Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

9:13
The vegetation of the earth is specifically exempted
from the destruction caused by the “locusts.” This is a
curse on disobedient men. Only the Christians are
immune to the scorpion-like sting of the demons (cf.
Mk. 6:7; Lk. 10:17-19; Acts 26:18); the unbaptized
Israelites, who do not have the seal of God on their
foreheads (see on 7:3-8), are attacked and tormented
by the demonic powers. And the immediate purpose
God has in unleashing this curse is not death, but
merely torment, misery and suffering, as the nation of
Israel was put through a series of demoniac convulsions.
St. John repeats what he has told us in 6:16, that in
those days men will seek death and will not find it;
and they will long to die and death shall flee from
them. Jesus had specifically prophesied this longing for
death among the final generation, the generation of
Jews which crucified Him (Lk. 23:27-30). As the
wisdom of God had said long before: “He who sins
against Me wrongs his own soul; all those who hate Me
love death” (Prov. 8:36).
7-12 The description of the demon-locusts bears many
similarities to the invading heathen armies mentioned
in the prophets (Jer. 51:27; Joel 1:6; 2:4-10; cf. Lev.
17:7 and 2 Chron. 11:15, where the Hebrew word for
demon is hairy one). This passage may also refer, in part,
to the Satanic gangs of murderous Zealots that preyed
on the citizens of Jerusalem. As Josephus tells us, the
people had more to fear from the Zealots than from the
Romans: “With their insatiable hunger for loot, they
ransacked the houses of the wealthy, murdered men
and violated women for sport; they drank their spoils
with blood, and from mere satiety they shamelessly
gave themselves up to effeminate practices, plaiting
their hair and putting on women’s clothes, drenching
themselves with perfumes and painting their eyelids to
make themselves attractive. They copied not merely
the dress, but also the passions of women, devising in
their excess of licentiousness unlawful pleasures in
which they wallowed as in a brothel. Thus they entirely
polluted the city with their foul practices. Yet though
they wore women’s faces, their hands were murderous.
They would approach with mincing steps, then
suddenly become fighting men, and, whipping out their
swords from under their dyed cloaks, they would run
through every passerby.” 3
One particularly interesting point about the
description of the demon army is St. John’s statement
that the sound of their wings was like the sound of
chariots, of many horses rushing to battle. That is the
same sound made by the wings of the angels in the
Glory-Cloud (Ezek. 1:24; 3:13; 2 Kings 7:5-7); the
difference here is that the noise is made by fallen angels.
St. John goes on to identify the king of the demons, the
angel of the Abyss, giving his name in both Hebrew
(Abaddon) and Greek (Apollyon) – one of many
indications of the essentially Hebraic character of the
Revelation. 4 The words mean Destruction and
Destroyer; Abaddon is used in the Old Testament for
the realm of the dead, the “place of destruction” (Job
26:6; 28:22; 31:12; Ps. 88:11; Prov. 15:11; 27:20). St.
John thus presents Satan as the very personification of
death itself (cf. 1 Cor. 10:10; Heb. 2:14). Clearly, for
Satan’s entire host of destroyers to be let loose upon the
Jewish nation was a hell on earth indeed. And yet St.
John tells us that this outbreak of demons in the land is
only the first Woe. Even this is not the worst, for two
Woes (i.e., the sixth and seventh trumpets) are still
coming after these things.
The Sixth Trumpet (9:-13-21)
13 And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from
the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,
14 one saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet:
Release the four angels who are bound at the great river
Euphrates.
15 And the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour
and day and month and year, were released, so that they
might kill a third of mankind.
16 And the number of the armies of the horsemen was
myriads of myriads; I heard the number of them.
17 And this is how I saw in the vision the horses and those
who sat on them: They had breastplates of fire and of
hyacinth and of brimstone; and the heads of the horses
are like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths
proceed fire and smoke and brimstone.
18 A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by
the fire and the smoke and the brimstone, which
proceeded out of their mouths.
19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their
tails; for their tails are like serpents and have heads; and
with them they do harm.
20 And the rest of the men, who were not killed by these
plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as
not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver
and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither
see nor hear nor walk;
21 and they did not repent of their murders nor of their
sorceries nor of their fornication nor of their thefts.
13 Again we are reminded that the desolations
wrought by God in the earth are on behalf of His
people (Ps. 46), in response to their official, covenantal
worship: the command to the sixth angel is issued by a
voice from the four horns of the golden altar (i.e., the
incense altar) which is before God. The mention of
this point is obviously intended to encourage God’s
people in worship and prayer, assuring them that God’s
actions in history proceed from his altar, where He has
received their prayers. St. John states that the voice
came from the four horns (hornlike projections at each
corner of the altar), referring to an important aspect of
the Old Testament liturgy: the purification offering.
This offering referred to the pollution and defilement of
a place through sin. If the place defiled by sin is not
purified, death will result. In his excellent study of the
3. Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War, iv.ix.10.
4. For a lengthy discussion of St. John’s grammar, with particular attention to the Hebraic style, see R. H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Revelation of St. John, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. &T. Clark, 1920), Vol. 1, pp. cxvii-clix. Charles’s summary of the reason for St. John’s unique style is that “while he
writes in Greek, he thinks in Hebrew” (p. cxliii).
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