Revelation 9
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CHAPTER 9
The Last Three Plagues, or Woes (9:1-21)
1 When the fifth trumpet sounded, John saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. That star was some kind of angel, who had been appointed to bring about the fifth plague, the plague of locusts (verse 3).
2-3 These locusts, or demons, came out of the Abyss (Luke 8:31). In the Old Testament, locusts were a sign of God’s judgment against men (Exodus 10:13-15; Joel 1:2-7; 2:1-11). Even now, in northern Africa large armies of locusts come from time to time; as they advance they eat everything in sight and leave the land bare. Sometimes the locusts are so numerous that their advancing column is four miles wide and three meters deep!
4 The locusts that John saw in his vision were like scorpions. They had been given power to torture those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads (Revelation 7:2-3)—that is, non-believers. However, they were not to harm anything else. Notice that even Satan’s armies are ultimately under God’s control.
5-6 The locusts were not given the power to kill people, but only to torture them for five months.23 By this means, God was giving unbelievers still one more chance to repent and turn to Christ.
7-11 In these verses John gives a description of these locusts. The locusts were as big as horses. Their “king” was an evil angel named Abaddon, which means destroyer.
12 Here John calls this fifth plague the first woe. The sixth and seventh plagues are also called the second and third woes.
13-14 Next, in verses 13-19, John describes the sixth plague (or second woe). God commanded the sixth angel: “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”24
15-16 These four angels were generals of an army of two hundred million horsemen. This army was ordered to kill one third of all unbelievers. This army had been kept waiting until the exact time of God’s final judgment against the world.
17-19 Here John gives a description of the horses and their riders. It was not the riders but the horses who did the killing; they killed men with their mouths and tails.
20-21 In spite of this terrible destruction, men still did not repent. Their hearts were hardened against God. They kept on worshiping the DEMONS and idols25 that were now destroying them. Satan had indeed deluded them! (Psalm 115:4-8; Daniel 5:22-33).