11

12

13

14

Be ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers;

For the wheat and for the barley;

Because the harvest of the field is perished:
The vine is withered, and the figtree languisheth;
The pomegranate, the palmtree also, and the
quince:

All the trees of the field are withered.

Surely joy is withered from among the sons of men. Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and mourn, O ye priests:

Howl, O ye ministers of the altar:

Come, lie all night in sackcloth, O ye ministers of my God.

For the offering of flour, and the drink-offering, is withholden from the house of your God.

Appoint† ye a fast, proclaim a ‡ solemn day: Gather the elders, and all the inhabitants of the land, To the house of Jehovah your God;

And cry unto Jehovah.

15

Alas, [alas,] for the day!

Because the day of Jehovah is near,

And as destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

+ Hebr. sanctify.

a day of restraint.

12. The vine] We have here a reason why the vinedressers should mourn: as in v. 11, why the husbandman should be confounded. Bochart, ubi supra, observes, that it is a transposition; like what occurs Cantic. i. 5: where the sense is, "I am black as the tents of Kedar; but comely as the curtains of Solomon." 13. Gird yourselves] Syr. and one MS. add with sackcloth. of my God] ó. Ar. read of God: and perhaps was written contractedly. Four MSS. read m

.

15. Alas] Syr. repeats the interjection twice; and V. ó. Arab. thrice. The measure is incomplete without a repetition. -the day of Jehovah] Of divine vengeance.

"Not

-as destruction] The same words occur Isai. xiii. 6. like an ordinary calamity; but like destruction inflicted by the Almighty." "Perhaps, as a destruction from him who is able to destroy' This would in some measure preserve the masia; but would be too great a liberty." Secker.

parono

16

17

18

19

20

Is not our food cut off before our eyes?

Yea, joy and gladness, from the house of our God?
The seeds have perished under their clods:

The store-houses are laid desolate, the garners are

destroyed:

For the corn is withered.

How do the cattle groan,

How are the herds of oxen perplexed,
Because they have no pasture!

The flocks of sheep also are destroyed.
Unto thee, O Jehovah, do I call:

For a fire hath devoured the pastures of the desert,
And a flame hath burnt all the trees of the field.
Moreover the cattle of the field cry unto thee:
For the streams of waters are dried up;

And a fire hath devoured the pastures of the desert.

Syr. adds and say

to the end of v. 14. But I rather attribute v. 15 to the prophet Joel.

16. Fea-] Kaι e vine. ó. MS. Pachom.

17. —have perished] The word seems best derived from the Arab. siccum evasit. Gol. lex. 1513. Pocock. A drought is foretold, as well as a plague of locusts: see v. 19, 20: and Chandler in loc. observes from Bochart, and this writer from Pliny, that a great increase of locusts is occasioned by heat. See Bochart, Pocock, and Pol. Syn. on the three ama yuva which occur in this line. I shall only observe further, that a kindred word to what we translate seeds has the same signification in Chald. and Syr: see Cast. lex: and that the word translated clods may as easily signify massa terræ convoluta as a signifies manus convoluta.

The store-houses] Perhaps subterraneous repositories. Jer. xli. 8. Bochart p. ii. iv. xxi. p. 595. See on Amos ix. 6. Neither these nor other receptacles for the fruits of the earth were repaired, because there was nothing to treasure up in them.

18. destroyed] The Hebrew word imports destruction, or punishment, in consequence of guilt.

19. do I call] The prophet carries on the beautiful hypotyposis, by representing himself as a sharer in the calamity. -pastures] There were spots in the desert, where flocks and herds might feed. Ps. lxv. 12. c. ii. 22.

20. desert] Eight MSS. and two ed. read 72, as v. 19,

1

2

CHAP. II.

BLOW ye the trumpet in Sion;

And sound an alarm in mine § holy mountain:
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble:
For the day of Jehovah cometh, for it is near:
A day of darkness and of gloominess;

A day of clouds and of thick darkness.
As the dusk spread upon the mountains,

Hebr. the mountain of mine holiness.

1. Blow ye the trumpet] Danger is thus proclaimed: Amos iii. 6. Hos. v. 8. Ezek. xxxiii. 3, 5.

And sound an alarm] And is omitted in Vulg. 6. Arab. Chald. and five MSS. There is more energy in the passage without it.

Natural means were used to prevent the devastations of locusts; pits and trenches were dug, bags were provided, and combustible matter was prepared and set on fire. Shaw's Travels. 4to. 187. Sir Hans Sloane's nat. hist. of Jamaica. Introd. lxxxi.

2. of darkness] Solem obumbrant, says Pliny of locusts. Nat. hist. xi. 29. Laborabat eo tempore pabuli omnis generis et annonæ inopia Syria, ob locustarum nusquam hominum memoria tantam visam multitudinem; quæ, densæ nubis instar, die in media luce obscurata, volitantes, agrum circumquaque depasta sunt. Thuanus 1. lxxxiv. vii. p. 364. tom. v. ed. Buckley. Suddenly there came over our heads a thick cloud, which darkened the air and deprived us of the rays of the sun. We soon found that it was owing to a cloud of locusts. Adanson's voyage to Senegal: p. 127. Dublin. 12mo. 1759. See more in Bochart on the 10th v. of this c. and in Chandler ib. where Hermanus is quoted as saying that locusts obscure the sun for the space of a mile; and Aloysius, for the space of twelve miles.

As the dusk] See Bishop Lowth on Isai. viii. 20. And Pocock in loc. shews that Abu Walid, Abarbinel, and Montanus, gave the sense of darkness to the original word, one certain sense of which is nigrum esse. The punctuation of this clause is that of V. 6. Ar. Chald. Or point thus:

A day of clouds and of thick darkness;
As the dusk spread upon the mountains.
A numerous people and a strong cometh;
Like them &c.

3

Cometh a numerous people and a strong.
Like them there hath not been of old time;
And after them there shall not be,

Even to the years of many generations,

Before them a fire devoureth,

And behind 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.

|| Hebr. of generation and generation.

* a wilderness of desolation.

† escape shall not be unto them. Spread upon the mountains like the morning. ó. Ch. But perhaps only for morning put darkness, or twilight." Secker.

of old time] It is said, Ex. x. 14, "Before them there were no such locusts, neither after them shall be such." But commentators restrain this assertion to the land of Egypt.

3. a fire] They consume like a general conflagration. They destroy the ground not only for the time, but burn trees for two years after," Sir Hans Sloane's nat. hist. of Ja

maica. i. 29.

Wheresoever they feed, their leavings seem as it were parched with fire. Ludolphus: hist. of Ethiopia. I. i. c. xiii. Multa contactu adurentes. Plin. xi. 29.

-nothing shall escape] Sc. which the ground produces. Sunt quæ pestem et calamitatem satorum omnium totis regionibus afferant, illataque fame antiquos agros deserere sæpenumero gentes coegerint. Marcellus Virgilius in Bochart P.'ii. L. iv. 1. After devouring the herbage, with the fruits and leaves of trees, they attacked even the buds and the very bark. They did not so much as spare the reeds, with which the huts were thatched. Adanson, ubi supra. Sometimes they enter the very bark of trees; and then the spring itself cannot repair the damage. Ludolphus ubi supr. Omnia morsu erodentes, et fores quoque tectorum. Plin. xi. 20.

66 Καθαπερ δε υπο των ακρίδων κατοπιν υλην εςιν εδειν εξελωμενην απασαν. Jos. B.

J. 1. 4. c. 9. §. 7. pag. 1199. Of the devastations of locusts in Transylvania 1747, 1748, and of their darkening the sky, see Ph T. N, 491. p. 30. &c." Secker,

"The locusts in Languedoc were about an inch in length, of a grey colour. The earth in some places was covered four inches thick with them, in the morning, before the heat of the sun was considerable; but as soon as it began to grow hot, they took wing and fell upon the corn, eating up both leaf and ear;

4

Their appearance shall be like the appearance of horses,

And like horsemen † shall they run:

5 Like the sound of chariots, on the tops of the mountains shall they leap:

Hebr. so shall.

and that with such expedition, by reason of their number, that in three hours they would devour a whole field-after which they again took wing, and their swarms were so thick that they covered the sun like a cloud, and were whole hours in passing.After having eaten up the corn, they fell upon the vines, the pulse, the willows, and even the hemp notwithstanding its great bitterness. After this, these insects died, and stunk very much." Phil. Trans. N. 112. A. D. 1686. Dr. Molyneux has given à curious account of the devastations occasioned in Connaught by the Dor, or Hedge-chaffer, A. D. 1697.—“ The grinding of the leaves in the mouths of this vast multitude all together made a sound very much resembling the sawing of timber."-" The Septuagint and Vulgate give this beetle the name of Bouys, or bruchus, from Bex strideo, intimating the remarkable noise it makes both in its eating and flying: whence the French name Hanneton, from Aliton, quasi alis tonans." Phil. Trans. 234.

4. of horses] Many writers mention the resemblance which the head of the locust bears to that of a horse; whence the Italiaus call them cavalette. Caput oblongum, equi instar, prona spectans. Ray on Insects. See Rev. ix. 7. and Bochart in loc.

5. Like the sound of chariots] See Rev. ix. 9. Nahum iii. 2. Et grandiores cernuntur, et tanto volant pennarum stridore ut aliæ alites credantur. Plin. xi. 29. And Remigius, quoted by Bochart in loc. says, Magnum sonitum faciunt, quando mittuntur; in tantum, ut a sexto milliari possit audiri sonitus eorum. Quand ces insectes volent en societè, ils font un grand bruit. Elles s'elevent avec un bruit semblable a celui d'une tempête. Elles engloutissent, devorent, echerchent, rongent, et pelent toute la verdure des champs avec un si grand tintamare, qu'elles se font entendre de loin. Encycl. voc. Sauterelle. But the sound of their hinder legs in leaping, feminum attritus, taken notice of by Aristotle and Pliny, is here meant. See Boch. ib.

-leap] La plupart des sauterelless autent plus qu'elles ne volent; et leur saut est tel, qu'ils s'elancent en decrivant, dit-on, un espace qui à deux cent fois la longueur de leur corps. Encycl. ib. And hence some of its Greek names: arrann from @TT to leap; and arredaßos, quasi arraλapos, cervus saliens. Boch, ib. 448.