“Our doctors of the law,” said the master of the house, “reckon the making a feast among good works, and I feel this doubly at the feast of the winnowing, which I make for my servants.” Helon attached himself to the priests and Levites of the place, who, according to the ancient custom of Israel, had also been invited;[20] they received him into their circle and related to him at his request the history of Lydda. This town had been taken possession of by those who had returned from the captivity of the tribe of Benjamin;[21] it had afterwards been reckoned with Samaria, and finally along with Rama and Apherama had been restored to the hero Jonathan by Demetrius Soter.[22] From this subject it was an easy transition to the victory over the Samaritans which the sons of Hyrcanus had just achieved. All these particulars arrested his attention, but none more than a description which an aged Levite gave of the desolation caused by a flight of locusts which he had witnessed in his youth. These locusts are of about the length and thickness of a finger; their numbers are countless, and they form swarms which extend for several leagues in breadth. Such a swarm, when approaching, appears like a mist; when it is arrived, it resembles the falling of thick flakes of snow: the air is darkened and filled with a fearful murmur: they cover the ground and all that grows on it, often to a foot in height, devouring every green thing, grass, corn, and the trunks of young trees. They creep into the houses, destroy clothes and furniture, and besides this, lay their eggs in the ground, which in the course of fifteen or sixteen days become young locusts. The south-east wind brings them, and it is happy for the land when it also drives them into the sea.
The aged Levite had retained such a lively impression of the misery of those times, that he could not cease from describing the plague itself, and the still more dreadful evils of pestilence and famine which it left behind. Helon listened to him with shuddering, and then broke out in the words in which the prophet Joel describes them:
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm in my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble. For the day of the Lord cometh—it is nigh at hand. A day of darkness and gloom— A day of clouds and thick darkness. As twilight spreads over the mountains, So now a people, great and strong. There hath not been ever the like, Nor shall be from generation to generation. A flame devoureth before them, And behind them a fire burneth. The land is as the garden of Eden before them, And behind them a desolate wilderness: Yea, nothing shall escape them. Their form is as the form of horses, And they leap as horsemen leap. They run like the noise of chariots on the mountain tops, Like the noise of fire that devoureth the stubble. They are a strong people, arrayed for battle. Before them nations tremble, And all their faces glow. They run like mighty men, They climb the wall like men of war; They march every one straight forward, And they shall not break their ranks. No one shall thrust another, They shall walk every one in his own path. They break through the midst of swords, And interrupt not their march; They run to and fro in the city, They mount the wall and climb up the houses, They enter the windows like a thief. The earth quakes before them, The heavens tremble, The sun and moon are darkened, And the stars withdraw their light. Jehovah thunders before his army: For his hosts are very great And mighty is he that executeth his word. The day of the Lord is great and terrible, Who can abide it?—Joel ii.