Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
The locust - arbeh , either from arab , to lie in wait or in ambush, because often immense flights of them suddenly alight upon the fields, vineyards, etc., and destroy all the produce of the earth; or from rabah , he multiplied, because of their prodigious swarms. See a particular account of these insects in the notes on Exodus 10:4 (note).
The bald locust - solam , compounded, says Mr. Parkhurst, from sala , to cut, break, and am , contiguity; a kind of locust, probably so called from its rugged, craggy form. See the first of Scheuchzer' s plates, vol. iii., p. 100.
The beetle - chargol . "The Hebrew name seems a derivative from charag , to shake, and regel , the foot; and so to denote the nimbleness of its motions. Thus in English we call an animal of the locust kind a grasshopper; the French name of which is souterelle , from the verb sauter , to leap" - Parkhurst. This word occurs only in this place. The beetle never can be intended here, as that insect never was eaten by man, perhaps, in any country of the universe.
The grasshopper - chagab . Bochart supposes that this species of locust has its name from the Arabic verb hajaba to veil; because when they fly, as they often do, in great swarms, they eclipse even the light of the sun. See the notes on Exodus 10:4, and the description of ten kinds of locusts in Bochart, vol. iii., col. 441. And see the figures in Scheuchzer, in whose plates 20 different species are represented, vol. iii., p. 100. And see Dr. Shaw on the animals mentioned in this chapter. Travels, p. 419, etc., 4th. edition; and when all these are consulted, the reader will see how little dependence can be placed on the most learned conjectures relative to these and the other animals mentioned in Scripture. One thing however is fully evident, viz., that the locust was eaten, not only in those ancient times, in the time of John Baptist, Matthew 3:4, but also in the present day. Dr. Shaw ate of them in Barbary "fried and salted," and tells us that "they tasted very like crayfish." They have been eaten in Africa, Greece, Syria, Persia, and throughout Asia; and whole tribes seem to have lived on them, and were hence called acridophagoi, or locust-eaters by the Greeks. See Strabo lib. xvi., and Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. xvii., c. 30.
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