Exodus 10:5
And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field:
And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth,.... Or, "cover the eye of the earth" {z}; either the appearance and colour of the earth, so as they could not be discerned for the multitude of the locusts on it; so the word is used in Numbers 11:7 or the eye of man looking upon the earth, which would not be able to see it, because the locusts would be between his eye and the earth. The Targum of Onkelos is,
"and shall cover the eye of the sun of the earth,''
so that its rays shall not reach the earth; and so Abarbinel interprets it of the sun, which is the light of the earth, when it casts forth its rays, as the eye upon the object that is seen; and the meaning is, that the locusts should be so thick between the heavens and the earth, that the eye of the earth, which is the sun, could not see or cast its rays upon it, as in Exodus 10:15, and so Pliny says {a}, that locusts came sometimes in such multitudes as to darken the sun:
And they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail; particularly the wheat and the rye, or rice, which was not grown, Exodus 9:32 and the herb or grass of the land, Exodus 10:12
and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field; such fruit trees as escaped the hail, and such boughs and branches of them which were not broken off by it, Exodus 10:15 and locusts will indeed eat trees themselves, the bark of them, and gnaw everything, even the doors of houses, as Pliny {b} relates.
{z} Urah Nye "oculum terrae", Montanus, Piscator; so Ainsworth.
{a} Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 29.
{b} Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 29.