be the symbol of mere voracity.

It is remarkable, that in the description of the locusts in this verse, and throughout, their flying is not mentioned at all. It is only in chap. ii. 2, "Day of darkness and gloominess, day of clouds and thick darkness," that Credner supposes such an allusion to exist. The darkness is, according to him, in consequence of the swarm of locusts coming up in the skies. But the incorrectness of such a supposition is immediately perceived, upon a comparison of chap. ii. 10. Before the host, and before it arrives, the earth quakes, the heavens tremble, sun and moon cover themselves with darkness, and the stars withdraw their shining. It is only after all this has happened, that the Lord approaches at the head of His host. It is not from this host, therefore, that the darkness can proceed. On the contrary, the darkening of the heavens, as is quite conclusively shown by the numerous almost literally agreeing parallel passages (compare the remarks on Zech. xiv. 6), is the symbol of the anger of God, the sign that He approaches as a Judge, and an Avenger. But in what way could the omission of every reference to the flying of the locusts, in a description so minute, be accounted for other than this: that the reality presented nothing corresponding to this feature?

It is only the heaviest and most continuous suffering, and not a transitory plague by locusts, which can justify the call in i. 8: "Howl like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth." This verse forms the transition to ver. 9, where the sacrifice in the house of Jehovah appears as cut off, and connects Joel with Hosea, in whom the image, of which the outlines only are given here, appears finished. Zion has also lost the friend of her youth—the Lord; compare Prov. ii. 17: "Who forsaketh the friend of her youth, and forgot the covenant of her God;