They covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened. — See the comment on Exodus 10:5, and compare also Clarke’s Travels in Russia, p. 445: — “The steppes were literally covered with the bodies of these insects.... The whole face of nature seemed to be concealed as by a living veil.”
They did eat every herb of the land. — “When these animals arrive in swarms,” says Clarke, “the whole vegetable produce disappears. Nothing escapes them, from the leaves of the forest to the herbs of the plain” (Travels, pp. 446, 447). “It is sufficient,” observes a traveller in Spain, “if these terrible columns stop half an hour on a spot, for everything growing on it — vines, olive-trees, and corn — to be entirely destroyed. After they have passed, nothing remains but the large branches and the roots, which, being underground, have escaped their voracity.”
All the fruit of the trees. — Egypt was famous for its fruits, which consisted of figs, grapes, olives, mulberries, pomegranates, dates, pears, plums, apples, peaches, and the produce of the persea, and the nebk, or sidr. The fruit of the nebk would be ripe in March, and the blossom-buds of the other fruit-trees would be formed, or even opening. On the damage which locusts do to fruit-trees, see the comment on Exodus 10:5, and add the following: — “When the weeds in the vineyards do not supply them with sufficient nutriment, they completely strip the bark and buds off the young twigs, so that these shoots remain throughout the summer as white as chalk, without producing fresh foliage” (Pallas, Travels, vol. ii., p. 425).
Which the hail had left. — See Exodus 9:25, and comp. Psalms 105:32-33 : — “He gave them hail for rain, and flaming fire in their land; he smote their vines also, and their fig trees, and brake the trees of their coasts.”