Behind | Workbook: Locusts and Armies, Part 1

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As important as the image of the locust invasion is in this book, the exact meaning of this image can be read a number of ways. It can be read literally as a plain description of locusts destroying crops and thereby laying waste to the agricultural life of the people. Alternatively, it can figuratively represent an army. It can also be read as either apocalyptic (at the end of time) or relating to the time of Joel. Of course, it might be all three at once.

The reference to an army as “locusts” had plenty of precedent in the ancient world. Assryian kings like Sennacherib and Sargon the Great used imagery of locusts in this way in their royal documents:

Sennacherib:

. . . and all they were risen against me
to offer battle, like a spring invasion of
countless locusts.

. . . my warriors swarmed like locusts out of
the ships (and) on to the bank and brought about
(the enemy’s) defeat.

Sargon:

. . . I had the vast armies of Assur cover their
cities like locusts.

. . . with the mass of my troops, as with locusts,
I covered the city.

Source: Pablo R. Andiñach, “The Locusts in the Message of Joel,” Vetus Testamentum 42, no. 4 (1992), pp. 438-439.

If Joel was using the term “locusts” to describe enemy armies (Assyrian or Babylonian), why do you think he used this imagery?

Minor Prophets, Part 2: Babylonian Crisis

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Behind | Workbook: Locusts and Armies, Part 1

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