winged locusts are to be understood, appears also from a comparison of Ps. cv. 34 with Exod. x. 12 ff. In Exod. a single army of _flying_ locusts overspread Egypt; the Psalmist, in recalling this event to memory, says: "He spake, and the locusts came, and ילק without number." From this passage, especially when compared with Ps. lxxvii. 46, where, instead of חסיל ,ילק is interchanged with ארבה, which alone is found in Exod., it is very clearly seen that ילק, the _licker_, is nothing else than a poetical epithet of the locusts. It never occurs, indeed, in prose; and this can be the less accidental, as גזם, the _gnawer_, is also never found in prose writings, and חסיל only once, in the prayer of Solomon, 1 Kings viii. 37--as that which it is in reality, as a mere attribute to ארבה. That ילק has its name from the eating, is shown by Nah. iii. 15: "The sword shall eat thee up as the ילק." And, in addition to this, we may [Pg 307] further urge, that the exposition of ארבה is altogether fictitious, and contradicted by all the passages;--that the prophet in ii. 25 inverts the order, and puts the גזם last, from which it is certainly to be safely inferred that the arrangement in i. 4 is not a chronological one;--that _Credner_ himself, by his being obliged to grant that גזם and חסיל do not signify a particular kind of locusts, raises suspicions against his interpreting the two other names of particular kinds;--and that if this interpretation were to be considered as correct, גזם and חסיל must denote the locusts as fully grown. But that is by no means the case. The origin of the name גזם is, moreover, clearly shown by Amos iv. 9: "Your vineyards, your fig-trees, and your olive-trees,--הגזם devours them." As regards the corn, other divine means of destruction had been mentioned immediately before; the trees alone then remained for the locusts, and they received a name corresponding to this special destination, viz., הגזם, the _gnawer_.--The verb חסל is, in Deut. xxviii. 38, used of the devouring of the locusts, and חסיל never occurs excepting where the locusts are viewed in this capacity. (Besides the passages already quoted, compare Is. xxxiii. 4.) The following also may be considered. The description of the ravages of the second brood is, according to _Credner_, to begin in chap. ii. 4. But the suffix in ver. 4 refers directly to the winged locusts spoken of in vers. 1-3; and in the verb ירוצון they are the subject. And now, every one may judge what value is to be attached to a hypothesis which has everything against it, and nothing in its favour, and the essential suppositions of which--such as the departure of the swarms, their leaving their eggs behind, their death in the Red Sea--are, as the author of the hypothesis himself confesses, passed over in silence by the prophet.