Concept in Definition ABC

Animal causing harm, disease

Traditionally and originally the word plague was used to designate any type of animal that caused severe damage to crops. Meanwhile, currently, although of course it is still used to refer to the aforementioned situation, the word is also widely used as a synonym of the term disease.

Then, in this other sense of the word, a pest will be called the situation in which an animal generates economic and physical damage to the interests of people such as their health, the cultivated plantations they have, their domestic animals, their natural environments, among others.

That is, the disease will not be the virus or the bacteria, but rather the situation in which a living organism causes physiological alterations in another living being.

Meanwhile, it is important to separate the idea of ​​plague from the animal species that causes it, for example, because an animal, a species, may be essential for the ecosystem of a certain place, however, wreak havoc in another, then, in this sense, the plague will not be the animal, the species itself, but the situation that causes it.

We can find the following types of pests; locust pests, forest pests, medical pests and agricultural pests.

Its negative effect on agriculture

In the specific context of farming, any animal, microorganism, plant, among others, that has a direct negative effect against the disease will be considered a pest. agricultural production. Normally, pests proliferate if there is consistent food, a situation that is practically regular and common since it is one of the measures that producers implement to increase the productivity crops, thus indirectly creating a favorable scenario for pests.

Calamity affecting a population

Another use of the term plague is to refer to the enormous calamity that can invade a town. Alcoholism is one of the most persistent plagues in our culture.

Abundance of people and things

On the other hand, when you want to realize the important abundance of things and people the word plague is often used. A plague of tourists invaded the beaches this summer.

Religion: the plagues against Egypt

On the religious level, the word plague has a connotation special and very important. Known as the ten plagues of Egypt, they were a series of calamities that God sent as punishment to the Egyptian people so that Pharaoh would release the Hebrews and they could finally leave there.
The story appears rigorously told and detailed in the Old Testament, more precisely in the second book of the Pentateuch, entitled Exodus, and also in the book of the Torah. For example, it is a relevant story known to the Christian and Jewish religions.

The Egyptian authorities were not resigned to releasing the slavery and from the yoke to which they had subjected the Jews and then before the refusal, God, sent them tremendous calamities continuously, that is, one after another, left them breathless, as we would say popularly.

Both Moses and Aaron came before Pharaoh to deliver a letter from God in which he demanded that the slave Israelite people could be set free and thus also be able to worship their god in a way free. Pharaoh discarded them. Again they insisted carrying a wooden rod which God transformed into a serpent, but none of it moved the pharaoh, then, God, decided to intervene in a more forceful way with the so-called plagues, which it was ten.

The first turns the water of the famous Nile River into blood; the second were hordes of frogs invading the entire territory Egyptian; the third plague consisted of lice that attacked severely; in fourth place the flies arrived to attack people and livestock; in the fifth the cattle were attacked again with a plague that ended up extinguishing all species; then an incurable rash affected everyone; on the seventh a tremendous storm with hail came; in the eighth came the attack of the locusts; in the ninth the Egyptian sky was covered and everything was in darkness; and finally the death of all the first-born of the country is announced.

Plague Topics