Locust

The locust of the Bible is primarily the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, an ordinary-looking grasshopper that periodically undergoes a dramatic behavioral and physical change: solitary green individuals turn into yellow-and-black gregarious swarmers, fly in dense clouds, and consume their own body weight in green vegetation every day. A medium swarm contains 40–80 million insects per square kilometre and can cover hundreds of square kilometres; a single day's feeding can devour the food of 35,000 people. Such swarms strike the Levant every few decades, and the eighth plague of Egypt (Exo.10) is the type-case in scripture. Joel's prophecy turns a real locust plague into a parable of the Day of the LORD: "What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten" (Joe.1.4). John the Baptist eats them in the wilderness (Mat.3.4), which the Mosaic law explicitly permits (Lev.11.22) — they were salted, roasted, or ground into flour, and were one of the few protein sources available in the deep wadis. Revelation 9 returns to the image with a vision of demonic locusts at the end of the age.