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Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to
the adjacent regions; the torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty earth;
the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike their roots into the clefts
of the rocks, are nourished by the dews of the night; a scanty supply of rain is collected in
cisterns and aqueducts; the wells and springs are the secret treasure of the desert; and the
pilgrim of Mecca, after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by the taste of the wa-
ters, which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt. Such is the general and genuine pic-
ture of the climate of Arabia (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter L,
par. 2).

Verse 2: "He opened the shaft of the Abyss, and there went up smoke from the shaft like the
smoke of a huge furnace; the sun was darkened, and the sky too, by the smoke from the
shaft."

Alexander Keith, in Signs of the Times, relates:

Like the noxious and even deadly vapours which the winds, particularly from the south-
west, diffuse in Arabia, Mahometanism spread from hence to its pestilential influence --
arose as suddenly and spread as widely as smoke arising out of the pit, the smoke of a
great furnace. Such is a suitable symbol of the religion of Mahomet, of itself, or as com-
pared with the pure light of the gospel of Jesus. It was not, like the latter, a light from
heaven, but a smoke out of the bottomless pit (Vol. I, p. 299).

Verse 3: "Then out of the smoke onto the earth came locusts, and they were given power
like the power scorpions have on earth."

In Judges 6:5 we read that the children of the east came up like locusts (not "grasshop-
pers") for multitude: "For they would come up with their livestock and their tents, coming in as nu-
merous as locusts; both they and their camels were without number; and they would enter the land
to destroy it."

And, in Jeremiah 46:23, YEHOVAH speaks of the armies that were to overwhelm Egypt,
saying that "they are more than the locusts, and are innumerable." Therefore, the term locusts signi-
fies armies of immense numbers.

Notes Josiah Litch --

That these locusts were emblems of an army, is clear...: "And the shapes of the locusts
were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were crowns like gold, and
their faces were the faces of men. And they had hair like the hair of women, and their
teeth were as the teeth of lions," &c....Such is the description of a Mahommedan [Mus-
lim] horseman prepared for battle. A horse, a rider with a man's face, long flowing beard,
woman's hair, flowing or plaited, and the head encircled with a yellow turban, like gold
(quoted in The Midnight Cry, January 6, 1843, pps. 7-8).

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