Day

Today’s Passage: Revelation 9

The fifth and sixth trumpets open a world of torment that remains entirely under God’s restraining hand. We watch a fallen star receive a key to the shaft of the Abyss. Smoke pours out like a furnace, dimming the sun. Out of that smoke come locusts with the sting of scorpions. God hems them in on every side. They may not touch the grass or any green thing. They may not touch anyone sealed by God. They may not kill. They may only torment, and only for five months. John describes a nightmare constructed from familiar pieces: crowns like gold, faces like men, hair like women, teeth like lions, iron breastplates, wings roaring like an army of chariots. They serve a king, the angel of the Abyss, named Abaddon and Apollyon. That is the first woe. Then the sixth angel sounds. A voice speaks from the horns of the golden altar where the prayers of the saints ascended. Four angels bound at the Euphrates are released at an hour God fixed in eternity past, and an army beyond counting kills a third of mankind. But the darkest terror in this chapter waits in the last two verses. After watching the sun go out and a third of the human race die, the survivors bury their neighbors and refuse to repent.

Revelation 9:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Then the fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth, and it was given the key to the pit of the Abyss. ² The star opened the pit of the Abyss, and smoke rose out of it like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the pit. ³ And out of the smoke, locusts descended on the earth, and they were given power like that of the scorpions of the earth. ⁴ They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.

Everything in these four verses hangs on the key. A star falls from heaven to earth, and John speaks of it as a person who opens the shaft. Generations of readers have asked whether this is a fallen angel or an agent dispatched on an errand. The text leaves the identity unstated. The text states with absolute clarity that the key was given. Whatever this figure is, he does not pick the lock. He cannot open the Abyss (ἄβυσσος) abyssos, pronounced ah-BUS-oss. Strong's G12, the Abyss, the bottomless deep, a prison for spirits. Abyssos combines a negative prefix with a root for bottom. It means bottomless, unfathomable, the place where a measuring line hits nothing. When Greek translators of the Old Testament needed a word for the primeval deep of Genesis—the formless waters over which the Spirit of God hovered—they chose abyssos. They used it again for the great deep that broke open in the days of Noah. The word carries the ancient weight of chaos held down. In the New Testament, it is the prison where demons dread to go. When the legion begged Jesus not to banish them to the abyss, they used this exact word. The Abyss in Scripture never functions as an independent kingdom rivaling heaven. It is a prison. Prisons have locks. Locks have keys. The resurrected Christ holds the keys of death and Hades. Whatever comes out of this pit emerges only by permission, only within limits, and only for a set time. Absolute, unbridled evil does not exist in this universe. on his own. He does not hold the key by his own authority. It is placed in his hand, and God can take it back. When the smoke rises, human instinct assumes the world has come off its hinges. The evidence in the text proves the opposite. The hinges rested in the hand of God before the star fell, and they remain in His hand while the smoke pours out of the pit.

The smoke billows up like a furnace, thick enough to blot out the sun and choke the air. A reader raised on the Old Testament feels the historical weight of that image. Smoke rose over Sodom. Furnace-smoke shrouded Sinai. Darkness covered Egypt so heavily a man could feel it. Biblical judgment frequently arrives as the extinguishing of light. Out of this darkness come locusts. These insects differ from natural locusts. Natural swarms eat green vegetation, while these receive a strict command to leave the grass alone. That single restriction defines their purpose. The assault targets human beings, not agriculture. Notice the fence God builds around the plague. In four short verses, the text restricts their power three times: not the grass, not the trees, and not one person who carries the seal of God on their forehead. Chapter 7 described that seal before a single trumpet sounded. Now we watch the seal hold. God marked His own people before the smoke ever rose. He did not wait to see how bad the disaster would get. If you belong to Christ, God sealed you before the trouble started. The trouble knows exactly where the fence stands.

Revelation 9:5–8 (BSB)

⁵ The locusts were not given power to kill them, but only to torment them for five months, and their torment was like the stinging of a scorpion. ⁶ In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will escape them. ⁷ And the locusts looked like horses prepared for battle, with something like crowns of gold on their heads; and their faces were like the faces of men. ⁸ They had hair like that of women, and teeth like those of lions.

The restraint continues. The text draws a hard line: the locusts receive no power to kill, only to torment (βασανισμός) basanismos, pronounced bas-an-is-MOSS. Strong's G929, torment, testing that reveals what is there. Basanismos carries a revealing history. It derives from basanos, the touchstone. Jewelers rubbed gold against a dark stone to test its purity. From testing metal, the word expanded to testing men. In the ancient world, it meant examination under torture. Eventually, it settled into the everyday noun for torment. The original idea of the touchstone remains active here. A touchstone creates nothing. It exposes the metal’s true nature. The trumpets do not manufacture the rebellion in the human heart. They rub against the human heart, and the rebellion comes out into the open. That mechanism explains the end of the chapter. We must also recognize the mercy built into the boundary. The locusts receive no power to kill. Torment that stops short of death leaves a door open. As long as a person draws breath, he can turn to God. This is a trumpet blast, not the final gavel. The call of God echoes through all five months of the pain. for five months. Five months equals the lifespan of a natural locust. A swarm appears in the spring, does its damage, and dies by late summer. The calendar of an insect bounds this entire judgment. The torment feels like a scorpion sting. First-century readers in the Mediterranean knew that pain intimately. A scorpion sting rarely kills a healthy adult, but it sends a fire under the skin that burns for hours, dominating the mind and paralyzing the body.

Verse six records a staggering tragedy. Men will seek death and not find it. A person plunges so deep into misery that the grave looks like a rescue, yet the grave refuses to open. Job voiced a similar desperation in his suffering. Jeremiah wept similar words over a ruined Jerusalem. The note rings through Scripture. The unbearable truth in Revelation 9 is that these men and women could still call on the name of the Lord and find salvation. Instead, they hunt for an exit that costs them nothing. A human heart facing judgment will search every corner of the earth for relief before it looks up. It prefers death over repentance.

John describes the swarm by combining elements that defy nature. They look like horses dressed for battle, crowned with gold, wearing human faces, women’s hair, and lions’ teeth. Each detail isolated makes sense. Combined, they form a monster. The imagery creates an emotional impact that a chart of decoded symbols destroys. Evil seen in its true form is made entirely of good things bent out of shape. Notice John’s careful vocabulary. He repeats “like” and “something like.” He reaches for comparisons to describe the indescribable. The prophet Joel used these exact comparisons long before John walked on Patmos:

"Their appearance is like that of horses, and they gallop like swift steeds. With a sound like that of chariots they bound over the mountaintops, like the crackling of fire consuming stubble, like a mighty army deployed for battle." Joel 2:4–5 (BSB)

John points directly at the vision Joel received. He uses Joel’s vocabulary because Revelation speaks the language of the Old Testament. A reader familiar with Joel recognizes these horses immediately.

Revelation 9:9–12 (BSB)

⁹ They also had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the roar of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. ¹⁰ They had tails with stingers like scorpions, which had the power to injure people for five months. ¹¹ They were ruled by a king, the angel of the Abyss. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek it is Apollyon. ¹² The first woe has passed. Behold, two woes are still to follow.

The locusts wear iron breastplates and arrive with a roar. Anyone who has stood in a field during a locust swarm remembers the sound. A dry roar fills the sky with no visible source. John hears the noise of cavalry. The picture communicates a concrete truth about this kind of affliction: it feels armored, unanswerable, and impossible to reason with. Verse ten repeats the five-month time limit. The repetition acts as a double guarantee. Five months, and the plague ends. When a persecuted congregation in Asia Minor heard this letter read aloud, they knew the despair of suffering that feels permanent. The Holy Spirit placed the expiration date in the text twice so the church would hear it twice.

Israel’s proverbs observe that natural locusts have no king. These locusts follow a commander. A calculating mind directs the swarm. John names this king “the angel of the Abyss.” He provides the name in Hebrew and Greek, ensuring his audience understands the identity. He is Abaddon, and he is Apollyon (Ἀπολλύων) Apollyōn, pronounced ap-ol-LOO-ohn. Strong's G623, Destroyer, the one who ruins. Apollyōn functions as a participle, the ongoing form of the verb apollymi, meaning to destroy or ruin. In English, it translates directly as the Destroyer. The Hebrew name, Abaddōn, stems from a root meaning to perish. In Israel’s wisdom literature, it designates the place of ruin. This king lacks a personal name. His title describes his entire existence. He destroys. He builds nothing, creates nothing, gives nothing, and heals nothing. For a first-century reader in Asia Minor, the Greek name carried an immediate threat. It echoes Apollo, a dominant pagan god whose emblem included the locust and whose favor Roman officials constantly sought. John forces that echo into the open. Compare this destroyer to the Lord Jesus Christ, who stated He came to give abundant life. One wrecks and the other saves. They do not stand as equal powers locked in a cosmic tie. The difference between them is absolute. .

A voice from heaven calls out the time: “The first woe has passed. Behold, two woes are still to follow.” Heaven tracks the sequence. This is not random chaos spilling across the earth. It is a scheduled progression. God announces the steps in advance and drives them toward a fixed conclusion.

Revelation 9:13–16 (BSB)

¹³ Then the sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God ¹⁴ saying to the sixth angel with the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” ¹⁵ So the four angels who had been prepared for this hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. ¹⁶ And the number of mounted troops was two hundred million; I heard their number.

The sixth angel sounds, and a voice speaks from the four horns of the golden altar before God. You saw this altar in chapter 8. An angel mixed the prayers of the saints with incense, offered them before the throne, filled a censer with fire from the altar, and hurled it to the earth. The prayers of suffering Christians ascended from that exact location. The command releasing the sixth trumpet descends from the same spot. A frightened reader must connect those two facts. The judgments striking the earth respond directly to the cries of the persecuted. When the martyrs asked “How long?”, heaven heard them. God acts.

The voice commands the release of four angels bound at the Euphrates. Once again, they are bound. God held them until this moment. The precision of the timing defies human calculation. They “had been prepared for this hour and day and month and year.” God fixed the exact hour in His calendar. The judgment does not arrive a minute early or a minute late. The same God who scheduled that hour numbers the hairs on your head. That fact anchors a believer reading this chapter. Divine precision guarantees that God runs nothing by accident.

John hears the number of the cavalry: two hundred million. He states the fact: “I heard their number.” He did not stand on a hill and count them. The text presents a number meant to communicate overwhelming scale. It represents a force extending past the horizon, an army you can neither outrun nor outlast. Acknowledge the sheer terror of that force, and then remember who ordered it to wait at the river.

Revelation 9:17–21 (BSB)

¹⁷ Now the horses and riders in my vision looked like this: The riders had breastplates the colors of fire, sapphire, and sulfur. The heads of the horses were like the heads of lions, and out of their mouths proceeded fire, smoke, and sulfur. ¹⁸ A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur that proceeded from their mouths. ¹⁹ For the power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; indeed, their tails were like snakes, having heads with which to inflict harm. ²⁰ Now the rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the works of their hands. They did not stop worshiping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. ²¹ Furthermore, they did not repent of their murder, sorcery, sexual immorality, and theft.

John describes the second army using colors and animals. The riders wear breastplates of fire red, dark sapphire blue, and sickly sulfur yellow. The horses have heads like lions, breathing fire, smoke, and sulfur. Their power resides in their mouths and their tails. The tails act like snakes with heads of their own, striking from behind. John paints a killing force that attacks coming and going. You can never safely turn your back on it. This portrait delivers an impact that a mechanical blueprint lacks. A third of mankind dies. Read that fact soberly. John records the staggering death toll and moves forward. The entire chapter has been driving toward the reaction of the survivors.

Verse twenty lands like a hammer. “Now the rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent.” They survived. They watched the sun go dark. They endured the locusts. They saw a third of the human race fall. They buried their dead, walked back into their houses, and continued exactly as before. That stubborn refusal constitutes the true terror of Revelation 9. The trumpets serve to shake a sleeping world awake. God strikes a third of the sea, a third of the rivers, a third of the light, and a third of mankind. A third represents a fraction, not a totality. The fraction proves time remains. Yet with the clock ticking, humanity refuses to repent (μετανοέω) metanoeō, pronounced met-an-oh-EH-oh. Strong's G3340, to repent, to change the mind and turn. Metanoeō combines meta (change or afterward) and noeō (to perceive or think). It means a change of mind, but biblical repentance requires more than intellectual agreement. It demands a total pivot of the person. The mind changes its verdict on God and self, and the feet turn to follow that new verdict. John the Baptist preached this word in the wilderness. Jesus Christ preached it in Galilee. The apostles anchored their sermons in Acts with it. In Revelation 9, the word appears twice as a tragic report: they did not repent. Heaven shouted a warning, and the earth said no. The report guarantees that repentance remained possible. The text never says they could not repent. It says they would not. The door stood open. The human will refused to walk through it. .

Look at the specific sins they refuse to abandon. They cling to demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, “which cannot see or hear or walk.” John pulls that phrase straight from the Psalms. Israel sang those words to expose the utter bankruptcy of false gods:

"Their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. They have mouths, but cannot speak; they have eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear; they have noses, but cannot smell; they have hands, but cannot feel; they have feet, but cannot walk; they cannot even clear their throats." Psalm 115:4–7 (BSB)

Under the crushing weight of the trumpets, humanity begs for help from statues that cannot clear their throats. The Psalm delivers a severe verdict: those who make idols become like them. Idolatry provokes God and destroys the worshiper. A man who bows to a blind and deaf statue becomes blind and deaf to the truth. That spiritual blindness explains why the plagues fail to wake them. Verse twenty-one lists their actions against other people: murder, sorcery, sexual immorality, and theft. They manipulate the unseen world for power, take lives, take bodies, and take property. Idolatry corrupts the vertical relationship with God, and abuse corrupts the horizontal relationship with neighbors. The human race breaks both tables of the Ten Commandments in the exact order God gave them.