Thus the Lord Yahweh showed me: and, behold, he formed locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, behold, it was the latter growth after the king's harvest.
It is agreed by all that the language here is figurative, and that the locust plague stands for some terrible threatened disaster in the past which God had averted.  It is certain that the visions do not stand for something that actually happened, but for that which appeared to be impending and did not occur.  Nor do they refer to the ultimate judgment which would actually befall Israel, a fate strongly predicted by other words and other visions.  As Harper said, "These visions are not premonitions of coming disaster."[6]  In a sense, these first two visions are the prophet's revelation that the abyss had yawned underneath Israel repeatedly during the course of the chosen people's ceaseless rebellions against God, and that again, and again God's mercy had spared the impending punishment, or rather deferred it; for it would yet occur anyway unless Israel repented.  It may not be wise therefore to limit the application of the vision to some single instance of such a relenting; and yet it is doubtless true that there were historical instances of such a a thing known to all.  Deane thought that, "The vision is thought to refer to the first invasion of the Assyrians, when Pul was bribed by Menahem to withdraw."[7] Certainly, such a view does no violence to the text.  It was a very efficient and fruitful device to represent all such deliverances which had rescued Israel from threatened disasters in the past under the figure of a locust plague, which in Palestine, is a recurring phenomenon.