On the eve of Passover, which this year begins at sundown on March 25, Jews around the world will recall the Exodus story and the 10 plagues that befell Egypt. According to the Old Testament Book of Exodus, God sent 10 plagues to Egypt because the pharaoh refused to free the Israelites from captivity. Locusts were the eighth plague.

Workers from the Ministry of Agriculture sprayed four square mile area in southern Israel where the migrating insects settled on Tuesday evening, and farmers had until the sun warmed their bodies to kill them on the ground. Channel 10 estimated that Agriculture Ministry crews working on the ground and in the air had until 10 a.m. to spray the swarm before it took wing.

Locusts can have a devastating effect on agriculture by quickly stripping crops. Farmers on Monday told Israeli media they were worried about a potential onslaught.

“The locusts may not have ruined Pharaoh, but they could ruin us,” Tzachi Rimon, a farmer, told Israel’s Channel 10 TV, in a reference to the biblical story of the Ten Plagues sent to torment the ancient Egyptians and their ruler for enslaving the Jews. The story is central to the narrative of the Passover festival, celebrated later this month by Jews around the world.

 

The insects covered nearly 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of desert overnight, officials said. Pesticides were sprayed from the air and on the ground to try to kill them in the early morning before dew on their wings dried and they could take off again.

Local weather conditions indicate that winds will carry additional swarms, currently in Egypt, away from Israel. The locusts also caused damages to fields cultivated by Palestinian farmers in the Gaza Strip, and the Hamas government instructed residents on Wednesday to close their windows.

The Islamist group ruling the coastal Palestinian territory was quoted by the Chinese Xinhua news agency saying the swarms of locusts were neither big nor harmful.

Saleh Bakheet, director general of plant protection department in the Ministry of Agriculture, said in a press statement that the plague “represents no kind of danger or harms to people and plants,” and that “the situation is under full control and protection of the Ministry of Agriculture.”