Ch. ii. Ver. 2.

A day of darkness and of of clouds and thick dark

gloominess: a day

ness,

V. 3. 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,

V. 9.—They shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter into the windows like a thief.

V. 10. The earth shall quake before them, the heavens shall tremble; the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining In the book of Nahum, ch. iii. ver. 15. the prophet, describing the ruin of the Assyrian monarch, and the various nations of his empire, makes use of the same allusions. There shall the fire devour thee: the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up like the canker-worm: 'make thyself many as the canker-worm, make thyself many as the locusts.

V. 17. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and

The meaning is-though thou shouldst increase and multiply like these insects, yet thou shalt be soon annihilated; and thy place known no more.

→ The canker-worm (the Geuzes of the LXX.) seems to be the locust (xg) in its first stage upon the earth: before it can fly.

thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known, &c. The author of the book of Proverbs takes notice, that the locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands, ch. xxx. ver. 27. These bands are very formidable, while they survive; and even in their dissolution destructive ".

Of the Deities invoked in such Calamities.

The Egyptians had gods, in whom they trusted to free their country from these terrible invaders. This we may infer from the Grecians; whose theology, as I have before observed, was borrowed from the people of Egypt. Hercules was a deity of this department; by whose mediation the cicada, or locusts, were said to have ultimately driven away.

been silenced, and Something of this

Your spoil shall be gath

'See Isaiah, ch. xxxiii. ver. 4. ered like the gathering of the caterpillar (or Cgxxos): as the running to and fro of locusts shall he run upon them.

Νυν δε συναχθήσεται τα σκυλα ύμων, μικρές και μεγάλες, ὃν τρόπου Easy τις συναγάγη ακρίδας· έτως εμπαίξεσιν ὑμῖν. Versio Græca Sept. The difference between the original and Greek version is very considerable: but the allusion to locusts is the same in both.

I

sort we meet with in Antigonus Carystius, who mentions the like of Perseus.

3

Diodorus

says, that they disappeared, and never returned. This is supposed to have happened in the lower part of Italy near Rhegium: and the like is mentioned to have been recorded by the people of Mount Eta. They stiled locusts zogvores, cornopes; which the other Grecians called parnopes: and they worshipped Hercules under the title of Cornopion, for having freed their country from locusts. We may suppose, that the same department was assigned to Apollo by the Eolians of Asia; who worshipped him under the title of Parnopius and we know, that upon this coast he was esteemed for driving away flies and vermin. The locust, at least the species of it stiled Terri by the Greeks, was esteemed "

:

4

6

I C. 1. and c. 2. See in Photius Cononis dinynais iuxta. p. 426.

μη μόνον κατά το παρον αφανείς γενεσθαι αλλα και κατα τον ύτερον χρονον άπαντα μηδενα κατα την χώραν φαινεσθαί τεττιγα. 1. iv. p. 229, 230.

3 Και γαρ από των παρνόπων, ἐς οι Οιταίοι κορνοπας λέγεσι, Κορα νοπίωνα τιμασθαι παρ εκείνοις Ηρακλέα απαλλαγης ακρίδων χαριν. Strabo, 1. 13. p. 912.

4 Θυσία συντελείται Πορνοπία Απολλωνι. Strabo, ibid.

sacred. The Athenians wore golden cicada, or grasshoppers, in their hair, to denote the antiquity of their race and particularly to shew, that they were, αυτοχθονες και γηγενείς, of the earth-born breed: a title much respected, and of long standing.

The Egyptians trusted much to the fecundity of their soil; and to the deities Isis and Sarapis, who were the conservators of all plenty. They likewise placed great confidence in other gods, who were the directors of their times and seasons. But these powers could not stand before Moses, the servant of the true God. He brought upon them an host of enemies, who laid waste the fruits of their ground; and rendered all their confidence vain. As Egypt is in great measure bounded to the east and north by seas: and is far removed from those regions in Africa where locusts particularly generate, it is not much infested with them. However, at the time

2

Plutarch. Sympos. viii. p. 727. Of Euromus and the Grasshopper see Clemens Alex. Cohort, p. 2.

'These insects are common in Arabia

Hasselquist, p. 233.

-scarce in Egypt.

The grasshopper or locust is not formed for travelling over the sea. Hasselquist's Letters, p. 444. He mentions seeing a number of them coming towards his ship in the Medi

spoken of, an east wind prevailed all day and all night; and the whole country in the morning swarmed with these insects. Hence we know, that they came from Arabia and that they must have passed the Erythrean, or Redsea, which was the barrier to the east. Before them there was no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such. Exod. ch. x. ver. 14. Hence Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste; acknowledged his sin; and begged to be delivered from this death, v. 17. And the Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red-sea. They were now filled; and not so easily buoyed up in the air: hence they were all lost in that gulph. The storm which carried them away, served the waters.

terranean off the Spanish coast.

to bury them in

For one that came on board,

an hundred were certainly drowned, though we were within

pistol-shot of the shore. P. 445.