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Revelation 9:1-12

King James Version (KJV)

“In our prayers we talk to God, in our Bible study God talks to us, and we had better let God do most of the talking.”
— D.L. Moody

Scripture focus

1. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. 7. 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. 8. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as [the teeth] of lions. 9. 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. 10. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power [was] to hurt men five months. 11. 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. 12. One woe is past; [and], behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

Revelation 9:1-12 — KJV

Commentary

Commentary on Revelation 9:1

Theological / Devotional

Fifth angel. The fifth trumpet is discussed in vs. 1–12. This trumpet is the first “woe” (see on ch. 8:13; cf. ch. 9:12, 13).

A star fall. Or, “a star fallen.” The star depicted here is not seen falling, as under the third trumpet (ch. 8:10), but is shown already fallen upon the earth.

It is interesting to note in passing that the figure of a fallen star occurs also in Jewish apocalyptic literature to describe Satan as a star fallen from heaven (Enoch 88:1; R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2, p. 251).

To him was given. This implies that the power represented by the key was not intrinsically his, but was allowed to him by a higher power.

The key. Possession of the key implies the power to open and close (see Rev. 3:7; cf. Matt. 16:19).

A number of commentators have identified the fifth and sixth trumpets with the ravages of the Saracens and the Turks. They point to the wars between the Persians under Khosrau II (A.D. 590–628) and the Romans under Heraclius I (610–641) as weakening the two empires, thus preparing the way for the Moslem conquest. The key, they suggest, is the fall of Khosrau, whose overthrow and murder in A.D. 628 marked the end of the Persian Empire as an effective power and opened the way for the advance of the Arabian forces.

Bottomless pit. Gr. phrear tēs abussou, “pit of the bottomless [place],” or “well of the abyss.” The word abussos is used repeatedly in the LXX to translate the Hebrew tehom (see on Gen. 1:2, where abussos represents the primeval ocean). In Job 41:31 it represents the sea in general, and in Ps. 71:20, the depths of the earth. The abussos is also the abode of leviathan. Thus the LXX of Job 41:22, 23, 25 (vs. 31, 32, 34 of the Masoretic text) reads, “He [the dragon] makes the deep [abussos] boil like a brazen caldron; and he regards the sea as a pot of ointment, and the lowest part of the deep as a captive: he reckons the deep as his range. … He beholds every high thing: and he is king of all that are in the waters” (English trans. in Bagster’s ed. of the LXX). With respect to the Arabs, the bottomless pit may be thought of as representing the vast wastes of the Arabian deserts, whence these followers of Mohammed issued forth, to spread their conquests over vast areas.

By SdaBc