Grasshopper

The grasshopper appears in scripture as a small, fragile, and fleeting creature, used almost always for comparison. It figures the smallness of human beings against larger powers, the failing of strength in old age, the unreachable height of the Creator, and the transience of armies that seem formidable until the sun comes up.

Smallness before greater powers

After the spies return from Canaan, the size of the inhabitants becomes the measure of Israel's own size by contrast: "And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" (Num 13:33). The image is mutual — the spies feel small, and they assume they look small to those who tower over them.

The same figure scales upward when applied to humanity as a whole. From the vantage of the One who sits above the circle of the earth, "its inhabitants are as grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in" (Isa 40:22). Here the comparison is no longer between Israel and Anakim but between the entire human population and the enthroned Creator.

The burden of age

In Ecclesiastes' picture of advancing old age, the grasshopper appears among other signs of decline: "yes, they will be afraid of [that which is] high, and terrors [will be] in the way; and the almond-tree will blossom, and the grasshopper will be a burden, and desire will fail; because man goes to his everlasting home, and the mourners go about the streets" (Eccl 12:5). What is light enough to be unnoticed becomes heavy when strength fails.

Massed armies that disperse

The grasshopper also figures the deceptive appearance of foreign military strength. Of Nineveh's officers: "Your princes are as the locusts, and your marshals as the swarms of grasshoppers, which encamp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun rises they flee away, and their place is not known where they are" (Nah 3:17). The numbers seem overwhelming while they cluster in the cold, but they vanish without trace once exposed.