The Lowly Locust
And the LORD turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red sea; there remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt. (Exodus 10:19)
Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind. (Leviticus 11:22) All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume. (Deuteronomy 28:42)
LATELY, I HAVE NOTICED a few locust/cicada shells attached to trees and walls. Today, the shell in the above picture was attached to a brick of the house beside the water spigot. There are annual versions of these critters and periodic versions. Some are 17-year or 13-year singers. I have heard of 7-year locusts. The one in the picture is NOT a seventeen. Locusts are prominent in the Bible.
WE CAN'T HAVE A WATCH WITHOUT A WATCH MAKER, and we can’t have a locust without a locust maker. These marvelous little pieces of machinery come in male and female versions and appear to be knowledgeable in which kind they are. (They mate.)
McGEE COMMENTS ON THE FOUR KINDS OF LOCUSTS in the Bible: “Well, folks, you can leave all of these off my menu. However, we must note that some of them are clean. There were apparently four species of locusts. The locust was the regular species; the bald locust had a protuberance; the beetle was a locust with a protuberance and a tail; the grasshopper was a locust with a tail but without a protuberance (projection or bulge). So they were permitted to eat these four kinds of locusts.
“BUT FRIEND, IF YOU'RE HAVE ME OVER FOR DINNER, let's have something else on the menu! Although they don't appeal to me, there is nothing religiously or ceremonially unclean about them. John the Baptist had a scriptural diet when he ate locusts and wild honey.” (McGee)
WHEN I WAS 5-6 YEARS OLD, I remember a big Mulberry tree located in a lot between Grandpa’s barn and the pasture. It was also used as a hog lot. Most years, we ate the mulberries off the tree. They were an inch long, tubular, and purple. Not as good as blackberries but not bad. We were supposed to pick them off the low-hanging tree limbs and NOT to eat them off the ground because of the hog traffic. The hogs liked them too.
BUT ON THIS SPECIAL YEAR, as Mulberry season approached, I was warned not to eat the berries because it was the 17-year Locust year. The locusts supposedly laid eggs in the berries. (Present-day writers say the eggs are laid in the bark of trees.) I still don’t know for sure if eggs were in the Mulberries. I had free-range of the barn and lot and the Mulberry tree.
I THOUGHT ABOUT IT AND REACHED A "PROFESSIONAL OPINION:" “I don’t see any little eggs of any kind on the berries and even if there are eggs inside the berries, they couldn’t be all that bad because we eat hen eggs all the time. (I didn’t know why we didn’t eat bird eggs or Guinea eggs.) So, I ate until I was full and went on my way. But that was only when my mother was not in sight. “If she had been around, eating mulberries that year would have been “harmful.”
TIME HAS PASSED AND MY INTEREST IN THE 17-YEAR-LOCUST has shifted to amazement at their design and how they perpetuate themselves. (And their Designer!) A lot of design going on here. Those little creatures have some kind of calendars so accurate that almost all of them wait the full 17 years (or 13) before they come out of the ground, hatch out of their shell and become airborne; and of course, mate, lay eggs and turn it over to the new generation that will come forth in the next 17 (or 13) years. They work underground all those years digging tunnels and eating roots.
LISTEN TO THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SOUNDS made by these critters. Notice that they all sing in unison, like a choir that sings together. https://www.cicadamania.com/audio/ It appears that they must attach their old shell to something to enable them to remove themselves from the old shell. Read this interesting story of the full life of the Cicada. https://www.cicadamania.com/
DO YOU REMEMBER READING THIS IN THE BIBLE? For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (Romans 1:20)
Read Through the Bible in a Year
SEPTEMBER 6, 2019 - FRIDAY
A.M. Proverbs 9-10 P.M. 1 Corinthians 15:1-32
(Bible Gateway will read this to you if you like. Look for the speaker icon.)
A Good Verse to Memorize:
That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. (Isaiah 45:6)
Song for Today:
Wonderful Peace (3:25) (Dick Anthony’s 16 Men)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szc9mWHNwN4
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