Pass the Locust Dip, Please

According to Jewish dietary law, locusts are a permitted food. The permission is specified in Leviticus 11:20–23:

“All winged swarming things that walk on fours shall be an abomination for you. But these you may eat among all the winged swarming things that walk on fours: all that have, above their feet, jointed legs to leap with on the ground—of these you may eat the following: locusts of every variety; all varieties of bald locust; crickets of every variety; and all varieties of grasshopper. But all other winged swarming things that have four legs shall be an abomination for you.”

Joel does not mention this, but the people he spoke to probably found some compensation during the plague in the collection of these insects for human consumption and animal fodder.

Many people in Africa and the Near East have found locusts a good food source. One translator of the Bible into Kituba and Lingala (the two national languages of Zaire) ran into problems with a literal translation of Joel because in some parts of Africa locusts are considered a blessing, not a plague. The qualifier “destructive locust” had to be inserted in the African translation, and a note added that in ancient Israel a locust invasion was considered a calamity.¹

Ronald L. Taylor in his popular book, Butterflies in My Stomach, quotes an African Bushman song, which says:

“Yea, even the wasting locust-swarm,

Which mighty nations dread,

To me no terror brings nor harm;