Exodus 10:14

At the command of the Lord, Moses stretched out the rod in his hand over the land of Egypt. The east wind blew that day and night. It brought a tremendous swarm of locusts such as had never been before, and we are told there would never again be such a scourge (v. 14).

In the last two plagues God used the air and the wind to work His will. The locust obeys the wind. These plagues set aside Egypt's deities of air and wind, as earlier plagues had set aside their deities of earth and water.

The records of the east hold plenty of accounts of the damage a bad swarm of locusts does. This blow was so severe that there had never been such locusts before, and there never would be again. So we can imagine the terrible plight of the land of Egypt.

Then came the rush of the wings of the moving millions. A moment later the devouring hosts covered the land, and the noise of their unstoppable jaws filled it. Every green thing fell before them. They took away all that the hail had left. So far as the eye could reach, the land of Egypt was a wilderness, as barren as the yellow deserts on its borders. Goshen — the garden of Egypt — also fell under the plague, for its fruits and its crops were no longer necessary for Israel.

Eight plagues had now been sent, and this last a dreadful one. Locusts on the ground, covering the face of it, so that the land was darkened. Locusts, too, in their houses, and filling them. And when they were gone, not a green thing in herb or tree could be seen. Could Meneptah still say, "Who is the Lord? I do not know the Lord." What an answer he had already received. The Lord he did not know had power over the waters, over the ground, over the bodies of men and animals, and over the air. In what area of the natural world was He not supreme? He could foretell the plagues. He could bring the plagues. He alone could remove the plagues.

The book of Joel gives a vivid description of the damage locusts do. Locusts are a picture of God's judgments in punishment. The locust plague was aimed to show the powerlessness of the Egyptian god Serapis. The Egyptians trusted him as their protector against locusts. Locusts are also mentioned in a symbolic way in Revelation 9:1-12.

Man may have departed from God and become hostile to Him. But nature in its whole framework is obedient, and serves Him still. So the sinner finds himself in a stream of hostile forces, the hosts of the Lord. The army of locusts gives us a vivid picture of them. "The locusts have no king," says Agur, "yet all of them march in rank." (Proverbs 30:27.) This instinctive discipline, under an invisible king, shows whose hosts they are and who marshals them: the Lord calls them "His army." (Joel 2:11.)