Joel 1:4

4. Description of the calamity to which Joel 1:2-3 point. “The land is bare, swarm after swarm of destructive locusts have devoured the crops and the foliage.” What are we to understand by the four classes of locusts mentioned: (1) gazam, (2) arbeh, (3) yeleq, (4) hasil; The first may be rendered “shearer,” the second “swarmer,” the third “licker,” the fourth “devourer.” Of these four names arbeh seems to be the generic term for locust; it is the one used most frequently in the Old Testament. Gazam occurs again only in Joel 2:25, and Amos 4:9; in Amos the name is selected in the place of the common one because it suggests in itself destructiveness. Yeleq seems to be used in Psalms 105:34, as equivalent to arbeh, and in Nahum 3:15, the two are used apparently as synonyms. In a similar way hasil is used as equivalent to arbeh in Deuteronomy 28:38; Isaiah 33:4, etc. From these facts it may be safe to infer that gazam, yeleq, and hasil are all epithets applied to arbeh. The prophet piles up these names simply for rhetorical purposes, “to picture the work of destruction as complete and final.” So Wellhausen and Nowack, “The names are heaped up to exhaust the genus even to its last individual.” This is a more probable interpretation than that which makes the four names designations of four different kinds of locusts, or of locusts in four successive stages of development. The latter view is advocated by Credner, Wuensche, and others, but it is made impossible by Joel 2:25, where the four names occur in different order; again, the stage designated by arbeh would be an undeveloped state, which is improbable, since it is the most common term for locust; besides, it would be difficult to distinguish between four separate stages in the life of the locust. That four different kinds of locusts are meant cannot be shown from the context, and the use of the names in other passages speaks against this view. Driver’s view, also, which regards the four names in part as synonymous designations of the same species, in part as designations of different species and in part as designating the ordinary locust in different stages of development is improbable.