Arbêh (אַרְבֶּה): The Dual Nature of the Plagues: The all-consuming plague of locusts upon Egypt transformed through the rejection of God’s Holiness into the Covenantal Curses upon the people of God

[Reading Time: 14 minutes]

This word study stems from further analysis of the Ten Plagues, a synthesis of which was recently featured in the writing, The False Heart Amplified or The True Heart Revealed. As that writing dealt with the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 9th and 10th plagues, this post will focus on the 8th plague of locusts with the word traced from its first instances in Exodus 10 through the Pentateuch to its final uses in Deuteronomy 28.

Etymology and Dictionary Definition

arbêh (אַרְבֶּה)

From ravah, “to be much, many”, indicative of their immense swarm of locusts. The first two instances of this root verb occur in

Gen 1

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply (ravah) and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply (ravah) in the earth.).

24 occurrences in the OT

9x in the Pentateuch

Summary Synthesis: Pentateuch

The first picture of arbêh is the all-consuming plague of locusts first presented in the narrative of the Eighth Plague, which is directed upon the Enemies of JHWH; yet in the text of the Pentateuch, this leads us through the laws of purity into the heart of the Holiness of God, which, when rejected by God’s people, ultimately transforms into the plague of the Covenantal Curse that not only destroy the Promised Land but, much more terrifyingly, blinds the eyes and consumes the heart.

Detailed Analysis

Exodus: The Eighth Plague

The first seven instances occur in the Pentateuch in the narrative of the Eighth Plague (10:4, 12-14, 19). Though the meaning will be expanded, these opening verses point primarily to the physically destructive nature of locusts. It overwhelms and consumes everything in its path.

Exodus 10

3 So Moses and Aaron came in to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says the Lord God of the Hebrews: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Let My people go, that they may serve Me.

Or else, if you refuse to let My people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts (arbêh [אַרְבֶּה]) into your territory (Ex 10:4).

And what will be the effect? What will they do?

And they shall cover the face of the earth, so that no one will be able to see the earth; and they shall eat the residue of what is left, which remains to you from the hail, and they shall eat every tree which grows up for you out of the field.

They shall fill your houses, the houses of all your servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians—which neither your fathers nor your fathers’ fathers have seen, since the day that they were on the earth to this day.’ ” And he turned and went out from Pharaoh (Ex 10:5-6).

Wavering…Double-Mindedness

At this point in the narrative, interestingly, enough, the servants of Pharaoh, having experienced the horror of the initial seven plagues, now have the courage and boldness to confront Pharaoh in his hardened state. As such,

Then Pharaoh’s servants said to him, “How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the Lord their God. Do you not yet know that Egypt is destroyed?” (10:7)

Yet even more fascinating is that fact that Pharaoh is actually responsive to his advisers’ words, calling for Moses and Aaron to be brought back into his court, where he tells them,

“Go, serve the Lord your God.

That is to say, he is going to finally release them; yet his double-mindedness on this point immediately becomes clear when he asks them,

Who are the ones that are going?” (10:8)

Moses responds,

We will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, and with our sheep and our cattle we will go, because we are to hold a pilgrim feast for the Lord (10:9).

To this, Pharaoh gives a warning,

The Lord had better be with you when I let you and your little ones go! Beware, for evil is ahead of you (10:10).

Yet from the warning, he then moves to retake control.

Not so! Go now, you who are men, and serve the Lord, for that is what you desired.” And they were driven out from Pharaoh’s presence (10:11)

This is very instructive.

For what we witness in the case of Pharaoh, we later see applied in Scripture to a “double-minded” person, who constantly wavers until he finally becomes “unstable in all his ways”:

If any of you lacks wisdom,

the Apostle James tells us very simply at the opening of his Epistle,

Let him ask of God, Who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him (cf. Mt 7:7-8)

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.

For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man (lit. “Two-souled” or “Two-spirited” [dipsychoi], which will be the focus of our next post), unstable in all his ways (1:5-8).

At one point, the “double-spirited” man says one thing; at another time, he says and does something completely different.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Like the waves of the sea. Unstable in all—not some—of his ways.

Such was Pharaoh (and so us), at first abiding in the word of the Lord; yet when the pressure begins to mount with the fires of the crucible crackling beneath our feet, another spirit rises up within us—this one seeking the path, not of God’s Word tried in the fires of Reality (“The Word of JHWH is Tested, Tried in the fires and refined” [tsaraph], II Sam 22:31-> Ps 18:30), but of its own autonomy, its own control.

Leviticus: The purity of the Holiness of JHWH

In the opening use, we witnessed the destructive, consuming power of the locusts in the Eighth Plague, highlighting both the external effects on the kingdom Egypt as well as the internal effects within Pharaoh himself as God through them had plagued his very heart (Ex. 9:14). Now, the text moves us in the eighth occurrence to the heart of Israel, expanding its meaning to encompasses the laws of purity, given to God’s people so as to direct them back to the Holiness of God. Following a discussion of clean and unclean animals (Lev 11:2-8), the ceremonial laws transition to the waters (11:9-12) then the skies (11:13-21)—That is to say, all creation, earth, water and sky, are embraced. In this later dimension, we find the next occurrence:

Lev 11

22 Even these of them you may eat; the locust (arbêh) after his kind, and the bald locust (salam) after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.

Which laws, as the later chapter makes clear, all point ultimately to the holiness of JWHW.

44 For I am the LORD your God: you shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall you defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creep upon the earth.

45 For I am the LORD that brings you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

Deuteronomy: The Transformation into the Covenantal Curses

With the laws of purity in place that center on the holiness of God, the final instance of arbêh in the Pentateuch elucidates the ways in which the Covenantal Curses operates in the heart of man when he lives in opposition to and defiance of God’s Holiness:

Deut 28

But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country…

Then, as these curses become particularized within the life of Israel,

The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me.  

The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess. (Deut 28:15-16, 20-21, cf. Rom 1:18-32).

The means of God’s judgment upon His wayward, recalcitrant people, we now see, will be to strike them with the very plagues of Egypt:

The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt (shékhin, cf. Ex 9:9-11…Job 2:7) with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed (28:20-21).

And from the physical manifestations of divine judgment, we find that the effects move, much more terrifyingly, into the spiritual dimension of the human soul:

The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart.

And you shall grope at noonday, as a blind man gropes in darkness (ăfēlâ, second occurrence with the first in being in the plagues of Ex 10:22) you shall not prosper in your ways; you shall be only oppressed and plundered continually, and no one shall save you (Deut 28:28-29).

From the path of prosperity in the Covenant life of JHWH to the inner dissolution in the “broad and easy way”

Then, as the curse takes hold, as it strikes them with madness and blinds their heart, we witness the steady dissolution of their prosperity as the Covenant Blessings declared over them in their entrance into the Promised land are reversed:

For JHWH had promised to give them

large and beautiful cities which [they] did not build, houses full of all good things, which [they] did not fill, hewn-out wells which [they] did not dig” and, finally, “vineyards and olive trees which [they] did not plant” (Deut 6:10-11).

Israel, however, in what has been spoken of as the “mystery of iniquity,” chose not the divine gifts, but rather the very same “plague” that had been sent by God into the very “heart” of Pharaoh (Ex 9:14). And this pathway was opened to them in their refusal to hear (sh’ma) the Mosaic warning and thus be warned,

“lest [they] forget the Lord who brought [them] out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” (6:12).

For in their forgetting, in their path of self-will, they refused to “fear the Lord [their] God and serve Him” alone. The Lord, therefore, would progressively give them over (cf. Rom 1:18-34) to the “broad path“ of pagan spirituality, as they would go “after other gods, the gods of the peoples who [were] all around [them]” (6:14).

Two paths diverged…and I took the broad and easy one

But, what was the result of this “broad and easy way”?

Did the ease make them rich and happy and content in their double-hearted worship of both God and mammon?”

Or did this pathway, in the very simple and straightforward words of Jesus, lead them down to “destruction”?

The Mosaic warning of Deut 6 becomes operative in Deut 28. Whereas they had graciously received houses they did not build and enjoyed the fruit of vineyards they did not plant, now, according to Moses,

“[They] shall build a house, but shall not dwell in it; [they] shall plant a vineyard, but shall not gather its grapes.

The Sixth Plague shall resurface in their midst, striking down their cattle:

Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it; your donkey shall be violently taken away from before you, and shall not be restored to you; your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you shall have no one to rescue them. (28:31).

And the Promised Land in which they now dwelt, a “nation whom [they] have not known shall eat the fruit of [their] land and the produce of [their] labor” with the terrifying result that they “shall be only oppressed and crushed continually (28:32-33).

Even more,

So shall [they] be driven mad because of the sight which [their] eyes see (28:34, comp. Is 6:9-10 & Mt 13:14-15).

Because

The Lord will strike [them] in the knees and on the legs with severe boils (shékhin) which cannot be healed, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.

The Lord will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods—wood and stone. And you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the Lord will drive you.

And finally, and this is the last occurrence of arbêh in the Pentateuch:

You shall carry much seed out to the field but gather little in.

And why?

for the locust (arbêh) shall consume it.

You shall plant vineyards and tend them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them. You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives shall drop off.

You shall beget sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours; for they shall go into captivity.

Locusts (tsᵊlātsal, From tsālal: To vibrate”, coming to represent the vibration of the wings of destroying insects, cf. Is 18:1, where it takes on human form) “shall consume all your trees and the produce of your land” (28:39-42).

And so here in this final elucidation of the destructive effects of the plagues, consuming not merely the external environment, but even more, striking into the heart of man then back out again, our study comes to an end.

We will, Deo volente, take it back up in the next post, tracing arbêh through the NT (akrides in Greek":) from its initial uses in the Gospels to its final occurrences in Revelation.

Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison!