Before their face the people shall be much pained - The locust being such a scourge of God, good reason have men to be terrified at their approach; and those are most terrified who have most felt the affliction. In Abyssinia, some province of which was desolated every year, one relates , "When the locusts travel, the people know of it a day before, not because they see them, but they see the sun yellow and the ground yellow, through the shadow which they cast on it (their wings being yellow) and immediately the people become as dead, saying, 'we are lost, for the Ambadas (so they call them) are coming.' I will say what I have seen three times; the first was at Barva. During three years that we were in this land, we often heard them say, 'such a realm, such a land, is destroyed by locusts:' and when it was so, we saw this sign, the sun was yellow, and the shadow on the earth the same, and the whole people became as dead." "The Captain of the place called Coiberia came to me with men, Clerks, and Brothers (Monks) to ask me, for the love God, to help them, that they were all lost through the locusts." : "There were men, women, children, sitting among these locusts, the young brood, as stupefied. I said to them 'why do you stay there, dying? Why do you not kill these animals, and avenge you of the evil which their parents have done you? and at least when dead, they will do you no more evil.' They answered, that they had no courage to resist a plague which God gave them for their sins. We found the roads full of men, women, and children, (some of these on foot, some in arms) their bundles of clothes on their heads, removing to some land where they might find provisions. It was pitiful to see them."
Burkhardt relates of South Arabia , "The Bedouins who occupy the peninsula of Sinai are frequently driven to despair by the multitudes of locusts, which constitute a land-plague. They remain there generally for forty or fifty days, and then disappear for the rest of the year." Pliny describes their approach , "they overshadow the sun, the nations looking up with anxiety, lest they should cover their lands. For their strength suffices, and as if it were too little to have passed seas, they traverse immense tracts, and overspread them with a cloud, fatal to the harvest."
All faces shall gather blackness - Others, of high-authority, have rendered, shall "withdraw (their) beauty" . But the word signifies to collect together, in order that what is so collected should be present, not absent ; and so is very different from another saying, the stars shall withdraw their shining Joel 2:10; Joel 3:15. The "their" had also needed to be expressed.) He expresses how the faces contract a livid color from anxiety and fear, as Jeremiah says of the Nazarites, "Their visage is darker than blackness" (Lamentations 4:8, see Margin). : "The faces are clothed with lurid hue of coming death; hence they not only grow pale, but are blackened." A slight fear drives the fresh hue from the cheek: the livid hue comes only with the deepest terror. So Isaiah says; "they look amazed one to the other; faces of flame are their faces" Isaiah 13:8.

All faces shall gather blackness - Universal mourning shall take place, because they know that such a plague is irresistible.

Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces (e) shall gather blackness.
(e) They will be pale and black because of fear, as in (Nahum 2:10).

Before their face the people shall be much pained,.... Or, "at their presence"; at the sight of them they shall be in pain, as a woman in travail; into such distress an army of locusts would throw them, since they might justly fear all the fruits of the earth would be devoured by them, and they should have nothing left to live upon; and a like consternation and pain the army of the Assyrians or Chaldeans upon sight filled them with, as they expected nothing but ruin and destruction from them:
all faces shall gather blackness; like that of a pot, as the word (m) signifies; or such as appears in persons dying, or in fits and swoons; and this here, through fear and hunger; see Nahum 2:10.
(m) "fuliginem", Montanus; "luridum ollae colorem", Tigurine version, Tarnovius; "ollam pro nigore ollae", Drusius.

much pained--namely, with terror. The Arab proverb is, "More terrible than the locusts."
faces shall gather blackness-- (Isaiah 13:8; Jeremiah 30:6; Nahum 2:10). MAURER translates, "withdraw their brightness," that is, wax pale, lose color (compare Joel 2:10; Joel 3:15).

Blackness - Such as is the colour of dead men, or the dark paleness of men frightened into swoons.