Caterpillar

Caterpillar in the King James Version renders Hebrew words (chasil and gazam) denoting insects used as instruments of divine judgment on crops and agriculture. The caterpillar appears alongside the locust and palmerworm in lists of devastating plagues upon vegetation (1 Kings 8:37; 2 Chronicles 6:28; Psalm 78:46; Deuteronomy 28:38). Joel's description of a fourfold plague — locusts, cankerworms, caterpillars, and palmerworms — consuming Israel's crops (Joel 1:4; 2:25) is likely a poetic multiplication of locust imagery representing total agricultural devastation. Isaiah uses the caterpillar as a symbol of God's power to strip the earth as judgment (Isaiah 33:4). The precise species distinctions in these Hebrew terms remain uncertain.