Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

9:1-6
9 And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron; and
the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots, of
many horses rushing to battle.
10 And they have tails like scorpions, and stings; and in
their tails is their power to hurt men for five months.
11 They have as king over them, the angel of the Abyss; his
name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek he has the
name Apollyon.
12 The first Woe is past; behold, two Woes are still coming
after these things.
1-6 With the first Woe, the plagues become more
intense. While this curse is similar to the great swarms
of locusts which came upon Egypt in the eighth plague
(Ex. 10:12-15), these “locusts” are different: they are
demons from the Abyss, the bottomless pit, spoken of
seven times in Revelation (9:1, 2, 11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1,
3). The Septuagint first uses the term in Genesis 1:2,
speaking of the original deep-and-darkness which the
Spirit creatively overshadowed (and metaphorically
“overcame”; cf. John 1:5). The Abyss is the farthest
extreme from heaven (Gen. 49:25; Deut. 33:13) and
from the high mountains (Ps. 36:6). It is used in
Scripture as a reference to the deepest parts of the sea
(Job 28:14; 38:16; Ps. 33:7) and to subterranean rivers
and vaults of water (Deut. 8:7; Job 38:16), whence the
waters of the Flood came (Gen. 7:11; 8:2; Prov. 3:20;
8:24), and which nourished the kingdom of Assyria
(Ezek. 31:4, 15). The Red Sea crossing of the covenant
people is repeatedly likened to a passage through the
Abyss (Ps. 77:16; 106:9; Isa. 44:27; 51:10; 63:13). The
prophet Ezekiel threatened Tyre with a great desolation
of the land, in which God would bring up the Abyss to
cover the city with a new Flood, bringing its people
down to the pit in the lower parts of the earth (Ezek.
26:19-21), and Jonah spoke of the Abyss in terms of
excommunication from God’s presence, a banishment
from the Temple (Jon. 2:2-6). The domain of the
Dragon (Job 41:31; Ps. 148:7; Rev. 11:7; 17:8), the
prison of the demons (Luke 8:31; Rev. 20:1-3; cf. 2 Pet.
2:4; Jude 6), and the realm of the dead (Rom. 10:7) are
all called by the name Abyss. St. John is thus warning
his readers that hell is about to break loose upon the
Land of Israel; as with Tyre of old, the Abyss is being
dredged up to cover the Land with its unclean spirits.
Apostate Israel is to be cast out of God’s presence,
excommunicated from the Temple, and filled with
demons. One of the central messages of Revelation is
that the Church tabernacles in heaven; the corollary of
this is that the false church tabernacles in hell.
Why does the locust plague last for five months? This
figure is, first of all, a reference to the period of five
months, from May through September, when locusts
normally appeared. (The unusual feature is that these
locusts remain for the entire period, engaging in
constant torment of the population.) Second, this may
refer in part to the actions of Gessius Florus, the
procurator of Judea, who for a five-month period
(beginning in May of 66 with the slaughter of 3,600
peaceful citizens) terrorized the Jews, deliberately
seeking to incite them to rebellion. He was successful:
Josephus dates the beginning of the Jewish War from
this occasion. 1 Third, the use of the term five is
associated in Scripture with power, and specifically
with military organization – the arrangement of the
Israelite militia in a five-squad platoon formation (Ex.
13:18; Num. 32:17; Josh. 1:14; 4:12; Jud. 7:11; cf. 2
Kings 1 :9ff.). 2 By God’s direction, Israel was to be
attacked by a demonic army from the Abyss.
During the ministry of Christ, Satan had fallen to the
earth like a star from heaven (cf. 12:4, 9, 12); and the
key of the well of the Abyss was given to him. And
he opened the well of the Abyss. What all this means
is exactly what Jesus prophesied during His earthly
ministry: the Land which had received the benefits of
His work and then rejected Him, would become glutted
with demons from the Abyss. We should note here that
the key is given to Satan, for it is God who sends the
demons as a scourge upon His rebellious people.
The men of Nineveh shall stand up with this generation
at the judgment, and shall condemn it because they repented
at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater
than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South shall rise up with
this generation at the judgment and shall condemn it,
because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the
wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than
Solomon is here.
Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes
through waterless places, seeking rest, and does not find it.
Then it says, “I will return to my house from which I came”;
and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in
order. Then it goes, and takes along with it seven other spirits
more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and
the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That
is the way it will also be with this evil generation. (Matt.
12:41-45)
Because of Israel’s rejection of the King of kings, the
blessings they had received would turn into curses.
Jerusalem had been “swept clean” by Christ’s ministry;
now it would become “a dwelling place of demons and
a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every
unclean and hateful bird” (18:2). The entire generation
became increasingly demon-possessed; their progressive
national insanity is apparent as one reads through the
New Testament, and its horrifying final stages are
depicted in the pages of Josephus’ The Jewish War: the
loss of all ability to reason, the frenzied mobs attacking
one another, the deluded multitudes following after the
most transparently false prophets, the crazed and
desperate chase after food, the mass murders,
executions, and suicides, the fathers slaughtering their
own families and the mothers eating their own
children. Satan and the host of hell simply swarmed
throughout the land of Israel and consumed the
apostates.
1. Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War, ii.xiv.9-xix.9.
2. The Hebrew word in these texts is usually translated harnessed, armed, or in martial array, but the literal rendering is simply five in a rank (that is, five squads of
ten men in each squad). See James B. Jordan, The Law of the Covenant: An Exposition of Exodus 21-23 (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), pp.
264f.; idem, Judges: God’s War Against Humanism (Tyler, TX: Geneva Ministries, 1985), p. 17.
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