Exodus 23:28 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And I will send hornets before thee— See this fulfilled, Joshua 24:12. The author of the Book of Wisdom, ch. Exodus 12:8 calls these wasps; and didst find wasps, forerunners of thine host, to destroy them by little and little. The hornet, whose sting is more venomous with us than that of the wasp, is far more venomous in the hot Eastern countries than in our colder climates: there it is often deadly. Pliny and Bochart have both remarked its pernicious and fatal nature; and the latter author, in his Hieroz. p. 534, produces many instances of nations that have been obliged to relinquish their country, by means of insects apparently so contemptible as bees, warps, and hornets. The reader is by all means referred to his ingenious work.