Image source: 2005 article in Sudan Tribune
Joel 1:2-12 relates the story of a massive locust invasion.
Hear this, you elders;
give ear, all inhabitants of the land!
Has such a thing happened in your days,
or in the days of your fathers?
Tell your children of it,
and let your children tell their children,
and their children to another generation.
What the cutting locust left,
the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
the destroying locust has eaten.
Awake, you drunkards, and weep,
and wail, all you drinkers of wine,
because of the sweet wine,
for it is cut off from your mouth.
As a 21st Century dweller, it is something outside my experience. Living in the USA, I don't know if in recent memory there have been any locust swarms.
A quick Google search yields this item from the University of Florida describing the largest locust swarm on record. Excerpt:
The Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, forms the largest swarms. In early 1954, a swarm that invaded Kenya covered an area of 200 km2. The estimated density was 50 million individuals per km2 giving a total number of 10 billion locusts in that swarm.BBC has an informative picture gallery of what a locust swarm can do. Excerpt:
A ton of locusts, which is a tiny part of the average swarm, eats the same amount of food in a single day as 10 elephants, 25 camels or 2,500 people.Some people might argue from verse 6 that the locusts are a metaphor for an invading army.
For a nation has come up against my land,
powerful and beyond number;
its teeth are lions' teeth,
and it has the fangs of a lioness.
Of course, it is possible that the opposite is true: an invading army is a metaphor for the locusts!
My view is to take the Bible at face value. However, of course, there are times when there is good reason to take it as metaphor!
In this case, Israel of the distant past being an agrarian society, the idea of the locusts being literal would be quite reasonable.
The results of the locust swarms leave the people in a miserable state.
It has laid waste my vine
and splintered my fig tree;
it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;
their branches are made white.
Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth
for the bridegroom of her youth.
The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off
from the house of the LORD.
The priests mourn,
the ministers of the LORD.
The fields are destroyed,
the ground mourns,
because the grain is destroyed,
the wine dries up,
the oil languishes.
Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil;
wail, O vinedressers,
for the wheat and the barley,
because the harvest of the field has perished.
The vine dries up;
the fig tree languishes.
Pomegranate, palm, and apple,
all the trees of the field are dried up,
and gladness dries up
from the children of man.
When I read my Bible, I remind myself that it is about real people and real situations.
Horrible things happen in our fallen world and this passage vividly described a tremendous disaster.
These kinds of things still happen today. Locusts still swarm in parts of the world. There are also other kinds of calamities that strike. In recent memory, think of the tsunami of southeast Asia or the hurricane that hit New Orleans.
When these things happen, as Christians, especially as RICH Christians and even the poorest of us in America are RICH in comparison, we need to do whatever we can to help those suffering and in need. This is the point of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
The first response is the practical one. Later on, one could contemplate more philosophically and theologically.
Lord, there are terrible things that happen in this world. You have called us to meet needs where ever we find them. Help the church to rise up in generosity to meet needs. Help me to see what you see and hear what you hear and respond however I can. Lord, speed the day when you restore what the locusts have taken. In the meantime, help me, help us to be your instruments of mercy in a lost and dying world. In Jesus name, amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment