Context & Key Themes
The eagle’s threefold woe at the end of chapter 8 introduces what chapter 9 begins to deliver. The fifth and sixth trumpets together constitute the first two woes, and the imagery is the most disturbing in the trumpet sequence. The fifth trumpet releases a star that falls from heaven and is given the key to the bottomless pit, out of which come locust-creatures with the power to torment but not kill. The sixth trumpet releases an army of two hundred million riders from beyond the Euphrates, who kill a third of mankind. The judgments are not against the righteous but against those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads, and they are not arbitrary but disciplinary in design — yet the chapter closes with a haunting note: even after these judgments, the rest of mankind do not repent of the works of their hands. The imagery is symbolic and prophetic, drawing from Joel’s vision of locust-armies and from Old Testament threats from the empires beyond the Euphrates, not from any specific modern military scenario.
Key Verses
“They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.” — Revelation 9:4
“The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands.” — Revelation 9:20
Summary
The fifth angel blows his trumpet, and John sees a star fallen from heaven to earth. The image of a fallen star can refer to a being rather than an astronomical object — here, evidently a fallen angelic figure, given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. He opens the shaft, and smoke rises like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air are darkened with the smoke from the shaft. From the smoke come locusts on the earth, and they are given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. They are told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. The protective seal of chapter 7 is now operating; the people of God are explicitly excluded from this torment.
The locusts are allowed to torment them for five months but not to kill them, and their torment is like the torment of a scorpion when it stings. In those days people will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them. The locusts are then described in vivid, nightmarish imagery: like horses prepared for battle, with what looked like crowns of gold on their heads and faces like human faces, hair like women’s hair and teeth like lions’ teeth, breastplates like iron, the noise of their wings like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails and stings like scorpions, and the power to hurt people for five months. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek Apollyon — both meaning “destroyer.” The first woe has passed; behold, two woes are still to come.
The sixth angel blows his trumpet, and John hears a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, saying to the sixth angel who has the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” The Euphrates was the eastern boundary of the promised land and the conventional Old Testament direction from which judgment came against Israel — Assyria and Babylon both came from there. The four angels are released, having been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, to kill a third of mankind. The number of mounted troops is two hundred myriads — two hundred million — a number meant to convey overwhelming, supernatural scale rather than a literal census.
John describes the horses and their riders. The riders wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur. The heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed. The power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound. The imagery is symbolic and grotesque on purpose — a vision of supernatural devastation, not a description of conventional warfare.
Then comes the most haunting line in the chapter. The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. The judgments were partial precisely so that there would be space for repentance; the chapter ends by recording that even with the space, the response was hardness rather than turning. The fact stands as evidence at the throne, and the trumpets continue.
Reflection
This chapter is hard to read — it is meant to be. The imagery is deliberately disorienting, drawn from Joel’s locust prophecy intensified to apocalyptic scale, and it reaches into the region of the demonic in ways the previous chapters have not. But several things in the chapter prevent it from being merely terrifying. First, the seal of God is operative. Those who belong to the Lamb are explicitly preserved from this torment, just as Israel was preserved from the plagues of Egypt while Egypt was struck. Second, the judgments are still partial — a third, not all — because the door to repentance is still open. Third, the closing note is not the cruelty of God but the hardness of unrepentant humanity. Even when sin is exposed and the demonic is made visible and the consequences are felt directly, those who refuse to turn refuse to turn. The chapter is a warning to every reader: do not assume that more dramatic evidence will produce repentance where the gospel itself has not. The hardening of a heart is its own kind of judgment, and it is the most sobering thing in the book so far.