And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months; and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. One woe is past: and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt. And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.—Rev. ix.
A voice from Heaven told St. John that the woes which would follow the blasts of the three last trumpets would be far more terrible than those which preceded them. This language, I thought, intimated that they would be of a different kind; that there would be in them more of moral and spiritual, less of merely physical misery. Let us see whether the description which is given of the first of these woes confirms this opinion.
I. “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth.” I do not say that these words are decisive as to the nature of the approaching calamity. Taken alone they might denote some mischief which was to affect the earth, as such, like the one we heard of when the first trumpet blew. But I think we should feel the symbol to be far less violent, far more like those to which we are accustomed in prophetical and even in ordinary discourse, if it denoted the fall of some intellectual power, the awful change which takes place when that which should be a source of light to the world increases its darkness.
II. The words that follow, “and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit,” could mean nothing, I conceive, if some physical disorder was indicated by the star falling from Heaven. But supposing some man, or some society of men that had believed in a righteous and true God of Heaven, that had testified of Him, should become believers in another kind of God altogether—should practically acknowledge an evil God—would not such a description be verified? A yawning gulph of Atheism is discovered beneath a surface which had been covered with a religious crust, upon which fair fruit seemed to be growing. Men begin to ask themselves whether there is any foundation for the universe at all, whether it is not built on rottenness. That this pit was opening beneath the heathenism of the Roman empire in the first century most will acknowledge. But had the heathenism the key of the pit? Was the bottomless infinite laid bare when Jove began to be regarded as a synonym of the air, even when the whole Pantheon was thought of as a collection of malignant demons? No! to the eye of an apostle the worshippers of Jehovah presented a far more horrible spectacle; their unbelief in the God of their fathers, their substitution of a dark power for Him was not only the interpretation, but in some sense was the cause, of the change in heathenism. For its own cause we must look further. It is set forth, I think, in the tremendous words, “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin. But now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.” The Revelation of Christ to them as the brightness of the Father’s glory had brought that which was hidden within them into full consciousness. They had been dwelling in a twilight. The light was still struggling in them. But they saw the Perfect Image and fled from it. That was not their God. That which was directly contrary to this image was their God. The witnesses for the deliverer became the witnesses and instruments of the destroyer. The star had indeed fallen from heaven. And because it was a star set for the illumination of the world, the whole world must suffer from its fall. The broken imperfect faiths of men, those that still vibrated between Ahriman and Ormuzd, that still timidly confessed, amidst all monstrous contradictions and foul acts, that good was Divine and must prevail—all gather blackness from this great apostasy. This bottomless pit is opened; only thus could it be opened.
III. “And there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.” There is a medium of mist through which we may behold heaven. Through that mist it may look to us sometimes like a magnified earth; sometimes as if it were the faint shadow of that which here is substantial. This medium is not one of mist, but of smoke. A furnace is beneath. Nothing is seen above but wrath and horror. And all nature takes the same likeness. All forms that once appeared beautiful become hideous. “The sun and the air are darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.”
IV. “And there came out of the pit locusts upon the earth, and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment is as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.”
Nearly the most vivid description in ancient poetry is that which the prophet Joel gives of the army of locusts which invaded Palestine in his day. Travellers have testified to its literal fidelity; a statistical table or an agricultural report might state the facts of such a calamity more drily, but not so accurately. That description illustrates better than any other the mistake which we commit when we talk of making allowance for the figurative language of the prophets. We need make no allowances for it. We should study it and interpret it carefully and strictly, and then it will give us a living instead of a dead picture of events that have actually occurred; it will bring before us an actual past, which may be compared with an actual present.
I refer to that passage in the oldest of all the prophets because none enables us better to settle what must be the signification of this passage in the Revelation. “A nation,” says Joel, “is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.” Again, “The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.” So, again, in the second chapter, “The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them as a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.”
There can be no mistake about the import of this language: its whole force is lost if it is supposed to point at anything else than such a destruction of grass, trees, produce, as a flight of insects, and only of insects, could cause. Now observe with what care the Apostle, evidently having the discourse of Joel in his mind, excludes those very subjects upon which he dwells. These locusts were “Not to hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree.” I need hardly stop to observe that such expressions, if they mean anything, must just as much prevent us from supposing that the locusts figuratively represent the irruption of some human host. Imagine a horde of Huns or Avars leaving no traces of their march on the earth or on any tree! Imagine it being said of such locusts, that it was given to them that they should torment but not kill their victims! Surely it is our own fault if we will not profit by these hints; if we suppose that a prophet, because he has a Divine commission to enlighten us respecting great truths, is more heedless in the use of his symbols, is less able to make us understand them, than an ordinary teacher.
The Locusts, then, I apprehend, which rose out of the smoke of the pit, which were only to touch those men who had not the seal of God on their foreheads, and were to smite them as a scorpion smiteth a man, must point to those superstitions, especially those restless speculations respecting the coming future, which beset men from whom all belief in the Divine goodness has departed; who feel that the world is governed by an enemy instead of a Father; whose accusing consciences make the worst anticipations of that which is designed for them credible. How these locusts darken sky and air; how they breed hateful suspicions, which disturb the intercourse of man and man; how they connect themselves with each man’s recollections of what he has done, and of what he is; how they tell him one moment that what he is now he shall always be; how then they urge him to try whether he cannot get quit of his own being, of his immortal self; we may all know. Oh, my friends, these torments are indeed the torments of a scorpion when he striketh a man; no other similitude can be equally true with that.
V. It is to anguish of this kind that the words apply so strictly, so mournfully, “And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.” A perpetual craving for death, as the end of these scorpion stings: a perpetual horror of death, as if the sting were in it; as if that sting could not be taken out. The repose of death is delicious; the man would give worlds for it. “Not to be!” But alas! does not that mean “never to have been”? Is there any other condition on which this kind of repose is possible? The conscience answers, “No! The grave must be deep enough and wide enough to inclose all that has been as well as all that is to be, or it is not deep and wide enough for me.”
VI. The presence of this scorpion torment is the great characteristic sign of all those superstitions that arise out of the bottomless pit of unbelief. But they have other characteristics which seem less compatible with each other. The first is this: “Their shapes were like unto horses prepared for the battle”. There is hurry, eagerness, terror about them. They seem always getting ready for some encounter. But they never are ready. Fear where no fear is; absence of fear for the real crisis that is approaching; incapacity for taking any clear, steady measure of danger; here is a token of the tribulation of that day as it has been of the like in all subsequent days. This is the second mark: “And they had on their heads as it were crowns of gold.” Fantastic expectations of possible felicity alternate with terror. Crowns of gold float before the eyes of the dupe; the trader in auguries and enchantments ever and anon holds them forth. A sensual paradise, with no tree of knowledge, or one that may be eaten of, seems about to be restored. This is the third sign: “And their faces were like the faces of men.” The different superstitions and dreams derive their different aspects from the tastes, tempers, partialities, antipathies of particular teachers; they all reflect the faces of men; none have any permanent or Divine substance. Here is the fourth feature: “And they had hair as the hair of women.” A feminine element was in them; not merely an element of weakness and timidity, though this was present, no doubt. We have seen already what part the false prophetess was playing in the Church of Thyatira; in the forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem, when such men as Simon and Elymas were scattered so widely over the earth, the Jezebel was at least as often found as the Balaam; one stood continually beside the other. And the dreams of the future as well as the immediate fantasies exhibited the qualities of both. Again, “The teeth of these locusts were like the teeth of lions.” In the bold language of Joel these teeth had been attributed to actual insects; he is comparing objects, not by their size, but by their effects. The prophet of the Apocalypse does the same. Those superstitions which have issued from the bottomless pit, whatever soft airs they may put on, let them be as human, as feminine as they will, are still murderous; they are tearing in pieces whatever is left of righteousness and truth on the earth.
Again, “They have breast-plates as it were breastplates of iron.” By what breast-plates of iron the cruel superstitions, the dark worships of the world are protected, most missionaries could proclaim. They have learnt, I trust, that fearful truth, not only by their experience of heathens, but of themselves; they have found what an unnatural and tremendous hardness any falsehood to which we have yielded, and which has girt itself about us, may acquire. That these locusts then, in St. John’s vision—these which had spread themselves over the earth in the latter days of Jerusalem, and were darkening earth and air,—should have this among other signs of their nature, can cause us no wonder. But again, “The sound of their wings was as the sound of many chariots running to battle.” The Divine seer, like the false prophets, was looking for a battle. And all those various forms of evil in which were gathering up the falsehoods and false worships that had been diffused over the world up to that hour, were in his ears as the sound of chariots hastening to the battle; as the forerunners and foretellers of a conflict between the powers of good and evil such as there had never been yet. But whatever other marks distinguish these locusts, that which was noticed first must be kept in mind to the end. “They had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails.” There may be crowns of gold on their heads; but that from which they derive all their power is from the torments they are able to cause the conscience. That which doth make cowards of us all, makes these thoughts of the future terrific and real; without that they would be merely lies, proceeding from the father of lies.
VII. For “they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name is in the Hebrew tongue Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.” Here we have come to the root of the matter. Devil worship, the worship of the destroyer, is the source of all the foul and hurtful fancies that people the hearts of men. These men have bowed down to him; they have confessed him to be their lord and master. Hitherto there has been a protest against his tyranny. Wherever there is a nation, wherever there is law, justice, freedom,—even the struggle for law, justice, freedom,—there is he defied; thence goes forth a proclamation: This is not our Lord; we owe him no allegiance. In one nation that protest had been distinct, formal, perpetuated from age to age. In one nation the voice, “I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the house of bondage—I am the Lord God, merciful and gracious—I am the Righteous Judge of the earth,” had been heard through every law and every sacrifice. And now that nation reverences Abaddon or Apollyon under the name of Jehovah. Was not this a woe which was prophetic of woes to come? Was not this a trumpet announcing that the holy city was to fall down?
VIII. “One woe is past; and, behold, there come two more woes hereafter. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.”
Does not this vision resemble that of the first four trumpets, rather than the one we have just been considering? There is an actual river introduced, the Euphrates. A third part of men are said to be killed. Two hundred thousand thousand horsemen are seen forming a great army. Are we not to look for some physical, rather than some moral calamity, as indicated by the language? I have no doubt that this is the first impression of most readers. I think it can scarcely be the ultimate one.
We shall perceive, I think, that this trumpet succeeds the fifth in natural chronological sequence. The bottomless pit is opened; the swarms of dark superstitions are spread abroad; then comes the removal of a spiritual chain which had hitherto held an evil host in check. But the river Euphrates? At all events, upon any scheme of interpretation, that river must be symbolical; it will not point to events visibly transacted on its banks, or in its neighbourhood. The question therefore is, what does such a symbol most obviously and naturally signify? A Jew would always think of the Euphrates in connexion with Babylon; he would regard it as the river of the Asiatic monarch. He would regard it as spiritually indicating the separation between the two great kingdoms, the Babel kingdom, and the Israelitish kingdom; the kingdom which stood on the ground of self-will; the kingdom which stood on the ground of the God of Righteousness. He would therefore regard the command to loose the angels who are bound on that river Euphrates as the Divine decree that the barriers between these kingdoms, so far as the latter was represented in Jerusalem, should exist no longer. The moral basis of the distinction had been destroyed. Jerusalem was a part of the Babel society: may we not say boldly, had become the centre and capital of it?
IX. The year, the day, the hour when this crisis took place, we are told, was fixed. The long pent up evil broke forth. But it had gained no omnipotence. A higher Will determined when it would have been a lie for Jerusalem any longer to pretend that it was a witness for God, when it was right that it should be proclaimed the great witness for the Devil. That year, and day, and hour were not indifferent to the rest of the world. They affected it in ways that it knew not. How, ultimately, we are to be instructed hereafter. How, immediately, we learn from the present passage. I do not find in it any announcement which leads me to doubt that the interpretation of the Euphrates which I have given is the right one. The number of the horses is clearly one that would not have been adopted in any narrative of an actual transaction. It is deliberately chosen to indicate a host which never could have been gathered together on any earthly field; yet which is to carry a wide-spread mysterious desolation. The description of the horses and horsemen is of the same character. The “breastplates of fire and of jacinth, and of fire and of brimstone,” point to no armour that was wrought in earthly forges; the “fire, and smoke, and brimstone,” do not come out of the mouths of animals that man can tame.
X. I do not, however, in the least mean to explain away the assertion that “men were killed by the fire, and the smoke, and the brimstone that issued out of their mouths.” I do not understand by this death, spiritual death. Wars and fighting came then, as they come now, from the lusts in men’s members; the brutality, covetousness, self-glorification, atheism of a land, were then, as they are now, the causes of destruction to hundreds of thousands. The loosing of the angels might be the removal of restraints from powers of moral evil. But if it was that, it was inevitably the removal of hindrances to the murder of men’s bodies. The passage of the Euphrates might be the transgression of the boundary between a kingdom of righteousness and a kingdom of mere power. But when that boundary is taken away, there is no safety for any earthly thing from the violence of power. That singular description in the 19th verse, of the power of these horses—“It is in their mouth and in their tails, for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt”—imports, I apprehend, a thorough union of intellectual with animal force, from which all moral purpose is excluded. There is the mouth which can utter wisdom; there is the tail which strikes and slays. All the wisdom is serpentine: the tail has heads; these obey the lower instincts; to do hurt is their one function. Surely when such creatures are left for a little space to range at large, they will fulfil that function. Woe to the world because of them. Exalted to high places, nothing will be restrained which they have imagined to do.
XI. Six trumpets then have sounded. We ask, what effect did they produce on those who were living under the sound of them? How did they influence the heathen world? How did they influence the Jewish world? The seer makes answer: “And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their thefts.” So it was in the beginning, so it will be to the end. All outward plagues, all outbursts of moral evils, all apostasies in Divine Societies, were and are trumpets of God; those who acknowledge His goodness and truth will tremble and rejoice that He is speaking to them; that He is calling them to repent; that He is preparing the way for a manifestation of Himself. But these trumpets, let them sound as loud and long as they may, seldom stir a man who disbelieves in a living and good God to confess Him. The terror which is in them stupefies rather than quickens. The slumberer is half roused out of his dream; is bewildered; takes a fresh opiate; flies to the gods that neither see, nor hear, nor walk; flies from Him whom he has only recognised in thunderings and lightnings. The sentence is everlastingly true that not the fire, nor the earthquake, nor the blast rending the mountains, but only the still small voice reaches the heart, and compels it to bow. The Jew and the Heathen alike hear the notes of approaching doom, and are unmoved. Both alike shall at last look on Him whom they have pierced, and mourn as one mourneth for her only son.