Locusts appear as crop-devouring creatures, food permitted in a legal setting, comparisons of an overwhelming group and an image of being shaken off. Exodus describes the locust plague and its removal within Pharaoh's confrontation.
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Reader summary
Full entry for אַרְבֶּה (H697) · Open the biblical lexicon
Locusts appear as crop-devouring creatures, food permitted in a legal setting, comparisons of an overwhelming group and an image of being shaken off. Exodus describes the locust plague and its removal within Pharaoh's confrontation.
The BSB source-word alignment has 24 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the locusts (5), locusts (3), [or] locusts (2), like a locust (2), the swarming locust (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 10:4. Its strongest book concentrations include Exodus (7), Joel (3), Psalms (3), Judges (2).
Locusts appear as crop-devouring creatures, food permitted in a legal setting, comparisons of an overwhelming group and an image of being shaken off. Exodus describes the locust plague and its removal within Pharaoh's confrontation. Leviticus names the locust among the permitted winged insects. Judges compares raiders to locusts within the destruction of Israel's crops.
Joel promises restoration for years consumed by the named locust army within a larger call, while Proverbs observes locusts moving in formation without a king. Psalm 109 places the locust image in a distressed speaker's petition. These uses do not classify every outbreak as an identified prophetic event or turn Joel's addressed promise into an individual formula for reimbursement.
Teach what the creatures do or illustrate, preserving literal food and crop damage alongside the distinct poetic and prophetic settings.
The plague and its removal, permitted food, destructive raiders, Joel's restoration promise, organized creatures and a distressed petition give locust vocabulary different purposes. The noun supplies no universal outbreak code.
The locusts swarmed across the land and settled over the entire territory of Egypt. Never before had there been so many locusts, and never again will there be.
The narrator describes an exceptionally severe locust invasion throughout Egypt in the actual plague sequence.
Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket, or grasshopper.
The locust is included among the winged insects permitted for food under the passage's stated distinctions.
For the Midianites came with their livestock and their tents like a great swarm of locusts. They and their camels were innumerable, and they entered the land to ravage it.
Invading people and their livestock are compared with locusts as they enter and destroy the land.
I will repay you for the years eaten by locusts—the swarming locust, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust—My great army that I sent against you.
The Lord addresses restoration for years consumed by the named locust army within the prophetic unit.
The locusts have no king, yet they all advance in formation;
Locusts without a king nevertheless move together in ranks among the four small and wise creatures.
I am fading away like a lengthening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust.
The distressed speaker says he is shaken off like a locust while describing his condition and petitioning for help.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Locust; pest insect whose devastating swarms exemplify divine plague and judgment in exodus narratives.
Locust; pest insect whose devastating swarms exemplify divine plague and judgment in exodus narratives.
a locust (from its rapid increase) BDB: locust Usage: grasshopper, locust.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 24 lexical occurrence verses.
אַרְבֶּה is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Locust vocabulary cannot decide a passage's genre or claim. Exodus narrates an exceptional plague and then the removal of the locusts, so the account should not end with destruction alone. Leviticus names permitted food within its legal distinctions. Judges describes invading groups through their numbers and crop destruction, while Proverbs praises locusts' ordered movement despite having no king.
Joel's restoration promise addresses years consumed by the named army within a unit that includes returning to the Lord, compassion and the promised Spirit. Psalm 109's locust comparison belongs to the distressed speaker's petition rather than a prediction about agriculture. A congregation should identify the actor, addressed people and purpose before drawing a comparison.
It can recognize real damage and pray about loss without announcing that every outbreak fulfills a specific timetable. It must not guarantee that each person's losses will be repaid by a particular date, or use the creature's name to devalue vulnerable people.
Joel.2.25
The noun names locusts, while comparisons and the plural setting shape its use. Twenty-four BSB tokens in twenty-one verses remain separate from canonical twenty-four; artifact transliteration is preserved without deriving an outbreak timetable or a reimbursement guarantee from the animal name.
Matthew 3:1-12 describes John's locust-and-honey diet within his wilderness ministry, call to repentance and announcement of the coming one. This is a canonical animal and food comparison, not proof that the diet is a coded plague or that every Old Testament locust passage has the same referent.