They shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth. — This is the case almost invariably with all the severer visitations of locusts. “The plain was covered with them,” says Denon (Travels, p. 286), speaking of Egypt. “The ground is covered with them for several leagues,” declares Volney (Travels, vol. i., p. 285).” Over an area of 1,600 or 1,800 square miles,” observes Barrow, “the whole surface might literally be said to be covered with them.” The Hebrew name, which means “multitudinous,” is thus very appropriate.
They shall eat the residue of that which is escaped... every tree. — Comp. Exodus 9:32. The description of Joel has never been surpassed: “A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them” (Joel 2:3). Comp. Volney (50s.100): “When their swarms appear, everything green vanishes instantaneously from the fields, as if a curtain were rolled up; the trees and plants stand leafless, and nothing is seen but naked boughs and stalks.” Very graphic is Joel again in respect of this last feature: “He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white” (Joel 1:7). Nor is it only shrubs, but even trees, that suffer. “They are particularly injurious to the palm-trees,” says Burckhardt; “these they strip of everv leaf and green particle, the trees remaining like skeletons, with bare branches.”