In the Septuagint version the word is commonly used for the Hebrew אַרְבֶּה, locust, of the meaning of which there is no dispute; as in Exodus, x. 4. 12, 13, 14.; Deut. xxviii. 38.; Joel, i. 4., ii. 25.; Ps. cv. 34., &c.
In other places the word ἀκρὶς in the Septuagint corresponds to חָגַב, in the Hebrew, as in Numb. xiii. 33.; Is. xl. 22.; and that this was a species of locust which was eatable, appears from Lev. xi. 21, 22.:
"Yet there may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all fours, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; even those of them ye may eat, the locust (אֶת הָאַרְבֶּה, τὸν βροῦχον) after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper (אֶת הֶחָגַב, τὴν ἀκρίδα) after his kind."
That locusts were eaten in the East is plain from Pliny, who in xi. 29. relates this of the Parthians; and in vi. 30. of the Ethiopians, among whom was a tribe called the Acridophagi, from their use of the ἀκρὶς for food.
There seems, then, no reason to suppose that in Matt. iv. 4., Mark i. 6., the word ἀκρίδες should be taken to mean anything but locusts.
It was, however, a very ancient opinion that the word ἀκρίδες here means ἀκρόδρυα, or ἄκρα δρύων, or ἀκρέμονες, or ἀκρίσματα, the ends of the branches of trees; although the word ἀκρίδες is never used in this sense by pure Greek writers.
T. C.
Durham.
The interpretation of ἀκρίδες (Matt. iii. 4.) suggested to Βορέας is not new. Isidorus Pelusiota (Epist. i. 132.) says:
"αἱ ἀκρίδες, αἷς Ἰωάννης ἐτρέφετο, οὐ ζῶά εἰσιν, ὥς τινες οἴονται ἀμαθῶς, κανθάροις ἀπεοίκοτἀπεοικότα· μὴ γένοιτο· ἀλλ' ἀκρέμονες βοτανῶν ἢ φυτῶν."