And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten,.... Or "I will recompense to you the years" ; give you fruitful ones, as a full compensation for those in which the locust ate up the fruits of the earth for some years running:the canker worm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer worm; of which see Joe 1:4;my great army which I sent among you; as in Joe 2:11; the Targum of the whole is,"and I will recompense unto you good years, in the room of the years in which the people, nations, and tongues, the governors and kingdoms of vengeance, spoiled you, my great army which I sent among you;''and Kimchi observes, that the sense of the Targumist is, that this verse is a prophecy of the days of the Messiah; as no doubt it is, in which the Lord has done for his people, as Moses prayed he would, "make [them] glad according to the days wherein [he] afflicted [them], and the years wherein [they had] seen evil", Ps 90:15; the times of the Messiah, in which so many good things come to the people of God, are a sufficient recompence for what they endured in times past.
Of the Mahometan notion of locusts being the army of God,See Gill on "Joe 2:11".