Verse 22
22. The locust The Hebrew arbeh. All the Bedawin of Arabia but only the poorest beggars in Egypt and Nubia eat locusts. Scalded in boiling sea water, dried, and deprived of their heads and wings, they are sold by measure in Arabian towns. See Exodus 10:4, note.
The bald locust The Hebrew salam. It occurs only in the catalogues, hence all that can possibly be known of it is, that it is some kind of straight-winged, leaping insect, good for food. “From the statement of the peculiar characteristic of the head, the name may with some reason be assigned to the genus truxalis, very common in the Holy Land, and which has a long, narrow, smooth head, and straight sword-shaped antennae.” Tristram.
The beetle Hebrew chargol. It occurs only here. It certainly is not the beetle, which is not a leaping insect, nor is it fit to be eaten. Rosenmuller pronounces all attempts to identify the chargol “ merae conjecturae.” The Revised Version has cricket instead of beetle.
The grasshopper The Hebrew chagab is four times translated grasshopper and once locust. 2 Chronicles 7:13. It is utterly impossible to distinguish this species of locust from the arbeh, though according to the Talmud it contains eight hundred kinds. Tristram thinks that the chagab was a small species, and that grasshopper is as near a translation as could be given.
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