Cankerworm

The cankerworm (Hebrew yeleq) was one of several insects used in Scripture to describe devastating locust-like plagues. It appears alongside the locust, palmerworm, and caterpillar as agents of divine judgment upon crops and vegetation. Joel invokes the image of cankerworms and locusts stripping the land bare as a metaphor for the army of divine judgment (Joel 1:4; 2:25), while Nahum uses the cankerworm as a picture of the swarming, all-consuming Assyrian armies (Nahum 3:15–16). The precise identification of the insect species named in these passages remains debated by entomologists and biblical scholars, with some suggesting the cankerworm represents a particular stage in the locust's life cycle.