A plague of locusts of “Biblical proportion” is spreading along the Red Sea coast of east Africa in the direction of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported last week.

Keith Cressman, the UN’s locust expert, warned: “The next three months will be critical to bring the locust situation under control before the summer breeding starts.”

“The further spread of the current outbreak depends on two major factors — effective control and monitoring measures in locust breeding areas of Sudan, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia and the surrounding countries, and rainfall intensity between March and May along both sides of the Red Sea and in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula.”

The huge swarms have generated comparisons to one of the ten plagues of Egypt. The biblical phenomenon, described in the Book of Exodus, said God delivered the plagues upon Egypt after the pharaoh refused Moses’ demand to set free enslaved Israelites.

Exodus 10:15 states: “They covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened, and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Not a green thing remained, neither tree nor plant of the field, through all the land of Egypt.”

Prominent evangelical pastor Paul Begley from West Lafayette in Indiana, US, is worried the plague will spread to the Holy Land. The parallels between the Biblical plague and its modern counterpart are evident, according to Begley.

“This is a plague of locusts like we haven’t seen since the days of the Bible and if they can’t control it, it might be a sign.

This recent wave of locusts in Egypt comes just six weeks before the holiday of Passover focuses on the original appearance in the same location.