If then we consider that watchers were often employed in royal houses, and mounted from time to time their place of observation, to see how matters stood abroad; " and on the other, that if we neglect the points, the Hebrew word pw shaked, translated almond tree, may be translated watcher. I should think the clause may naturally enough be decyphered, by explaining it of the frequency of the attendance of physicians, who appear oftenest at court, and flourish most there, when the master of such a palace is in a very declining state, and drawing near to death. Asa, in the thirty and ninth year of his reign, was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians."

The function of a physician with regard to the body, and of a watchman with respect to a palace are not unlike they both appear from time to time at court, but much more observable, as well as frequently, in seasons of apprehension and danger, than at other times.

To go on: When the book of Deuteronomy would inform us, that Moses, though 120 years old, appeared to have a vigour to the last, to which old age is, in common, a stranger, it expresses this circumstance in the following terms: His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated, or, as the margin translates it more literally, according to the Hebrew, "nor the moisture fled," a velo nas lechoh Acm 2 Sam. xviii. 24; and still more in point, 2 Sam. xiii. 34. "2 Chron. xvi. 21. • Ch. xxxiv. 7.

cordingly, I should think, that it is of this disappearing of moisture in old age, that the last clauses of this allegorical description of declining life are to be understood: And the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail. But as this does not immediately appear, the sentiment ought to be a little explained and illustrated.

In the first place, I would observe, that the word which is translated natural force, but which signifies moisture, is used to express the moistness of a living tree, or of a branch just pulled off, in opposition to a tree that is dead, or a branch that has been pulled off so long as to be dried, having lost its freshness and its leaves: so it is used to express the greenness of the withs by which Samson was bound ; and the freshness of the twigs Jacob peeled, and set before the cattle of Laban; it occurs also in Ezek. xvii. 24, And all the trees of the field shall know that I the LORD have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish; and in like manner in some other passages.

In the next place it is to be remarked, that the learned have taken notice, and with justness, that the verb ↳

yistabel is improperly

translated shall be a burden; it undoubtedly

means, whatever may be the

preacher had in view here,

insect the royal

that this insect

Judges xvi. 7. 8.

4 Gen xxx. 37.

should burden or load itself-should grow heavy by its feeding voraciously.

Thirdly. It seems that Solomon refers not to the grasshopper in this clause, but the locust; and our translators have so rendered the original word, an chagab, 2 Chron. vii. 13.

The insecteology of the Holy Land has not been examined with that accuracy and to that extent that could be wished; but since GoD, in answer to that solemn prayer at the dedication of the temple, according to that passage of the book of Chronicles which I just now cited, declared, that if he should shut up heaven that there would be no rain, or command those insects, that we are now enquiring about, to devour the land, or send a pestilence among the people; that if his people humbled themselves before him, he would be attentive to their prayers in that place, we cannot easily make any doubt of the word's meaning the locust, or wonder that our translators should so render the word in that passage.

For this declaration was made in answer to Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple but his supplication was, that if the heaven should be shut up, and there should be no rain or if there should be famine, if pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust or caterpiller, that then GoD would hear them, when they should spread forth their hands towards that place; to which is to be added the consideration, that the grasshopper is an inoffensive animal, or at least not remarkably noxious, and

by no means a proper subject for deprecation in the temple.

This circumstance also shews the cicada' could not be meant by the Hebrew term here, as some of the curious have supposed; for though the noise they make is extremely disagreeable and disturbing, as Dr. Richard Chandler complains in his late Travels in Asia Minor, yet it is not an insect so distressing to them, as to allow us to imagine it was a subject of solemn prayer in the temple. The disturbing them in their noon-tide naps, and the devouring the fruits of the earth so as to occasion a famine, are evils of a very different magnitude.

As to what is said in the 12th of Ecclesiastes, it will easily be imagined, that their noise must be peculiarly disagreeable to many of the aged, who naturally love quiet, and are commonly unable to bear much noise: but as this quality of old age has been before pointed out, it would on that account be improper to explain this

An insect something like a grasshopper, and therefore the word cicada is often so translated, but considerably different from it, and unknown in England.

The complaint this gentleman makes of them is, that they are extremely troublesome in the day-time, making a very loud, ugly, screaking noise, as some affirm, with their wings; and that if one begins, others join, and the disa greeable concert becomes universal; and that after a dead pause, as it were on a signal, it commences again. Dr. Shaw, years ago, made much the same complaint, adding, that they are squalling sometimes two or three hours without ceasing thereby two often disturbing the studies, or the short repose that is frequently indulged, in these hot climates, at those hours, he means, from mid-day to the middle of the afternoon, in the hotter months of the summer. P. 186.

clause of the cicada; and much more so, as I have shown, from the answer of God to Solomon's dedicatory prayer, it is highly improbable that the Hebrew word here can mean the cicada, but it is very naturally understood of the locust.

Now what is the consequence of the coming of destructive flights of locusts? Those that came upon Egypt, Moses tells us, did eat every herb and all the fruit of the trees, and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt. Agreeably to which, le Bruyn tells us, that when he was at Rama, near Jerusalem, he was told there, that once they were so destructive, that in the space of two hours they eat up all the herbage round Rama, and that in the garden belonging to the house in which he lodged there they eat the very stalks of the artichoke down to the ground."

If in the last place we recollect, that green fields and vineyards, which the locusts are described as devouring, are represented as objects of desire, They shall lament for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine, according to the margin, the fields of desire; again, Ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in

t Exod. x. 15.

X

"Tome 2. p. 152. This also may be of use to shew, that the depredations of the locust might be not improperly mentioned in speaking of a house and its inhabitants: the great have not only their gardens sometimes adjoining to their houses, but various flowering shrubs in their court. yards, according to Dr. Russell, vol. i. p. 33.

Is. xxxii. 12.