And, behold, seven ears, withered, thin, and blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them:
Blasted by the east wind - destructive everywhere to grain, but particularly so in Egypt, where, sweeping over the sandy deserts of Arabia, it comes in the character of a hot, blighting wind, that quickly withers all vegetation (cf. Ezekiel 19:12; Hosea 13:15). But the east wind may be taken here as used in a loose sense for any burning wind, as the Arabs now call such (Shurkiyeh) the east wind, though it blows in spring from the south, and Robinson ('Biblical Researches,' vol. 1:, p. 305: cf. 287) says that he encountered that wind blowing in a southerly direction not far from Beer-sheba. The Septuagint translates the word in this passage by Notos, the south wind.