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 indeed happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? Joe 1:1. Ye shall tell your sons of it, and your sons their sons, and their sons the next generation. Joe 1:4. The leavings of the gnawer the multiplier ate, and the leavings of the multiplier the licker ate, and the leavings of the licker the devourer ate.” Not only for the purpose of calling the attention of the hearers to his address, but still more to set forth the event of which he is about to speak as something unheard of - a thing that has never happened before, and therefore is a judgment inflicted by God - the prophet commences with the question addressed to the old men, whose memory went the furthest back, and to all the inhabitants of Judah, whether they had ever experienced anything of the kind, or heard of such a thing from their fathers; and with the command to relate it to their children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. “The inhabitants of the land” are the inhabitants of Judah, as it was only with this kingdom that Joel was occupied (cf. Joe 1:14 and Joe 2:1). זאת is the occurrence related in Joe 1:4, which is represented by the question “Has this been in your days?” as a fact just experienced. Yether haggâzâm, the leavings of the gnawer, i.e., whatever the gnawer leaves unconsumed of either vegetables or plants. The four names given to the locusts, viz., gâzâm, ‘arbeh, yeleq, and châsil, are not the names applied in natural history to four distinct species, or four different generations of locusts; nor does Joel describe the swarms of two successive years, so that “gâzâm is the migratory locust, which visits Palestine chiefly in the autumn, ‘arbeh the young brood, yeleq the young locust in the last stage of its transformation, or before changing its skin for the fourth time, and châsı̄l the perfect locust after this last change, so that as the brood sprang from the gâzâm, châsı̄l would be equivalent to gâzâm” (Credner). This explanation is