Four words for locust are used in this verse, probably referring to one kind of locust in various stages of growth. The four stages of this one kind of locust refer to the nations that devastated Israel in four consecutive empires: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, including Antichrist, who will be the last Caesar of the Roman Empire (Rev. 17:8-11). The armies of these empires were like locusts (Joel 2:25) coming to devastate and consume Israel totally, devouring her people, land, fields, produce, food, and drink and cutting off her offerings. These empires correspond to the four sections of the great human image in Dan. 2, to the four beasts in Dan. 7, and to the four horns in Zech. 1. They will be overcome and terminated by Christ, who will set up the kingdom and reign among the saved Israel in the age of restoration (ch. 3; Dan. 2:34-35 and notes).
Beginning approximately two hundred years before the coming of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, God sent the prophets to warn Israel, to advise them, and to call them to return to God. However, Israel did not listen to the prophets. This forced God to send the four kinds of locusts to chastise His people. Israel has been suffering the cutting, swarming, licking, and consuming of the locusts for twenty-seven centuries. God’s purpose in allowing Israel to suffer under the locusts was to bring forth a couple, Joseph and Mary, so that God could be born in man, of man, and out of man to become no longer only God but a God-man (cf. Matt. 1). Hence, God used the suffering of the Jews to bring in the incarnation, an unprecedented event that brought God into man and mingled God and man as one. Furthermore, God has used the locusts to afford all the necessary facilities in the environment for the carrying out of His purpose. The Roman Empire, the aggregate of the four empires, afforded everything necessary for the incarnated God to live and move and work on earth. It also provided the means for Christ to be crucified for the accomplishing of God’s redemption (John 18:31-32), the occasion for the pouring out of the Spirit as the processed and consummated Triune God upon all flesh to produce the church as the organic Body of Christ (Acts 2), and the facilities for the spreading of the gospel to the entire inhabited earth (Matt. 28:19; Acts 1:8).
The Bible is a record of two histories: the history of man, the human history, and the history of God, the divine history. The former is like an outward shell, and the latter, like the kernel within the shell. In the Minor Prophets the human history is clearly defined and is signified by the four kinds of locusts mentioned in this verse. The divine history within the human history is also revealed in considerable detail. The divine history, as the divine mystery of the Triune God in humanity, began in eternity past with the eternal God and His eternal economy (Micah 5:2c; 1 Tim. 1:4; Eph. 1:4-5, 9-11). It continues with Christ’s incarnation (Micah 5:2a); His death, burial, and resurrection for the spreading of God’s redemption and salvation to all the nations on earth (Jonah 1:17; 2:10); His pouring out of the consummated Spirit to produce the church as the corporate expression of the Triune God (2:28-32); His second coming as the Desire of nations (Hag. 2:7a) and as the Sun of righteousness (Mal. 4:2a); His coming with His overcomers as His army to defeat Antichrist and his army (Joel 3:1-15); and His reigning in Zion in the thousand-year kingdom (Joel 3:16-21; Micah 4:7). Eventually, the kingdom will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and the new earth for eternity. The New Jerusalem will be the ultimate, the consummate, step of God’s history.
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