Vol. XXVIII, No. 6 WASHINGTON 



December, 1915 



ATDOIAL 



OGKAPfflG 



AGAZI 



JERUSALEM'S LOCUST PLAGUE 



Being a Description of the Recent Locust Influx into Pal- 

 estine, and Comparing Same with Ancient Locust 

 Invasions as Narrated in the Old World's 

 History Book, the Bible 



By John D. Whiting 



Author of "From Jerusalem to Aleppo" and "Village Life in the Holy 

 Land," in the National Geographic Magazine 



HEAR ye this, ye elders, and give 

 ear, all ye inhabitants of the 

 land, — hath this ever happened 

 in your days? or in the days of your 

 fathers? Concerning it to your children 

 tell ye the story, — and your children to 

 their children, and their children to the 

 generation following: — That which was 

 left by the creeping locust hath the 

 swarming locust eaten, and that which 

 was left by the swarming locust hath the 

 grass locust eaten ; and that which was 

 left by the grass locust hath the corn 

 locust eaten. Awake . . . and weep 

 and howl . . . For a nation hath come 

 up over my land, bold and without num- 

 ber" (Joel 1:2-6).* 



Thus Joel, writing some seven or eight 

 hundred years B. C, begins his descrip- 

 tion of a locust plague, which then as 

 now must have laid waste this land. We 

 marvel how this ancient writer could 

 have given so graphic and true a descrip- 

 tion of a devastation caused by locusts in 

 so condensed a form. 



* From the Emphasised Bible, critically 

 translated by Rotherham. 



FORMER LOCUST INVASIONS 



One often finds among the old peasant 

 men those who are gifted with telling 

 stories, whether true or imaginary, and 

 thus, as in Joel's days, history is still 

 handed down to the children, children's 

 children, and another generation. The 

 oldest men have thus been recounting the 

 stories of havoc caused by flying locusts 

 fifty years ago that used to sound like 

 "Arabian Nights" tales. Still there is no 

 doubt that the present visitation eclipses 

 any in the memory of the present gener- 

 ation, and probably equals in severity any 

 former one. 



Since 1865, so commonly called "sent 

 el jarad" (year of the locusts), locusts 

 have at intervals reappeared in Syria, but 

 in smaller areas and causing nothing like 

 a general disaster or distress, the more 

 recent of these having occurred in 1892, 

 in the Jordan Valley near Jericho, where 

 waving fields of tall green barley and 

 wheat were eaten down to the very stump 

 in a remarkably short time. In 1899 they 

 were found in small quantities in Galilee, 



