Revelation 9

Revelation 9 is the ninth of the twenty-two chapters of the book of Revelation. In Revelation 8, after four of the seven trumpets have sounded, an eagle announces three "woes." In this chapter the first and second woes unfold in turn.

Outline

• Verses 1–6: The fifth angel sounds his trumpet. A star fallen from heaven receives the key of the bottomless pit and opens it. Locusts come out of the smoke and are given power like that of scorpions. For five months they torment only those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads, but they are not permitted to kill them. People seek death but cannot find it.
• Verses 7–11: The locusts are described. They resemble horses prepared for battle and wear what appear to be crowns of gold. They have human faces, hair like women's hair, teeth like lions' teeth, breastplates of iron, and tails like scorpions. Their king is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek Apollyon.
• Verse 12: The first woe is declared past, with two woes still to come.
• Verses 13–16: When the sixth angel sounds his trumpet, a voice comes from the four horns of the golden altar. At its command, the four angels bound at the Euphrates are released. They had been prepared to kill a third of humanity at an appointed time. The army of horsemen numbers two hundred million ("two hundred thousand thousand").
• Verses 17–19: The horses have heads like lions, and fire, smoke, and brimstone issue from their mouths. Their tails are like serpents. By these three plagues a third of humanity is killed.
• Verses 20–21: The survivors do not repent of worshiping demons and idols, nor of their murders, sorceries, fornication, and thefts.

Key Verses

• Revelation 9:4: "but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads." Because the judgment passes over those who have been sealed, this verse connects with chapter 7.
• Revelation 9:20: "yet repented not." This phrase reveals both the purpose of the judgments and human obstinacy, and it serves as the conclusion of the entire chapter.

Figures and Places

• The fifth and sixth angels: The angels who sound the trumpets.
• The fallen star: A being who receives the key of the bottomless pit. The text does not reveal its identity.
• Abaddon and Apollyon: The angel of the bottomless pit. Both names are understood to mean "destruction" or "destroyer."
• The bottomless pit (abyss): The term denotes a depth without a bottom. It also appears in Revelation 20:1–3.
• The Euphrates: A great river of Mesopotamia. In the Old Testament it is frequently mentioned as the northeastern boundary of Israel.

Points for Reflection

• Differing interpretive approaches: How this chapter is read depends on one's approach to eschatology.
• Futurism, particularly dispensationalism, reads it as describing events of a future tribulation period.
• Some historicist interpreters have identified the locusts with Islamic powers and the horsemen with the Ottoman Turks.
• The symbolic (idealist) interpretation sees it as a portrait of evil forces and judgments that recur throughout history.
• Interpreters also differ on whether the trumpet judgments occur in chronological sequence or depict the same period again, alongside the seal and bowl judgments (see The Seven Seals, Trumpets, and Bowls).
• Distinguishing the text from popular speculation: Identifications of the locusts as helicopters or of the two-hundred-million-strong army as the military of a particular nation are speculations spread by popular books. The text itself names no such referents.
• Connections within Scripture:
• The locusts recall the locust plague of the Exodus (the Ten Plagues) and the army of horse-like locusts in Joel 2.
• The seal on the forehead connects with Revelation 7:3 and Ezekiel 9:4.
• The description of idols that can neither see, nor hear, nor walk resembles Psalm 115.