The people in Joel’s day knew quite a bit about locusts. They knew far more about locusts than people know today. A culture’s concerns can be detected in part by its language, and when a language has nine different words for ‘locust’, it is clear that some of the most terrifying nightmares of that culture were all about locusts. And for good reason! A great portion of the world has known first-hand the meaning of a locust-plague, but the Middle East in particular has experienced their devastations.