Bible Strands
Psalms 78:46
He gave their crops to the grasshopper, the fruit of their labor to the locust.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The psalmist recounts God’s historical judgments on Israel during their wilderness wanderings, detailing a plague of insects that follows the destruction of livestock and land by flies and frogs.
The words — יְבוּלָ֑ם (ye.vu.La/m) means their produce, and וִֽיגִיעָ֑ם (vi./gi.'A/m) means their toil, both terms highlighting the total transfer of agricultural yield to swarming insects.
The thread — This plague motif appears in Exodus 10:12 during the Egyptian judgments, Psalms 105:34 as a remembered act of divine speech, and Joel 1:4 where successive waves of locusts consume remaining harvests.
Why it lands — The text demands acknowledgment that agricultural collapse functions as a direct instrument of judgment, requiring readers to trace present suffering to historical patterns of divine response rather than to random natural disaster.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
He gave also their increase unto the caterpiller, and their labour unto the locust.
Cross-references
- Exodus 10:12 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt, so that the locusts may swarm over it and devour every plant in the land—everything that the hail has left behind.”
- Psalms 105:34 He spoke, and the locusts came—young locusts without number.
- Joel 1:4 What the devouring locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust has left, the young locust has eaten; and what the young locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten.
- Joel 2:25 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.
- Amos 7:1 This is what the Lord GOD showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts just after the king’s harvest, as the late spring crop was coming up.
- Revelation 9:2 The star opened the pit of the Abyss, and smoke rose out of it like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the pit.