Revelation 9

Trumpets of more doom

Fifth Trumpet Opens the Abyss of Punishment

1When the fifth angel blew his trumpet, I saw an angel drop out of the sky and onto the earth. [1] He had been given the key to the shaft that descended into the abyss [2] of punishment. 2He unlocked the shaft seal. Smoke belched up out of the deep hole, like the smoke of a massive furnace. Billows were so dense and dark that they saturated the air and blackened out the sun.

3Locusts [3] swarmed up out of the smoke. They had the scorpion’s power to terrorize, and they used it all over the world. [4] 4Locusts got their orders not to hurt earth’s plant life—not the grass or the trees. [5] Instead, the locusts had permission to target humans. Not just any humans, but only those without God’s seal on their foreheads. [6] 5Locusts weren’t allowed to kill people. But they had permission to make life miserable for them. For five months [7] they could torture people like stinging scorpions would do.

6Times will get so tough that the people will want to kill themselves. But they won’t be able to do it. [8]

7These locusts looked like horses in battle gear. But they had human faces. And they wore gold crowns [9] on their heads. 8They had hair like a woman [10] and teeth like a lion. [11] 9They wore iron armor chest plates. And their wings roared like a battalion of war chariots charging into battle. 10They had tails like scorpions, armed with stingers. [12] Those stingers are what terrorized the people for five months. 11The king of the locusts is an angel deep in the abyss of punishment. In the Hebrew language his name is Abaddon, meaning Destroyer. [13] But in Greek, the international language, his name is Apollyon. [14] 12The first terror is over. Two more to come.

Sixth Trumpet Calls Invaders from the East

13When the sixth angel blew his trumpet, I heard a voice. It came from the four horns on the gold altar in front of God.

14The voice gave these instructions to the sixth angel who just blew the trumpet, “Free the four angels held captive at the Great River Euphrates.” [15] 15These were killer angels who had been waiting for this very hour of this day in this month of this year. Their mission was to kill a third of the people in the world. [16] 16I heard someone say how many mounted soldiers were in their army: uncountable times double uncountable. [17]

17In my vision, I saw the soldiers mounted on their horses. The soldiers had armored themselves in colorful breastplates—blazing red, dark blue of a hyacinth, and sulfur yellow. Their horses had lions’ heads. Fire, smoke, and blazing sulfur shot out of their mouths. 18These three elements—fire, smoke, and sulfur [18]—poured out of the mouths of the horses. The disasters this caused killed a third of humanity. [19]

19The horses are dangerous at both ends. They can hurt people with the fire, smoke, and sulfur shooting out of their mouths. And they can hurt them with their tails, which can strike like the head of a snake. [20] 20Humans who survived these disasters didn’t learn anything from it. They didn’t change their destructive way of living. They kept on worshiping demons. And they worshiped lifeless idols made from gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood. There’s nothing to those idols. They can’t speak a word, hear a sound, or get up and take a walk. 21These people showed no remorse for what they stole, for murders they committed, for their sex sins, or for practicing sorcery and witchcraft.

Footnotes

Intro Notes for Revelation

19:1

More literally, “a star fallen from the sky.” But this star was an individual entrusted with a key to the pit. Bible writers often describe angels as stars. Job 38:7 describes angels as “morning stars.” Some scholars say the “fallen angel” is an evil angel or possibly Satan. Jesus once said, “I saw Satan when he fell out of heaven” (Luke 10:18). But some argue that it wouldn’t make much sense for God to give Satan the keys to his own prison. But many scholars say the angel is more likely an angelic messenger God sent down to earth with a job to do.

29:1

Jews at the time taught that the abyss was the underworld—the place of the dead (Romans 10:7). Luke 8:31 presents it as “home of the demons” too. Scholars sometimes translate the word abyss as “bottomless pit.” It’s Satan’s thousand-year prison in Revelation 20:1-3. It’s also linked to the depths of the sea, something Luke may have had in mind when he reported the story of demons ending up in the Sea of Galilee after Jesus cast them into a herd of pigs (Luke 8:33).

39:3

“Locusts” may be John’s colorful way of describing demons. The description is reminiscent of the eighth Egyptian plague, of locusts (Exodus 10:14). The prophet Joel compared an invading army to locusts with teeth like a lion (Joel 1:6). Some students of the Bible say the swarming locusts could describe the Roman invasion that ended with them leveling Jerusalem and the last Jewish Temple in AD 70. The locusts seem evil, yet God uses them to impose his punishment on sinful people, apparently those he held responsible for martyring some of his people (Revelation 6:9-11).

49:3

Locusts didn’t look like scorpions, many scholars say, but they had the effect of scorpions: they terrified people.

59:4

The grass was already gone, along with a third of the trees (Revelation 8:7).

69:4

“Seal on their foreheads” sounds a little like the brand or the tattoo that many in Roman times put on their slaves, marking them like livestock. Here, many scholars say it’s a metaphor that distinguishes God’s people as those under his protection. It’s a word picture intended to help people visualize an invisible spiritual reality. In this way it’s like the parables of Jesus, in which he used fictional stories to teach people what it means to live like citizens of God’s spiritual kingdom. This symbolic seal of God would be the opposite of the mark of the beast (Revelation 13:16-17).

79:5

“Five months” might refer to the dry season, when locusts chewed up the plants. Or it could refer to the lifespan of a desert locust, laid as an egg in the spring and dead by the end of summer—up to six months, depending on the availability of food. It takes longer for them to mature if there’s not much food. In this case, the “five months” would serve as a metaphor—a way to help people visualize the symbolic story and imagine the kind of real-world suffering John is describing. Five months was also about how long the Romans besieged Jerusalem before breaking through the walls and leveling the city in AD 70.

89:6

This is punishment worse than death. It’s apparently for people who martyred Christians (Revelation 6:9-11). Roman writer Seneca, in a tragedy called Troades (Trojan Women), wrote, “May you have good reason to die, but no way of dying. May you be forced to live when you want nothing more than to die” (paraphrased). That’s the kind of thing we might want to say to a serial killer or to that relative we don’t want to talk about.

99:7

“Crowns” may have been code for “powerful” or “invincible,” a bit like a large army.

109:8

“Hair like a woman” seems out of place here. Guesses about what it means: symbol of victory, the golden color of Roman helmets, or describing them as long-haired barbarians. Romans wore short hair and considered the long-haired tribal warriors from what is now Germany as barbarians.

119:8

“Teeth like a lion” was a common expression—a way of describing a powerful and often unstoppable force (Job 4:10; Joel 1:6).