The Blowing of the Seven Trumpets (Revelation 8–11)

The Blowing of the Seven Trumpets (Revelation 8–11)

REVELATION 8–11

The Blowing of the Seven Trumpets

After the considerable interlude of the two scenes in chapter 7, the narrative that began in 4:1 is picked up again with the opening of the seventh seal. As noted earlier, the sequence of visions in the first half of the book is not intended to be chronological; rather the whole is purely narratival. The narrative itself thus picks up where it left off at 6:17, and will now carry through to 11:19. At the same time John also presents visionary moments that regularly fluctuate between heaven and earth, without noting any movement between the two.

Several phenomena in the opening paragraph (8:1–5) indicate that it functions as a Janus moment in the narrative, bringing closure to the seven seals while introducing the seven trumpets. In what follows (8:6—9:21) John is going to repeat the structure of the seven seals (ch. 6) as sets of four, two, and one. As before, these are then followed by a twofold interlude (10:1—11:14). But in this case the final three trumpets are introduced as a set of three woes, two of which are given in chapter 9. Finally, at the end of the second item in the interlude (11:14) John announces that the second woe has passed, and that the third is coming soon, which is then followed by the seventh trumpet. How all of these work into a neat package will become more clear in chapters 12–13, but for now these structural observations should serve as helpful guides for interpreting the details of the next section and those that follow.

THE SEVENTH SEAL: PRELUDE TO THE SEVEN TRUMPETS (8:1–5)

¹When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

² And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.

³Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. ⁴The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. ⁵Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.

The first thing up after the Lamb opens the seventh seal is silence (v. 1), after which John introduces seven angels who stand in the presence of God and who are given seven trumpets (v. 2). But before they do anything, another angel appears, who offers on the altar the prayers of the saints (vv. 3–4). Then at the end of the paragraph (v. 5) John experiences a spectacular theophany, reminiscent of Exodus 19 and occurring again in Isaiah 29:6. The phenomena themselves first appeared in 4:5 (q.v.), but now they include an earthquake.

John thus begins the prelude by bringing closure to the seven seals (v. 1) and immediately introducing the seven trumpets (v. 2). Thus his opening clause picks up the narrative that had been dropped at 6:12–17: When he [the Lamb] opened the seventh seal. In light of its significance in chapter 5, one might expect that the scroll itself would now be read. But no, not only does John not do anything so pedestrian, he never mentions the scroll itself again—although another little scroll will appear in chapter 10, whose meaning is a matter of considerable debate among interpreters. In the present case, one is also caught by surprise that the opening of the seventh seal is not accompanied by loud sounds of various kinds, as in earlier moments (trumpet blasts, shouts, etc.); rather the reader is caught up short with silence in heaven for about half an hour. This is most likely intended to arouse awe and wonder, not to mention anticipation. Then, in place of someone’s reading the scroll, we are rather introduced to its content by way of yet another vision, which as before is a marvelously crafted piece of imagery.

After the silence, therefore, John introduces the seven angels who stand before God, to whom seven trumpets were given. Both of these phenomena have been points of considerable difference as to their meaning and role in the narrative, for which certainty is not easy to come by. “The seven angels” are introduced with the Greek definite article, which indicates not merely that “seven angels appeared,” but that they are either “the seven angels, the well-known ones” or “the previously mentioned seven angels.” A goodly number of interpreters have regarded them as having a backward look, thus as referring to the seven lamps, but that seems to founder on any number of exegetical problems. More likely John is here referring to the seven archangels, who were well known in late Jewish antiquity, and who are actually named in 1 Enoch 20.

Although the meaning—and background—of the “seven trumpets” has also been a point of some difference among interpreters, the most likely option is to be found in several texts in the Prophets, where warnings of judgment are accompanied by a trumpet blast. Thus, for example, in Ezekiel 33:1–5 the watchman will “blow the trumpet to warn the people”; and in Zephaniah 1:14–16 the “great day of the Lord” will be “a day of trumpet and battle cry” (cf. Joel 2:1; 2 Esdras 5:23). If this is the way forward, then the difference between the trumpets and the coming “seven bowls” (ch. 16) is that the former only announce the coming judgments, and inherent in them is the opportunity to hear them as warning. What further supports this view is that when the trumpets are sounded only one third of the earth will be affected and people are regularly offered opportunity to repent, even though they do not (e.g., 9:20–21); while the later “bowls of wrath” are poured out as divine judgment, with no relief of any kind.

The seven angels are then followed by another angel, who has sometimes been interpreted as referring to Christ, a view that has almost nothing in its favor. In this book, “angels” are angels, and Christ appears either in his incarnate form or as the Lion or the Lamb. Indeed, as with the seven seals, the seven trumpets originate from the heavenly throne. What has now changed is the imagery itself: heaven now appears as a temple, an image that was anticipated in 5:8; the bowls of incense are the prayers of the saints; and in 6:9 John sees “under the altar the souls of the martyrs.” In the present scene the angel who had a golden censer came as a priest ministering in the temple and stood at … the golden altar in front of the throne. The angel had also been given much incense to offer, which is intended to accompany the prayers of God’s people.¹ Although this sentence reads quite naturally, presenting a scene that can be easily envisioned, the fact is that a heavenly “altar” is here introduced for the first time, even though it is referred to as something that the reader should recognize. The reason for introducing it, of course, is related to the rest of the scene that follows, whose imagery will only work with the assumption of an altar.²

The incense with its accompanying prayers then went up before God from the angel’s hand—an unusual moment to be sure, where an angel rather than a human priest is the heavenly officiant. This in turn is followed by the initial heavenly response, which is performed by the same angel, who then took the censer, filled it with fire from the alter, and hurled it on the earth. This combination seems quite intentional on John’s part; that is, in the flow of the present narrative one should assume that the same “golden censer” in verse 3, which was associated with incense and “the prayers of God’s people,” is here “filled … with fire … and hurled … on the earth” as the divine response to the prayers. The response in turn to the censer being throw down is a theophanic display in the form of peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake (cf. 4:5).

What this means seems clear enough, and serves as the source of the title of Eugene Peterson’s meditative commentary on the Revelation, Reversed Thunder, language borrowed from George Herbert. Earlier in 6:9–10, the souls of the “saints” are under the altar, where they cry out, “How long, Sovereign Lord, until you … avenge our blood?” Now, in another great moment in this book, this initial picture of warnings about soon-coming judgment is seen as in direct response to the prayers of the saints. Thus, as the prayers go up, great displays of a fierce storm come down, which conclude with a rumbling of the earth itself.

THE FIRST FOUR TRUMPETS AND THE FIRST EAGLE (8:6–13)

⁶Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them.

⁷The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down on the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.

⁸The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned to blood, ⁹a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

¹⁰The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water—¹¹the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.

¹²The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.

¹³As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!”

In another remarkable moment in the Apocalypse, John achieves maximum mileage from his vision of heaven with this next scene, in which the first four angels sound their trumpets. It is especially important to note that this is a continuation from the vision that began in 6:1 and concluded with 8:1–5, a passage that also served to introduce the next major section of the narrative. Not only has there been no explicit relocation of John himself, but as verses 1 and 2 made clear, he is still in the same vision as in the preceding three chapters. What appears next, then, is the second of the three sets of seven noted above (p. 90). But in contrast to the first set, the final three items in this one are introduced by an eagle as three “Woes” (v. 13).³

The most striking feature of these woes is their clear echoing of the plagues of Egypt recorded in Exodus 7:14—12:30. The reader has just heard (in 8:5) the theophanic thunderings that echo Exodus 19; now one is presented with plagues against those who have caused the suffering and hardship among God’s people. And as 9:4 makes clear, those who are “sealed” by God escape these woes, just as the children of Israel escaped the plagues. The Exodus plagues themselves included the following (those that are underlined are echoed in the present account):

John’s own vision clearly echoes the four plagues underlined above, two of which (7 and 9) come to earth from above, as do three of John’s.

One should note that all four of the present plagues have the same pattern: (a) the angel blows the trumpet, (b) the plague is described, and (c) the results are measured, all in terms of one-third destruction. This latter feature is especially important, since it is John’s way of indicating that the present plagues are merely anticipatory, announcing ahead of time that the present persecutors of God’s people, just as with the Egyptians of old, will eventually be visited with divine judgments for their role in the persecutions.

John begins the present narrative with another introductory sentence, Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them, thus following up the introduction of the angels in verse 2. What occurs next is the first of four immediate, but partial judgments directed at the Empire. The judgment itself is aimed at the land, picking up the first of the judgments of the four angels in 7:1, who were told not to “harm the land or the sea or the trees.” Now all heaven opens up, as it were, so that there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down to the earth. This is a description of a great electrical storm, in which both hail and lightning (“fire”) strike the earth. The apocalyptic dimension of the scene is found in the description of the lightning as “fire mixed with blood.” As with all of these scenes, the present destruction is expressed in the passive voice so that its divine source is made certain. Yet it is not attributed directly to God—as in modern parlance where such phenomena are often described as “acts of God”—even though no such hesitation existed in the Exodus account itself.

The destruction in this case is then expressed in a way that is a bit more difficult for one to grasp visually. It begins with the more generalized reality that a third of the earth was burned up. The ultimate intent of such destruction is then specified in two ways. First, a third of the trees were burned up. That this pictures the nature of the destruction as over against its reality as such is made certain by the concluding description, and all the green grass was burned up. Thus what the preceding “winds” could not do (see 7:3) the present “hail and fire” achieve—a complete destruction of the land’s primary growth, “green grass.”

No one living in Rome at the time of this writing could have missed the implications of what happened when the second angel sounded his trumpet, since it is a rather precise description of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on the coast of the Bay of Naples, which a few years earlier (79 CE) had destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. As it turns out, this is also the only one of these plagues that has its origins on the earth itself. Thus what is pictured is something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, which is seen to have been thrown into the sea.⁴ The effects of this eruption continue the partial nature of the judgment from the first plague, so that what happened above to “a third of the earth” happens now to a third of the sea, in this case being turned to blood, as did the Nile in the first plague in Exodus 7:17–20. “The sea,” of course, is the Mediterranean; but this rather impossible event indicates how much these pictures are intended to address the imagination and are not to be pictured literally; after all, it is exceedingly difficult even to imagine visually a third of the sea turning to blood. At any rate, John is well aware of the disastrous effects of such marine contamination, since he follows by noting that a third of all the living creatures in the sea died. Here again his interest is in the partial destruction of the sea; only one third of its marine population died. The third result of this second plague is aimed directly at Rome itself, since at the time of John’s writing Rome’s existence was dependent altogether on imports from elsewhere in the Empire. Thus the divine judgment in this final case resulted in a third of the ships being destroyed.

With the third angel, the judgments again come from above. Thus when the angel sounded his trumpet … a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky. In this case the star is given a name, Wormwood, a non-poisonous, bitter plant sometimes used for medicinal purposes, but here most likely reflecting its bitterness as such. Again, the phenomenon described is most likely an apocalyptic reference to something known to the readers, probably to a destructive meteorite that has made its way to the earth. In this case the judgment is against the fresh waters in that it fell … on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. But rather than being turned to blood in this case, a third of the waters were turned bitter. This appears to be a first-century description of contaminated or poisoned waters, which when drunk in this case caused many people to die from the waters that had become bitter. As it turns out this is the only plague that is explicitly directed toward the people themselves.

Finally, when the fourth angel sounded his trumpet the heavenly bodies themselves are seen to be affected by human rebellion against God. This is very much in keeping with—indeed it is a clear echo of—the ninth plague in Exodus 10:21–23, where the heavenly lights of both the day and the night are themselves darkened. Thus when the light of day, the sun, and the lights of night, the moon and the stars, are struck, a third of them turned dark, which is further elaborated to mean that a third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.

In this case, however, John is at the same time reflecting the “messianic woes” found throughout the Jewish prophetic and apocalyptic writings, where supernatural disasters are pictured as part of the Day of Yahweh. Thus, for example, God speaks through the prophet Joel (2:30–31):

I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth;

blood and fire and billows of smoke.

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood,

before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.⁵

It should be further noted that in the prophetic tradition temporal punishment, not final judgment and death, is the goal of such extraordinary phenomena. The same holds true for John in the present passage, since throughout these preliminary visions John perceives these expressions of divine displeasure as leaving the door open for the possibility of repentance.

John then concludes this series of woes, and introduces the final set of three, by means of the cry of a bird. In the Greek this bird is designated an aetos, a word that refers either to an eagle or a vulture, both of which are carrion-eating birds, and thus unclean to the Jewish community. The intent of the bird’s cry is to set off the next two and the final angelic trumpets from these first four. Thus John relates, as I watched, I heard an eagle⁶ that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice. The sense of foreboding thus comes from an unclean bird, whose threefold Woe! introduces a message of anticipated doom upon the inhabitants of the earth. This doom will be announced through the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels. At the same time this becomes a new structural signal—regarding the final three woes—that will be picked up further in 9:12 and 11:14.

THE FIFTH TRUMPET [= THE FIRST WOE] (9:1–12)

¹The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. ²When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. ³And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. ⁴They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. ⁵They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. ⁶During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

⁷The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. ⁸Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. ⁹They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. ¹⁰They had tails like stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. ¹¹They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).

¹²The first woe is past, two other woes are yet to come.

With the trumpet blast of the fifth angel, the reader approaches the height of John’s apocalyptic imagination, in which the whole scene reveals a spectacular combination of images, with one figure being transmogrified into yet another. Indeed the imagery changes at such a rapid pace that the reader who tends to visualize as he or she reads can be left a bit bewildered. The narrative begins with a heavenly emissary (in the form of a personified star) opening the great pit (“the Abyss”⁷) full of smoke as from a hot furnace. Beginning with verse 3, the appearance of locusts echoes the eighth plague of Egypt; at the same time it also echoes the great locust plague of Joel 1 and 2, which Joel saw as the harbinger of the Day of the Lord. But from the outset in John’s description the locusts are likened to scorpions, whose ability to torture is picked up in verse 5. Nonetheless, when their likeness is described, and in keeping with the vivid imagery of Joel, they become an army of “horses prepared for battle.” Thus everything about this scene is apocalyptic and unnatural.

The trumpet blasts of the fifth and sixth angels, even though they belong to the sequence of devastations that began in verse 6, are significantly different from the first four in terms of both length and content. At the same time the apocalyptic nature of the narrative also takes a new turn: up to this point the various actors are living beings of some kind; but with the content of this fifth trumpet blast the major player is now a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth, whose fall itself, given the tense of the verb (“had fallen”), John apparently did not see. The star itself then takes on lifelike qualities so as to set in motion the content of the woe. Narrating again in the “divine passive,” John tells us that the star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss, thus assuming that the major but unidentified player throughout the drama is divine. John of course expects his readers to assume that the star is an angelic figure of some kind,⁸ since it came “from the sky to the earth.” If so, then this angel serves as a kind of parody of the Satan legend, where, for example, in Luke 10:18, “Satan [fell] as a star from heaven.” This imagery further corresponds to 8:10 above, where the “great star [that] fell from the sky” is a clearly malevolent figure. As a parody of this imagery the present, non-malevolent angel will set the next vision into motion; and as an inclusio with this description John will conclude the entire scene in verse 11 by naming Satan himself as “the angel of the Abyss,” who also served as king of the scorpions.

One should also note that the present “shaft of the Abyss” assumes, along with the preceding picture of “heaven above,” a kind of three-storied universe where “the heavens” are above the earth and the Abyss (a word that is transliterated from the Greek) lies under its surface in some way. In this case the Abyss is most likely a depiction of “hell,” in the sense that it is the current abode of demonic forces in the under-world, where they will also be kept until they are thrown into a final hell, depicted in 20:10 as “a lake of burning sulfur, where … they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” Thus in the somewhat repetitive fashion now familiar in John’s Apocalypse, the narrative continues with the divine action of the star, who opened “the shaft of”⁹ the Abyss. What happens next assumes what the ancients themselves would have surmised on the basis of volcanic eruptions: that under the earth’s surface is something resembling a gigantic furnace¹⁰ (Vesuvius again). When exposed to the earth above, smoke rose from the Abyss, which in turn is likened to the smoke from such a furnace. Then to heighten the visual dimension of the imagery John adds that the sun and sky were darkened by the smoke, thereby emphasizing the enormity of what John saw.

Beginning with our verse 3, John’s imagery now echoes the eighth plague against the Egyptians in Exodus 10:12–15; thus out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth. But in sharp contrast to the Exodus plague, these locusts were not to devastate the green plants; rather they were to torture human beings who did not have God’s seal. In true apocalyptic fashion, these locusts were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. That they were not in fact scorpions, but only had “power” similar to that of scorpions, is then explained in verse 4, where the locusts are told to act in a manner very unlike locusts and not … harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree. Instead they are to act like scorpions and thus “harm” people; but in this case, as an act of temporal judgment, they are to “torture” (v. 5) only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.¹¹ With this imagery John picks up and elaborates on the meaning of 7:2–3, where this protective “seal” had been applied “on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”

Here people without “the seal of God” are about to undergo a temporal, as over against eternal, judgment. The locusts were therefore not allowed to kill the people who lacked the seal, but only to torture them for five months. This temporal reference has served as a field day for speculations of all kinds. But two matters need to be borne in mind: first, this is in fact the normal length of a locust plague; and second, it therefore serves as a convenient, probably symbolic, way of pointing to a short time. In any case, what is significant is that God, not Satan, initiates this event. That is, even though the event itself is demonic, its timing and length are under God’s rule, not Satan’s.

John concludes this opening depiction of the scorpion-like locust plague by making sure his readers understand that all of this is ultimately a divine judgment meted out on those who do not bear the “seal” of divine ownership. As throughout, John’s readers are to recognize their own tormentors as among those who during those days will seek death but will not find it, a clause which in typical fashion for John is then repeated for emphasis: they will long to die, but death will elude them.¹² John’s way of putting it is both more poetic and more vivid than most English translations are capable of. Their “longing” will be to die, but death (now personified) “will flee from them,” as the traditional English translations (correctly) have it. Those who are currently tormenting God’s people must endure the torture of the locusts; death itself is not an option.

The ninefold description of the locusts themselves (vv. 7–11) begins to stretch John’s own apocalyptic imagination, since he is simultaneously attempting to keep his imagery alive while also trying to depict an enormous cavalry of (human) soldiers. Thus even though one can picture the apocalyptic nature of such cavalry, to form a mental image of what John actually describes becomes nearly impossible. At this point John is almost certainly playing on Rome’s ongoing fear of the “barbarian hordes,” especially those with long blonde hair from northern Europe. The result is a marvelous collocation of images that together picture an army of which Rome itself actually lived in constant fear.

Thus John’s locusts looked like horses prepared for battle, which in this case is an echo of Joel 2:4 (“they have the appearance of horses”).¹³ Eight features are then delineated that are intended to arouse the emotions of the reader, as the picture goes from normal imagery (“horses prepared for battle”) to the more bizarre imagery of the cavalry itself, and then back to the “many horses and chariots rushing into battle” (v. 9). Eight features are pointed out in all, each of which seems to be aimed directly at the Roman fear of the barbarian hordes from the north. The first two are those that make one suspect a depiction of the barbarians. With on their heads they wore something like crowns of gold John is possibly alluding to blonde hair, which was virtually unknown in Mediterranean and Near Eastern lands. Here John has moved subtly from a description of locusts to something much more human in appearance. That this is his intent is made certain by the next descriptor: their faces resembled human faces, “resembled” in this case because “human faces” (= human beings) is in fact what John is setting out to depict.

This imagery is then heightened by their next feature; as long-haired barbarians, their hair was like women’s hair. Staying with the head, John next caricatures the barbarians’ mouths in terms of their sometimes fearsome-appearing teeth. Thus their teeth were like lions’ teeth, imagery that may also have resulted from their (known or supposed) love of meat, especially meat on the bone. At the same time, of course, teeth are the “weapon” of actual locusts, whose ability to devour created such dreaded havoc on crops and people alike. The next descriptor might appear to be the more puzzling one; but if in fact this is an attempt to describe the barbarians figuratively, then breastplates like breastplates of iron is a descriptor based on the underside of the locust while it also describes the appearance of the multitudes of real breastplates in an army arrayed for battle. Very likely this imagery is what brought about the prophet Joel’s description in the first place, which John is now picking up. The next item is also not terribly complicated: the sound of their wings is described as like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. Again, this is a depiction that moves easily from imagery to reality and back again. The sound of such hordes is what holds the imagery and the reality together, and allows the reader to have a considerable amount of confidence as to what John is doing.

Finally, John concludes his depiction of the feared barbarian hordes by returning to the imagery with which he began. The locusts, even though they “looked like horses prepared for battle” (v. 7), are once more likened to scorpions. But here the mixing of metaphors takes over the description itself. At the beginning (v. 3) John has already described the locusts as having been “given power like that of scorpions of the earth,” who were to “torture [people] for five months.” Now in the final clause of the long description of the locusts/barbarians (v. 10), he returns to this imagery by giving them tails like stingers, like scorpions, who as before had power to torment people for five months. Thus by once more employing this kind of repetition, John reinforces the limited power of these scorpion-like locusts.

In something of a surprising move, John then concludes his description of the fifth angel’s trumpet by naming Satan as king over the locusts. By describing him as the angel of the Abyss, John thus offers a conclusion that also serves as an inclusio with verse 1. But to make sure that his readers fully understand who this “angel” is, this “star that had fallen from the sky,” John gives his full name, both in Hebrew (Abaddon) and in Greek (Apollyon). For the sake of the English reader the NIV translators chose at this point to make the same helpful rendition of this Hebrew (and Greek) word into English: that is, Destroyer. Thus even though the people to whom John writes are currently under-going persecution at the hands of the Empire, he is equally concerned to let the persecuted know that the persecutors will eventually receive theirs as well.

Therefore, by his using (a) Joel’s locust plague to signify a powerful army that will torture—now (b) combined with images hinting at the barbarian hordes, which (c) are melded further into pictures that are ultimately demonic in character—John announces God’s prior, temporal judgments that will befall the unrepentant dwellers on the earth.¹⁴ It is precisely this understanding that leads directly to the second, and somewhat complementary, picture of the sixth trumpet. Thus John concludes this first warning of divine judgment by announcing that the first woe is past, two other woes are yet to come, a note that will be picked up again after the second woe (11:14). In this way the reader is being told quite intentionally that the two woes and the double interlude of 10:1–11 and 11:1–13 are to be understood as corresponding to each other in some way, so that the second woe is not over until the interlude itself is included.

THE SIXTH TRUMPET [= THE SECOND WOE] (9:13–21)

¹³The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. ¹⁴It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” ¹⁵And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of the world’s people. ¹⁶The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.

¹⁷The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. ¹⁸A third of the people were killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. ¹⁹The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury.

²⁰The rest of the people who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. ²¹Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.

With the sounding of the sixth trumpet everything heads toward what C. S. Lewis called “the last battle.” Thus in keeping with the preceding five plagues, John presents yet another extraordinary picture, this time of a cavalry of such monumental proportions that even the large Jezreel Valley in northern Palestine could not contain them all. The picture comes to us in three parts: the first (vv. 13–16) signals the gathering of “the mounted troops”; while the second (vv. 17–19) describes both “the horses and [their] riders,” as well their devastation of a third of the earth’s population; the final part (vv. 20–21), a concluding summation, indicates the resistance of those who survived the plague, and who thus continued in their ungodly ways despite the warnings afforded by the plague itself.

Once more the reader is reminded of the divine sovereignty in all of this; that everything is ultimately initiated from the heavenly throne. Thus when the sixth angel sounded his trumpet, there follows immediately a voice coming from the four¹⁵ horns of the golden altar that is before God. This sentence reminds the reader that John is still in the heavenly scene that began with his being “in the Spirit” and thus transported so as to be “before the throne in heaven” (4:2). At the same time the altar that was first introduced into the scene in 8:3, and without explanation, is now envisioned in its Old Testament expression, including its being made of gold and having four “horns.”¹⁶

In the present imagery these horns now speak with a single “voice” to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, telling him to release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.¹⁷ In the kind of mixing of metaphors and images common to this book, four angels were pictured in 7:1 as standing at the corners of the earth, holding back the plagues against the earth until God’s people had been sealed. Now four angels are themselves pictured as bound, and are located geographically at the Euphrates River. For Israel this river (and therefore Babylon) was considered “north,” since most foreign invasions came from that direction, coming “down” against Israel along the coastal plain. In light of the following description of a vast army assembled for battle, this is almost certainly a pickup from Ezekiel’s prophecy against Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38–39). And given Rome’s own fears of the Parthian hordes, who had twice defeated their armies in recent history, this is the logical place for such a colossal threat to originate.

Attention remains on the comings and goings of all the various figures—and especially of the voices—who represent several dramatis personae. The voice of the horns now addresses the sixth angel. Any attempt to identify the voice itself is an exercise in futility, since in this case it is simply a convenient, and for this work normal, way for John to keep the narrative flowing. What is important is what the voice says: “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” With this description yet another area of debate among interpreters was let loose, since the definite article implies that the four angels are those mentioned in 7:1–2, yet there is nothing in that passage that even remotely implies that they were “bound.” Most likely, therefore, John is once more doing what he has often done: introducing a character or a prop in one narrative and then elaborating on him/it in the next occurrence, as was noted above with regard to the “altar.” The purpose of releasing the four angels is so that, in keeping with the partial nature of everything in these preliminary visions, they might kill a third of the world’s people. Again, this is simply an apocalyptic vision in which John foretells some God-appointed temporal calamities against the Empire.

The final item in this scene, however, catches the reader totally off guard. Most modern readers are simply unacquainted with the (sometimes rapid) fluidity of apocalyptic imagery. Just as the altar was introduced in 6:9, and later plays a considerable role in the introductory vision of 8:1–5, so the angels introduced in that vision now play a larger role in the present one. But for all that, the present shift is especially dramatic. One is given the impression in the preceding sentence that the four angels themselves would “kill a third of the world’s people.” But what we are now told instead is that their release signals an army of unequaled magnitude; a cavalry that is so huge it defies all human attempts to visualize it. The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand, which calculates to, as the original NIV had, “two hundred million,” a number that in antiquity simply did not exist. That this is an apocalyptic number, in both senses of the term, becomes evident when one tries to visualize such a cavalry, which at one mile wide would be about eighty-five miles long! Thus John simply concludes, I heard their number.

Nonetheless, what follows is not an aural, but a typically visual description, not of the multitude of troops as such, but of an immense cavalry of horses and riders who looked like this. At the same time John’s own description is such that the reader cannot be absolutely certain as to how one is to visualize what has been written. The ambiguity in the Greek text begins with the first description, which reads (literally and in John’s order), “And thus I saw the horses in the vision and those seated on them having breastplates of fiery red and hyacinth-colored and sulphurous.” At this point one can be quite sure that John is thus describing the breastplates of the cavalry, which in translation are correctly turned into colors (fiery red, dark blue, and [sulfur] yellow). What is less certain is whether each rider had a breastplate with one of these colors or (what seems more likely) each breastplate was multicolored.

John follows this singular description of the riders with a description of the horses, which are demonic apocalyptic figures indeed. Once more verbally describing visual imagery, John tells the reader that the heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, imagery that is then intensified by what was seen coming out of their mouths: fire, smoke and sulfur. Thus what John saw coming out of the mouths of the horses corresponded in part to the breastplates of the riders themselves. He then concludes his description of this immense cavalry by continuing to focus on the horses, whose power … was in their mouths and in their tails. Thus the pain to be inflicted would come not from the riders, but from the now demonic horses, who are finally described as something of a cross between snakes and scorpions. At the same time, here is a place where John’s verbal description of a visual image pushes hard against the reader’s own visual imagination. That is, the horses’ tails were like snakes—an easily manageable image—but the tails themselves are seen as having snake-like heads with which they inflict injury. In the end, therefore, it is these apocalyptic horses, not their riders, who are envisioned as having power both to kill, by what came out of their lion-like mouths (v. 18), and to inflict painful injury, by means of their snake-like tails (v. 19).

This sixth woe is finally brought to its conclusion with the summation of results that appear in verses 20–21. At the same time, John’s very long and complex Greek sentence also serves to conclude the results of all six of the preceding plagues (which began in 8:6). The conclusion itself has altogether to do with continuing human resistance to the warnings that should have been evident in the plagues themselves. As with Pharaoh in the Exodus, the rest of the people who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent. And at this point John’s own very Jewish, very Christian revulsion toward idolatry takes center stage by way of this scathing denunciation of paganism.

One can especially hear the repugnance in the way John goes on to describe “the rest of the people” in terms of their not repenting of the work of their hands. This is a thoroughly biblical way of deriding idolatry, where, quite in keeping with Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:20–21, John echoes the mockery of Isaiah 2:6–8 and 44:9–20. In the former passage the prophet, after cataloguing Israel’s rejection of Yahweh, concludes, “their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made.” This is the ultimate irony for any believer in Yahweh, the living God; that human beings, themselves created in the divine image, should try to create deities for themselves that take the form of what is merely creaturely, deities whose “image” they believe can be found in the creature rather than in the Creator. In the second passage the prophet offers an enlarged expression of the same—the ultimate scathing caricature of those who would bow down and worship what is nothing more that “the work of their own hands.” Such people, the prophet concludes, “feed on ashes, a deluded heart misleads them; they cannot save themselves” (44:20).

That denunciation and caricature are John’s ultimate intent is to be found in the threefold description with which he concludes. First, quite in keeping with Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:20, he first describes the unrepentant pagan world as worshiping demons. In so doing John is thus reflecting a view that can be found earlier in the Septuagint of Psalm 96:5 (LXX 95:5), where the translator turned the Hebrew “all the gods of the nations are idols” into “all the gods of the nations are demons.” This translation is an acknowledgement that the false gods did indeed have power, but it is demonic/satanic power, not that of the living God. Then, in keeping with the entire biblical tradition, their objects of worship are further described with scathing satire; what they worship are idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. With this echo of Deuteronomy 4:28¹⁸ John pretty well sums it up from his Jewish, and now Christian, perspective. The “gods” are created by human hands out of earthly materials, and as such they are not living beings, but mere idols, characterized by their inability to do what even mere human beings can do: “see … hear … walk,” thus giving the briefest kind of expression to the traditional Jewish loathing of idolatry.

But that is not all. What the Israelite prophets came to recognize clearly is that people become like the “gods” they worship, a perspective that is especially carried on by Paul and John in the New Testament. Thus those who are being warned by the six preceding plagues continue in their pagan ways, here summarized by three of the Ten Commandments (their murders, … their sexual immorality or their thefts), and including their magic arts, an allusion to witchcraft, which is also thoroughly denounced by the Prophets.¹⁹ Enamored by such evils, “the rest of the people who were not killed by these plagues … did not repent” of these kinds of evils, not to mention all other kinds of evils.

John’s concerns in this overall description of the coming plagues is both that the God of all grace still holds out an offer of mercy to the perpetrators—they are being given an opportunity to repent—but that finally divine justice will come in the form of judgment against all such forms of human injustice. At issue finally is that the Roman perpetrators (and their imitating minions) have taken on the character of the “gods” they worship; and so, as we will learn later, they will eventually get what they actually deserve.

What seems to emerge rather clearly in this narrative is that these plagues are not to be construed as part of God’s final judgment against human rebellion and sin. Rather they are to be understood as both judgment and warning to those who have been responsible for the present suffering of God’s people. The repeated use of “one-third” is an apocalyptic signal to remind John’s readers that this narrative is not to be construed as the final act. After all, despite the fact that some of God’s people are currently suffering at the hands of the Empire, the fifth angel’s plague of torture (9:1–11) is seen as bypassing them (implied in 9:4). The way toward understanding the place and purpose of these “trumpet woes” is to recognize their relationship to the plagues of Egypt. In the Exodus narrative Pharaoh was constantly being reminded of the greater greatness of Yahweh, while at the same time he was given plenty of opportunity to repent. So now, the “inhabitants of the earth,” those whose enmity against God had found expression in the slaying of the Lamb and now in the persecution of the Lamb’s followers, should have been able to see the righteous hand of God at work in the plagues and disasters that overtook them. But as John sees clearly, instead of repenting (= turning about to become God’s people), they rather harden their hearts and continue in both their idolatries and their sins against those who are being re-created back into the divine image. One should also note at the end that, even though the whole is shot through with eschatological motifs, this vision—in keeping with those that have preceded—seems intended to be far more theological than chronological or eschatological in purpose. Here John is establishing God’s own divine sovereignty over all the events that transpire on earth.

And finally, before one moves on to the two interlude visions that come next, one should note the absence here of any mention of the eagle from 8:13. In the preceding 9:12, John deliberately tells his readers that “the first woe is past; two other woes are yet to come.” What is to be noticed here is that he does not repeat this motif at the end of the current vision; rather he waits until 11:14 to mention this feature, which can only be deliberate on his part. Whatever else, John is telling his readers to keep the present six trumpets together with the following two interlude visions. They thus correspond to each other in some way, so that this sixth woe is not over until the twofold interlude (10:1–11 and 11:1–13) itself is over.

INTERLUDE 1: THE ANGEL AND THE LITTLE SCROLL (10:1–11)

¹Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven. He was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs were like fiery pillars. ²He was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, ³and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. ⁴And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven say, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.”

⁵Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven. ⁶And he swore by him who lives for ever and ever, who created the heavens and all that is in them, the earth and all that is in it, and the sea and all that is in it, and said, “There will be no more delay! ⁷But in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.”

⁸Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more: “Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.”

⁹So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, “Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but ‘in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.’²⁰” ¹⁰I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. ¹¹Then I was told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings.”

Turning from the dreadful plagues that are a foretaste of the wrath of God that is to come, the reader is now faced with one of the more complex moments in John’s narrative. The key to its structure lies with the preceding set of seven, the opening of the seven seals in 6:1—8:5, to which this passage functions as the first interlude. The key to understanding would seem to lie at two points. First, John’s own role in the vision is considerable; in fact there is nothing else quite like it in the book. Second, the entire narrative revolves around John “eating” the “little scroll” that is introduced in verse 2 and is finally eaten in verses 9–11, all of which echoes a similar experience of the prophet Ezekiel (3:1–3). The passage is presented in three clear parts, in keeping with the paragraphing above: verses 1–4 introduce the vision by way of another major player in the drama, a “mighty angel” who stands with one foot on the land and the other on the sea and who is holding “a little scroll”; in verses 5–7 this same angel swears by the Living One, the eternal God, that time has run out; then in verses 8–11 John, in dramatic fashion, takes and eats the scroll and is given a second commission (for the first one see 1:19). Not surprisingly given the nature of its content, this passage also has a considerable influx of echoes of, and language borrowed directly from, the Old Testament prophetic tradition.

The introductory moment is full of drama, again highlighting its significance for the narrative. This is John’s way of telling his readers/ hearers to pause and take special note of what happens next. He does this in three ways: first, the “mighty angel” is described (vv. 1–2a); second, he is positioned with one foot on the sea and the other on the land (v. 2b); third, he shouts with a loud voice (v. 3a).

John begins with another mighty angel, an intentional echo of 5:2, wherein he introduced the first “mighty angel,” who was associated with the first scroll. But in contrast to the earlier vision, which took place in heaven where John himself had been transported, he is now back on earth; thus this angel is seen as coming down from heaven. This description seems to emphasize the divine nature of the angel’s mission, while at the same time he is positioned on earth for his first task, which follows in verses 2b–3. But before revealing what the angel does, John describes the angel himself, which description has been the cause of trouble for many interpreters, since what is said of the angel’s face and feet clearly pick up on what is said of Christ in 1:15 and 16. This connection with the vision in chapter 1 has caused some to argue that John intended his readers to see Christ himself in this imagery. But that is highly questionable, since it is hardly imaginable that John would have intended Christ in an identification that reads, “another mighty angel.” Rather, what John intends is most likely associative: that this angel who reflects some of Christ’s own glory has come with Christ’s authority.

Indeed, the rest of the description seems deliberately intended to emphasize the angel’s coming down from heaven with especially divine authority. First, he was robed in a cloud, perhaps an intentional echo of Exodus 13:21, where Yahweh went ahead of Israel “in a pillar of cloud to guide them.” Second, he appeared with a rainbow above his head, which possibly functions as something of a halo. Here John is picking up on his own imagery of the throne in 4:3. Third, his face was like the sun, which seems to be a clear recall of Christ’s own appearance in 1:16, and which has led to the mistaken view that the whole is thus a description of Christ. Rather as noted above, John’s intent seems to be associative in this case—the mighty angel sent from heaven has some of the characteristics of the One who sent him. And fourth, his legs were like fiery pillars, which echoes, although not precisely so, what is said of Christ in 1:15: “his feet [not legs] were like bronze glowing in a furnace.” It is both the clear echoes and the imprecisions between this description and that of Christ in chapter 1 that would seem to negate the identification of the present angel with the Son of God himself; at the same time the deliberate echoes themselves emphasize the divine authority of the angel, that he has been sent as Christ’s representative.

More significant for John than the description as such is what the angel was sent to do. In a somewhat chiastic fashion John introduces a little scroll, which lay open in the angel’s hand. This scroll will remain on hold in the narrative until verses 8 and following, where John himself is commanded to eat the scroll. Moreover, when John does return to the scroll, he repeats that it “lies open in the hand of the angel,” thus emphasizing that its contents were eventually to be made known. But before returning to the scroll itself, John further elaborates on the role of the angel who is holding it (vv. 2b–7).

First up, John narrates that the mighty angel planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. Since this phenomenon is repeated (otherwise quite unnecessarily so) two more times (in vv. 5 and 8, in both cases where the scene shifts to the next episode), one must assume that such repetition indicates a measure of significance. Most likely it anticipates the visions of the two beasts in 13:1 and 11, where one comes up out of the sea and the other comes out of the earth. This seems to be made certain by the sworn oath in the present vision (v. 6), where the emphasis lies on God as the creator (and thus ruler) of both the land and the sea. Despite the ravages of the two beasts, therefore, this angel by way of anticipation reminds the reader that both land and sea belong to God, not to the Empire.

That this is John’s intent seems verified by the further elaboration of the scene in verse 3, where the angel gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. Here John is deliberately using language from both Hosea and Amos, where Yahweh himself “roars like a lion” (Hos 11:10; cf. Amos 1:2; 3:8; Jer 25:30). Now it is the angel who has “come down from heaven” whose “shout” sounds “like the roar of a lion,” which in turn caused the voices of the seven thunders to speak. These personified “thunders,” even though they are introduced with the definite article, are otherwise unknown in all of Jewish or Christian apocalyptic literature; and further speculation is of very little value.²¹ What John seems to be doing is deliberately building up the drama of the scene for the sake of his readers. In any case the present scene is not the main event itself; it is merely setting up what follows. This is finally made clear in verse 4, which concludes the opening paragraph with a command to John himself, who was about to write … when the seven thunders spoke, but who was commanded instead by a voice from heaven to seal up what the seven thunders have said²² and do not write it down. Nonetheless, despite this very clear command to John, many later interpreters have not been satisfied with silence and have thus disobeyed the “voice from heaven” by speculating about what “the seven thunders … said.” Such attempts in fact play havoc with the biblical text itself, since the intent here is mystery and awe, not information.

That the little scroll functions as drama only, and its content is thus irrelevant to the present scene, becomes clear in the succeeding paragraph (vv. 5–7), where John, by way of description alone, intensifies the drama. He begins by picking up the description of the angel from verse 1, namely, the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land. But now by the angel’s raising his right hand to heaven, the traditional hand for taking an oath, he swore on the authority of the eternal God that “there will be no more delay!” The awesome nature of the oath is emphasized by John’s elaboration of the God in whose name the angel has sworn. The emphasis lies simultaneously on the fact that this is the eternal God (him who lives for ever and ever) and that this God alone is Creator of everything else that exists in the universe, as that is known by the first-century reader. Thus with a clear echo of Exodus 20:11,²³ the angel swears by the Living God, the one who created the heavens and all that is in them, the earth and all that is in it, and the sea and all that is in it.

The point of all this, intentionally linked to the little scroll, is what the angel swears at the end of our verse 6: There will be no more delay!²⁴ However, this is then qualified by a temporal referent: in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet. In itself this referent does not suggest that it will be soon, although it is very likely that John expected this moment to be in his near future. Indeed, John keeps the ambiguity alive by speaking of this eschatological event in terms of the mystery of God that will be accomplished before the final moment occurs. The final clause is also full of ambiguity for the later reader. Does just as he announced to his servants the prophets refer to the prophets of Israel, whose oracles are written for posterity in the Old Testament? Or, more likely it would seem, is this an application of an Old Testament prophetic announcement²⁵ to some Christian prophets of his own day, of whom he is one himself, as the final sentence in the present passage (v. 11) affirms? In any case, John stands in the long line of those who understood the prophets to be those to whom God has spoken so that in turn they speak in God’s behalf.

All of this together makes it clear that this is not a signal that the End is immediate. Rather, it is a signal that “the mystery of God is to be accomplished” before that final moment happens; but in the meantime there must be further prophetic activity. Although one cannot be certain here, the “mystery of God” most likely points directly to the climax in 11:15–18, where God’s purposes with creation in general and humanity in particular are brought to completion with the sounding of the seventh trumpet. So why, one might rightly ask, include here still one more anticipatory moment in what itself is only an interlude vision? The most likely answer is precisely because it does occur in the interlude, where John pauses to remind his readers that their own ordeal is not in fact nearly over. John himself has much more prophesying to do, and the church has much more witnessing to do, which is precisely how this middle paragraph leads the reader into the main point of the whole scene—verses 8–11.

John begins the main point of the vision by picking up the unidentified voice that I had heard from heaven mentioned in verse 4, which here spoke to me once more. This whole episode is a direct echo of Ezekiel 2:8—3:3, with distinct overtones from Jeremiah 15:16–17 (LXX). Ezekiel had also been commanded to eat an opened scroll, which he does, and even though it was full of woe and lament, it “tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth” (3:3). Furthermore, when Jeremiah ate the words that came from Yahweh, they filled him with “indignation,”²⁶ a word that is echoed here by John in verse 9 (“sour”). Most of the rest of this paragraph is filled with the drama (not unlike Ezekiel) of the interplay between the angel, the voice from heaven, and John. Thus the voice told him to go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land, a command that serves as an inclusio with verse 2 (“a little scroll that lay open in his hand”). The rest of the paragraph simply spells out John’s obedience and reaction to this command.

First, and in keeping with John’s repetitive narrative style, John went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. The angel in turn said to John, now in the language of Ezekiel, Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but ‘in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.’ Then in verse 10, John narrates his obedience to this command: I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. And²⁷ it happened just as he had been promised: It tasted sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour.

This in turn leads to the crucial interpretive matter in the conclusion, then I was told, where the NIV has turned John’s plural (“and they say to me”) into a “divine passive.” Most likely this is a plural of divine action, where the Godhead is understood to be speaking to John (although this would not have been his own language). With a verb that implies this burden has now been laid on him (literally, “it is necessary for you”), John is told, You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings. This is the third such list in the book²⁸; the unique feature of this one is the substitution of “kingdoms” for “tribes,” which occurs in all the other lists except the one in 17:15, where “multitudes” is substituted for “tribes.” The substitution in this case can only be intentional. John is being told that he must prophesy to those who are, and will become, part of the people of God; but he is also to prophesy against “kings,” which is what chapters 12 and 13 are basically all about. This is almost certainly the interpretive key to the “sweet” and “bitter” in the preceding sentence. What John must prophesy, beginning in our chapter 12, will on the one hand be “sweet as honey,” because it is God’s word; on the other hand, it will “turn [his] stomach sour” because the same word will call for suffering on the part of some people (believers) and judgment on others (the Empire). But before that, and in keeping with the preceding interlude visions in chapter 7, John presents a second interlude vision, in which in this case he plays a merely cameo role at the beginning.

INTERLUDE 2: THE TEMPLE AND THE TWO WITNESSES (11:1–14)

¹I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, with its worshipers. ²But exclude the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months. ³And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” ⁴They are “the two olive trees” and the two lampstands, and “they stand before the Lord of the earth.”^{29 5}If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes out of their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die. ⁶They have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying; and they have power to turn the water into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want.

⁷Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and will overpower and kill them. ⁸Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified. ⁹For three and a half days many from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. ¹⁰The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.

¹¹But after the three and a half days the breath³⁰ of the life of God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. ¹²Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on.

¹³At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.

¹⁴The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.

As with the preceding interlude vision, this is another especially complex passage. The reason for this is that John offers just enough interpretive moments to give one a fair degree of certainty about some matters—especially his overall concern. But these rather clear instances are encased in symbolic moments that also create some interpretive dissonance; at least they seem to do so if one follows what might appear to be their most natural interpretation. In terms of content, the passage appears to come in two parts (vv. 1–2 and 3–14).³¹ But the relationship between the parts is not immediately clear, although the reader has some hope by looking carefully at the Old Testament passages being echoed. In any case, here is a clear instance where the reader must learn to think in terms of theology, not of time. It was noted earlier that the present two interludes (10:1–10 and this one) are to be understood as in direct response to 9:20–21, and thus John and the church are being commissioned to do what divine judgment as such could not do—prophesy, and thus bear witness to the risen Jesus.

It was noted above (ch. 10) that in a passage unique to the Revelation, John himself is depicted as a prophet. By stepping into the role of Ezekiel, he is being called upon to prophesy again (in this book, obviously) both to the people and to “kings,” speaking words of exhortation and hope to the people of God, and judgment against those who oppose them. This is what is played out in this second part of the present interlude. In verses 1–2 John is still playing a role in the narrative, but in this case it turns out to be a cameo role, although not an insignificant one. Thus John was given a reed like a measuring rod, where in light of what follows, the Greek word translated “like”³² probably here means something approximating “to serve as.”

With his being given the reed-like measuring rod, John is commanded³³ to go and measure at least two (probably three) things: the temple of God and the altar, and (literally) “those who worship in it,” where “it” most certainly refers to the temple.³⁴ At the same time he is ordered to exclude the outer court … because it has been given to the Gentiles, who in turn will trample on the holy city for 42 months. The content of this command is a clear echo of Ezekiel 40–42, where the measuring itself points to the greatness and grandeur of the final, eschatological temple of God, which will replace the one destroyed by Babylon. Very likely John had the larger context of Ezekiel in view as well.

For Ezekiel the destruction of Solomon’s temple was necessary because it had been desecrated by God’s own people. This comes out most clearly in Ezekiel 8:5–18, where the idolatry of the temple courts is described, followed in turn (ch. 9) by the execution of the idolators and (in ch. 10) the glory departing from the temple. At the end of things, after Israel is “resurrected” by the Spirit (ch. 37), Ezekiel is given a picture of a great eschatological temple (chs. 40–43). John is now drawing from that vision, while at the same time looking forward to its final fulfillment (21:15–27), where the New Jerusalem exists without a temple. Thus, since “measuring” is not known elsewhere as a symbol for “sealing,” in this present imagery John is to call attention to the people of God as God’s own eschatological dwelling place, and he is to do so by measuring the temple. In real life the outer court was called “the court of the Gentiles,” thus in this measuring John is told to exclude that court. Most likely “the Gentiles” in this case refers to the Roman Empire, which will play havoc with God’s people, but only for a limited time, and which in any case is being excluded altogether from the Divine Presence.

Of greater difficulty for the contemporary reader is how the next two items, the altar and the worshipers, fit into the overall scene. At issue are two matters: first is the location of the altar, which belongs to the inner court of the temple; second is whether the measuring of the altar is a positive or negative symbol. That in turns leads to whether the “worshipers” are genuine believers or are syncretists of the kind who were to be cast out in Ezekiel’s vision. What might be significant is that verse 1 has no less than five verbal echoes to the Septuagint of Ezekiel 8:16, where the syncretists are doomed to be banished forever. But since nothing that follows in the present vision gives the reader any certain clues, the interpretation of this part of the imagery should probably remain on hold.

Most likely, we are to understand all of verse 1 as presenting a positive image, which is then given its counterpart in verse 2, where what eventually came to be known as “the court of the Gentiles” has now “been given to the Gentiles” (= the Roman Empire), who in turn “will trample on the holy city for 42 months.”³⁵ If so, then one should not think of verses 1–2 as a separate vision of some kind, but rather as an introduction to the whole of the present vision. Using imagery from Ezekiel’s measuring of the eschatological temple, John is now positing the church as God’s temple, in this case pointing also to the church’s eschatological grandeur. But then, turning to the outer court, which is not a part of God’s eschatological temple, he sees it as trampled by the Gentiles (= Romans) for a limited time of great woe. If so, then with a rapid flow of images, where one image merges easily into the next, God’s newly constituted people are now “the holy city,” which as throughout the Old Testament is an interchangeable synecdoche for the temple. If this is in fact what John is here picturing, then God’s newly formed people are going to be trampled on by the Roman Empire for “42 months,” which becomes 1,260 days in the next sentence, and turns into “time, time, and half a time” in 12:14. Nonetheless, even though there will be much pain and sorrow, the time of the Gentiles is to be understood as limited in scope.

Thus, picking up language about the “seventieth week” in Daniel 9:25–27, John is asserting that the time of the Gentiles, the time of the “two witnesses,” and the time of the “dragon” all coincide. In apocalyptic literature such imagery refers to a time of national distress, which pointed originally (in Daniel) to the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. John seems now to be using it to point to the limited time of suffering on the part of God’s people at the hands of the Roman Empire, which precedes the coming of the final glorious kingdom of God.

From the measuring of the temple and its being trampled by the Gentiles, John moves on in verse 3 to introduce his readers/hearers to the two witnesses, whom the speaker (almost certainly Christ) now will appoint. Thus they are designated my “two witnesses,” who are equipped to prophesy during the whole “42 months” that the outer court is given over to the Gentiles. On the premise consistently pursued in this commentary, that one begins interpretation with what seems certain, we must assume that the two witnesses represent Christian believers in some way. This is made clear in verse 8, where John says “their Lord” had been “crucified,” language that distinguishes Christian believers from all other people on the earth. This is further confirmed by the fact that they both “witness” and “prophesy,” which are the very activities of John himself; furthermore, “witness” in the Revelation refers specifically to someone’s bearing witness to Jesus, sometimes through death itself.

John’s initial description of them, they are the two olive trees, is drawn directly from Zechariah 4:3, where the prophet saw two olive trees on either side of a seven-lamp menorah. Zechariah’s prophecy was intended to encourage Zerubabbel (the king) and Joshua (the priest) to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem by the help of the Spirit. In John’s vision the “two witnesses” next assume the role of the two lampstands, who are further described in the language of Zechariah 4:14: they stand before the Lord of the earth. Most likely the “two witnesses” serve as imagery for the people of God worldwide, who in 5:9–10 have been purchased by the Lamb to become a kingship and priests for God and who are destined “to reign on the earth.” Now clothed in sackcloth (v. 3), the “two witnesses” must prophesy by bearing witness to the Lamb, their Lord who had been crucified in the same “city” where they now bear witness. And John now plays the role of Zechariah, who is here encouraging “the two olive trees” (his contemporary church) to carry on their task in the midst of present, increasing difficulties.

The next part of the vision offers a twofold affirmation of their witness. First (v. 5), John assures his contemporary church of God’s sovereign protection over them if anyone tries to harm them as they bear witness to Christ. Picking up the imagery of the apocalyptic horses from 9:17, John now pictures God’s people themselves as having fire that comes out of their mouths and devours their enemies. It is doubtful whether John here actually intended something like “tit for tat”; rather this is most likely intentionally strong imagery³⁶ to indicate that during the time of their witness God will protect them so that they may fulfill the divine will. Then in his typically repetitive style, John adds, This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die.

This affirmation of divine protection for the two witnesses is followed by a description of the effectiveness of their witness (v. 6). They come in the power of Elijah and Moses, so that what God intends by their witness will be accomplished. Thus, as with the prophet Elijah,³⁷ they have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying. John’s primary intent with these words is not to suggest that his contemporary church will perform these kinds of miracles—although that would not be excluded—but that God would oversee their time of “prophesying” in Christ’s name with divine protection. Similarly, as with Moses in Egypt, they have power to turn the water into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want. These twin clauses point to a period of time when the church’s witness would be basically unhindered, and would continue to be accompanied by mighty signs and wonders. John’s intent at this point is thus to encourage his contemporary church to continue to bear witness to Christ in an increasingly hostile environment.

Nonetheless, the time of evangelism and encouragement would be limited, thus John foresees a time when they will have finished their testimony; and with that he looks forward to a more gruesome future for the people of God. He begins by picking up imagery from the final description of the fifth trumpet (9:11, “the angel of the Abyss” called “Apollyon”/“Destroyer”), now noted as the beast that comes up from the Abyss. Then with a direct echo of Daniel 7:21, he announces that the beast at that time will attack them, and will overpower them and kill them.³⁸ This is further use of Holy War imagery, which will be picked up in detail in chapters 12–13. As before in this book, one must read not with time itself as a major concern, but Christian theology. Thus what is being pictured is not about when—the concern of far too many later believers—but of what it is that awaits John’s first readers. This is yet another of the prophetic moments in which John is anticipating the holocaust that awaits those who bear witness (= “give testimony”) to the crucified, now risen Christ.

The image of “the beast” in this case first of all echoes this familiar theme from Daniel 7, where the final beast that “came up out of the sea” is pictured as “devouring his victims” and “trampling under foot whatever was left” (v. 19), who then in verse 21 is seen as “waging war against the saints.” But at the end (v. 27) the “sovereignty, power and greatness of the kingdoms … will be handed over to the saints of the Most High.” At the same time John is here anticipating the elaboration of this moment, which will be the major content of chapter 13. At this point in the narrative John pictures their martyrdoms in terms of their bodies lying in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt. Thus, with imagery that he can get away with, since John can be sure that the Roman Empire will know nothing of the biblical narrative, he likens Rome to both Sodom, the city of unparalleled vice in the Abraham narrative of Genesis 18–19, and Egypt, the ultimate biblical expression of enmity against God’s people and of pagan degradation. At the same time he is most likely following the precedent of Isaiah, who speaks of the unfaithful leaders of Israel as “you rulers of Sodom” (1:10). It is also highly likely that John is here reflecting back on the Neronic persecutions, where scores of believers lost their lives—in the “public square,” as it were—as they were covered with tarred animal skins and set aflame to serve as light for Nero’s infamous garden parties.

However, the second way of identifying “the great city” creates a moment of dissonance for many readers, since John speaks of Rome as the city where also their Lord was crucified. This phrase, together with the imagery of the temple in verses 1 and 2, has caused some interpreters, understandably so, to see the referent as Jerusalem. But everything else in the narrative indicates that “the great city” is Rome itself. Indeed, John’s own readers would be quick to see this as a referent to Rome, since crucifixion (mentioned here alone in this book) was a singularly Roman form of execution. The fact that “the great city” is now likened to Sodom, the mother of all sexual perversity, and Egypt, the oppressors of God’s people, taken with the rest of the imagery in the book, seems to be conclusive that this imagery points to Rome. And it is imagery John can get away with, since the “inhabitants of the earth” referred to in verse 10, who consider Rome to be the center of their universe, will scarcely recognize the biblical referents.

The ultimate indignity that the Empire will impose on God’s people, here imaged in the figures of Moses and Elijah, besides letting “their bodies … lie in the public square of the great city,” is to refuse them burial … for three and a half days.³⁹ This disparagement is related to the arrogance of the Empire, whose action is described in terms of many from every people, tribe, language, and nation⁴⁰ … gazing on their bodies. The (demonic) celebratory nature of their action is then further elaborated in terms of the inhabitants of the earth … gloating over them and … celebrating their demise by sending each other gifts. At the end, in another truly prophetic stroke, John concludes by offering the reason for this outrage: because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth. In this moment of prophetic outburst John attributes the coming martyrdoms of God’s people to be the result of their proclamation of Christ—crucified by the Romans themselves, but now alive in his people and calling for repentance. What makes all of this such a genuinely prophetic moment is that up to this point there has (apparently) been only one martyrdom (Antipas of Pergamum; see 2:13). As noted above (p. xv–xvi), John, himself in exile on Patmos, sees that martyrdom as the harbinger of the deluge of suffering that is about to happen to followers of the crucified but risen Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. The irony lies with the nature of their “torment”—believers at their Eucharist (= “thanksgiving”) regularly celebrate the death and resurrection of the One whom the Romans had tried to be done with by way of crucifixion.

What follows immediately is a scene that works perfectly well in apocalyptic narrative, but would work less so as a form of direct prose. It functions here as the sure clue to the truly prophetic nature of this whole scene, which anticipates the concluding elaboration in chapters 21–22, where the assumed resurrection of believers is given its narratival moment. Thus John begins by picking up the temporal referent of three and a half days. After these days, John goes on, the breath of the life of God entered them, language that is taken directly from Ezekiel 37:5–6 and 14, which in turn already echoes Genesis 2:7. At the same time, with this language the difficulty with translation also becomes pronounced. The word for “breath” in Greek is pneuma, which is also the word for “spirit”; thus John is making a deliberate wordplay on the double reality that life is in the breath, while at the same time he surely intends that real life for the believer lies with the indwelling Spirit of God. After all, the imagery in Ezekiel, taken over by John, has to do with the eschatological renewal of the people of God by the Spirit, which the early church found fulfilled in their own coming to life through the experience of the Spirit. Thus, with these words John is offering pregnant imagery both for the resurrection of believers who have died and for the fact that the life of the believer is wholly dependent on the indwelling Holy Spirit.

But the imagery does not stop there. When the breath/Spirit of God “entered them,” John relates, they stood on their feet, with the result that terror struck those who saw them, referring especially to those responsible for the death of the two witnesses. As well it might, since many of “those who saw them” were responsible for the martyrdoms in the first place. Most likely this combination of their own “standing” and “terror striking” those responsible for their maryrdoms is John’s way of saying that martyrdom does not stamp out true believers. That is, John is not here picturing many temporal resurrections of believers who are martyred, but rather is saying in effect that they are God’s people, and the elimination of some does not bring their witness to an end. To the contrary, thousands and thousands more will follow in the train of the martyrs.

The end result of their “resurrection” is divine vindication. Thus, besides the “terror [that] struck those who saw” the ones whom God has revived, the revived themselves then … heard another loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And with that they went up to heaven in a cloud,⁴¹ while their enemies looked on. At this point one must allow the apocalyptist the kind of necessary leeway both to get his point across and to do so with pictures, since with these final clauses several separate eschatological realities merge into a single picture. What seems to be at issue for John is the divine vindication of the Christian martyrs. Thus brought together in two brief sentences is the threefold reality of Christian martyrdom, the eschatological vindication of the martyrs, and fear on the part of their Roman executioners. That some of this does not match neatly with other New Testament expressions of these realities that come in straight prose should not be a problem for the reader. This is apocalyptic eschatology, after all, which is intended, by way of vivid pictures, to stress the realities as such, not to offer a literal timeline of events. Unfortunately, much of the ability to imagine on the part of contemporary readers has been lost as the direct result of so much such imagery being offered on the silver screen and the television set. But these words were written to people without our visual media available to them, so the imagination of John’s contemporary reader is left to thrive on its own through the pictures afforded by the words themselves.

That verbal imagery addressed to the reader’s imagination is John’s intent seems to be made certain by his conclusion to the present scene, which takes the form of divine judgment on those responsible for the slaughter of believers. As with all that has preceded it in the vision, this word of judgment (in our v. 13) is not here a word about the final judgment itself; rather it speaks of the temporal judgment meted out within history on those in the Empire responsible for the holocaust. First, at that very hour [meaning at the time of God’s judgment] there was a severe earthquake, whose result was that a tenth of the city [Rome] collapsed. Thus whatever was intended ultimately by the imagery of “a tenth of the city,” minimally it points to a temporal, not eternal judgment. Second, seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake. Again, this language carries symbolic significance, pointing both to the immensity (“seven thousand”) and to the divine nature (the passive “were killed”) of the judgment. Understandably, and a phenomenon repeated more than once in human history, the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven (cf. Jonah 1:16). What John does not intend by these words is that the “survivors” became converts; rather, in giving “glory to the God of heaven” they are acknowledging God’s divine majesty and power; but that falls several leagues short of offering themselves to the living—and only—God as obedient servants.

With that acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty, John’s present purposes have been served, so he concludes by noting (v. 14) that the second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon. At the same time, however, he leaves the later reader guessing, since there is no mention of a “third woe” as such in the narrative that follows. In any case, by indicating that “the second woe has passed” and that a “third” is coming soon, John indicates at the conclusion of the first two woes that they have to do with temporal judgments (that is, judgments within the framework of continuing history) rather than with the final judgments meted out on all at the end of the age. Thus, whatever else, the first two woes are seen to lie within the time frame of the historical church.

THE SEVENTH TRUMPET: CONCLUSION TO THE INTRODUCTORY VISIONS (11:15–19)

¹⁵The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,

and he will reign for ever and ever.”

¹⁶And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on the thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, ¹⁷saying:

 “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,

   the one who is and who was

  because you have taken your great power

   and have begun to reign.

¹⁸The nations were angry,

   and your wrath has come.

The time has come for judging the dead,

  and for rewarding your servants the prophets

 and your people who revere your name,

  both great and small—

  and for destroying those who destroy the earth.

¹⁹Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm.

With the “passing” of the second woe (v. 14), and picking up where the present narrative left off (9:21), John reports that the seventh angel now blows his trumpet. Very much in keeping with the first interlude (7:9–17), the reader is returned to heaven to see what has been happening there during this time, since the view from above ultimately determines everything. The narrative is in three parts: in verse 15 John gives the introductory scene, the sounding of the seventh trumpet; verses 16–18 then present the response of “the twenty-four elders” (the people of God from both covenants in heaven); verse 19, however, reminds the reader that this is not a vision of the end itself. Rather, two things are seen in heaven: God’s temple with the ark of the covenant; and another theophany, grander than those that have preceded, which in this case includes yet another earthquake. Thus the present paragraph seems to serve a double purpose: to conclude the narrative to this point, and to prepare the reader for the more blow-by-blow account of what believers may expect before the End itself, which has only been anticipated thus far, but which will be elaborated in greater detail in the coming chapters. It is of further interest to note that in a book that tends to be christocentric, this preliminary view of the End is thoroughly theocentric.

Thus John begins with the seventh angel sounding his trumpet, which was accompanied by loud voices in heaven. The trumpet thereby signals “the beginning of the End,” as it were, while the anticipated End itself is announced by the “loud voices in heaven,” who in effect declare the “already but not yet” dimension of the kingdom of God. On the one hand, the voices said: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and his Messiah,” an announcement that for several reasons is full of puzzles for the careful reader. By all the rules of grammar, the past tense of the verb (“has become”) implies that with this announcement there is something that has now already taken place. Moreover, the “kingdom” announced here is that of “our Lord and his Messiah,” which is the only certain passage in the New Testament where the word kyrios is used of God the Father rather than of Christ. At the same time, even though there is some slight ambiguity in the passage, this present moment seems to be a declaration from heaven itself that the Messiah’s rule, a “kingdom” where he will reign for ever and ever,⁴² is now in effect.⁴³ But that said, the rest of the passage is thoroughly theocentric, as the focus turns once more from the Son to the Father.

Thus following the acclamation of the “loud voices in heaven,” which point to Christ as King, everything from this point on focuses singularly on God the Father. Thus the response of the twenty-four elders, who were seated on the thrones before God, points to a kind of consummation of things. From their seats “before God” they fell on their faces and worshiped God, which that takes the form of thanks-giving (v. 17a), now echoing language from the introduction of God in the narrative in 1:8, and that afforded God in the heavenly scene in 4:8. Thus the worship of “the twenty-four elders” (those who represent the people of God from both covenants) begins, We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the one who is and who was. This is followed immediately by the cause of the thanksgiving: because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. In some ways this a most unusual thing to say of the God who never ceases to rule the universe that God has created. But the emphasis here is eschatological, referring the End when God once more brings all things visibly under his “great power.”

But the rest of the thanksgiving of the twenty-four elders carries some surprises, since it picks up on the dual nature of God’s eschatological judgment of all peoples, and takes the form of a kind of A–B–A arrangement. It begins with God’s judgment of the wicked: The nations were angry,⁴⁴ and your wrath has come. In John’s Greek this is a deliberately two-sided moment, in which the biblical distinctions between “anger” and “wrath” are maintained. “Anger” is what reflects the character and activity of those who oppose God; “wrath” is the divine response to such anger that takes the form of final judgment. Thus the time has come for judging the dead; but in keeping with the Apocalypse throughout, the first to receive “judgment” are God’s own people, who then take two forms. First, God’s judgment will include rewarding your servants the prophets. This would seem to be a subtle hint to the reader as to John’s own place in the divine scheme of things. But his greater concern at this point in the narrative is in God’s “rewarding” your people who revere your name. This is an especially biblical way of referring to those who are faithful to Yahweh and to Christ. Then, to make sure that every reader/hearer in the seven churches is included, he adds both great and small, echoing Psalm 115:13 in reverse, which seems especially fitting in a context where the “small”—the faithful who are not conspicuous or in places of leadership—are an equal concern for John along with God’s “servants the prophets.”

But since this thanksgiving on the part of the twenty-four elders is equally about God’s judgment on the wicked, the Roman Empire and its minions who are faithful to it in its idolatry and persecution of God’s people, John concludes with the especially powerful language, and for destroying those who destroy the earth. While this is an understandable way of putting it, John is not here referring to “earth keeping” as such, but to the larger understanding of the reason God placed humankind on this planet: to both “fill [KJV “replenish”] the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). From the biblical perspective the earth does not exist either for its own sake or for God’s own sake, but as the “temple” in which people are to live under God’s sovereign rule and grace.

Finally, in response to the way those whom God has created have treated his creation, especially since they themselves have been created in the diving image, the heavenly counterpart of God’s temple, the earth itself, responds accordingly. Thus, God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant,⁴⁵ which seems to be John’s way here, as elsewhere, of tying the two covenants together. The surprising element here is the imagery “God’s temple in heaven was opened.” “What temple?” one wants to ask; but then it must be remembered that this is imagery, after all, not photography; and the temple is always for the believing Jew the place of the Divine Presence, thus such language is altogether appropriate in an apocalyptic description of heaven. That this is imagery, pure and simple, is made certain by one of the concluding words in the entire narrative: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (21:22).

Finally, and typical of such theophanies both in this book and elsewhere where, God is not/cannot be described; the Divine Presence is indicated by what later peoples came to refer to as “acts of God.” And as before in this narrative, the response to the opening of the “temple in heaven” was both in heaven and on earth. From heaven there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder. Anyone who has experienced this kind of storm in mid-America will recognize how well this describes what happens in a thunderstorm; one first sees the “lightning,” which is followed momentarily (depending on the distance) by “rumblings,” which then yield to loud claps of “thunder.” This is then followed by the only earthly phenomenon as such, an earthquake. For those who have lived through both of these phenomena, there is a moment of fright in both cases; and well there is for many who have been on the road during a severe hailstorm. In the present case these “acts of God” are narrated as a kind of divine response to the worship offered by the twenty-four elders, who have just announced that the anticipated time of God’s judgment has in fact come.

With these words, then, John brings the first half of his “revelation of Christ” (1:1) to its fitting conclusion. Even so, all that has preceded is merely preparatory, setting the stage and offering the reasons for both God’s judgment on the Empire and God’s salvation of his own people, which will be described in greater detail in the visions that follow.

1. John here seems to be echoing Ps 141:2, where the psalmist prays, “May my prayer be set before you like incense.” The term “God’s people” at this point is the NIV’s mediating compromise between the traditional rendering of this phrase as “the saints” and the more precise term “God’s holy ones,” both of which are terms loaded with linguistic baggage that imply a special group of believers among the much larger group as a whole. More technically the term suggests “those who have been set apart and sanctified” to serve God wholly, which is what all believers are intended to be and do. Thus John’s language here is intended not only to identify those who truly belong to God, but also to describe how they are to live—in loving obedience to their heavenly Father, whose likeness they are also to bear.

2. For the next mention of the altar, see on 9:13 below.

3. Although the eagle comes on the scene at the end of the fourth woe, its appearance is included in the present discussion because it appears both to conclude the set of 4 and to introduce the final set of 3.

4. This latter feature (“thrown into the sea”) is also a reflection of what happened to Vesuvius, since its lava flow went a considerable distance into the sea—even though the whole mountain was not destroyed, which apocalyptic license allows John to picture.

5. One might compare with this other such texts in the Jewish Apocrypha, including 4 Ezra 5:1–12; 6:21–24; 2 Bar. 27:1–10; A. Mos. 10:4–5. Cf. also Matt 24:29.

6. Unfortunately most American readers, for whom the eagle is a national emblem, miss the essentially pejorative nature of this picture. This is a symbol of death and doom, with a hungry scavenger flying overhead, not that of a majestic creature being used for divine purposes.

7. The NIV translators have at this point (correctly) used the English term that has been simply transliterated from the Greek abyssos, which occurs also in Luke 8:31 and Rev 20:1. Its meaning in Greek is “bottomless” or “very deep”; it was used by the LXX translators for the Hebrew thom, having to do with the primeval deep (cf. e.g., Gen 1:2; 7:11; Prov 8:28) and thus made its way into English as a borrowed word.

8. There has, in fact, been a considerable amount of speculation as to whether John also intended the star to represent something or someone. On the basis of 8:10, where “a star falling from heaven” is a malevolent figure, the present “star” is often thought to be Satan. But that seems to founder on the content of both v. 1 (why would Satan give himself the key to the Abyss?) and 20:1, where in typical fashion John seems to be picking up and elaborating on something mentioned earlier in a more elliptical fashion. Also, in the later passage the figure is specified as “an angel.”

9. Although the NIV, for the sake of the English reader, omits the repeated “the shaft of,” it has been restored here so that the reader of the commentary will catch a sense of the repetitive nature of John’s Greek.

10. Although there may be no intended correlation on John’s part, the LXX of Gen 19:28 uses similar language when describing the destruction of Sodom.

11. It is of some interest that here is a case where satanic means are used to mete out God’s judgment on Rome; but this is something that is probably due to the apocalyptic genre itself. Straight prose would very likely say this quite differently.

12. Cf. Job 3:21 LXX: “those who long for death that does not come.”

13. For Joel this serves as the first descriptor of a plague of locusts, which also (most likely) represents God’s judgment of Israel by means of a foreign army.

14. “Prior” in the sense that these judgments are expected within the framework of history, and are not to be confused with the final judgments in 19:11–21 and 20:7–15.

15. The textual tradition of the Revelation is fairly evenly divided as to whether or not the adjective “four” is original here. It is included in most English translations, omitted only in the REB, and put in brackets in the NAB. It was also omitted in the original NIV, but considered authentic by the revision committee.

16. “Horns” of the altar is a difficult concept for those in whose native language the word would most often conjure up images of the horns of a bull; but these “horns” are small pointed projections on each corner of a square altar, which itself stood about four feet high.

17. This language (“great river Euphrates”) is taken directly from Gen 15:18.

18. Referring to disobedient Israel’s being scattered among the nations, where “you will worship gods of wood and stone, made by human hands, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.”

19. See, e.g., Nah 3:4: “… the wanton lust of a prostitute, alluring, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations … by her witchcraft.”

20. Ezekiel 3:3.

21. The closest analogy to it is the personification of “thunder” in Ps 29:3–5, where “the God of glory thunders, … the voice of Yahweh is powerful; the voice of Yahweh is majestic.”

22. This appears to be an echo of Dan 8:26: “but seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.”

23. Which reads, “For in six days the LORD made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them.”

24. This is almost certainly the intent of John’s own idiom, which the KJV translators rendered more literally as “and time shall be no more,” an idiom that made its way into one of the eschatological gospel songs from my childhood: “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more” (“When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” James M. Black, 1893).

25. See esp. Amos 3:7: “Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.”

26. Greek ὅτι πικρίας ἐνεπλήσθην; John has πικρανεῖ σου τὴν κοιλίαν.

27. For reasons that are not altogether clear, the NIV translators made an adversative “but” out of what appears to be a simple narratival “and” (kai) at this point.

28. For more on these lists see p. 85 n. 24 regarding the first instance (5:9).

29. Zechariah 4:3, 11, 14.

30. Or Spirit (see Ezekiel 37:5, 14).

31. As to vv. 1–2 serving as a paragraph unto itself, this is in fact the paragraphing of the Nestle-Aland²⁷ Greek NT, which also has paragraphs beginning at vv. 7 and 11; the UBS edition, on the other hand, which has the identical Greek text, puts all of vv. 1–13 into a single paragraph, while making v. 14 a paragraph unto itself. This is simply a reminder that paragraphing is a more modern (very helpful) invention that didn’t occur at all in ancient Greek and Latin literature, which lacked spaces between words as well.

32. Greek homoios. On the use of this word in the Revelation, see p. 16 n. 14 on 1:13.

33. At this point John’s Greek breaks down a bit, reading (literally), “And there was given to me a reed like a measuring rod, saying, ‘Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship in it; and the courtyard [= outer court] disregard [lit. “cast on the outside”] and do not measure it.’” A large number of MSS overcame the difficulty by adding a subject after “measuring rod,” thus “and the angel that stood there was saying,” which is very likely the intent of John’s very clipped Greek.

34. It should be noted that this passage, along with the imagery in 17:9–11, has served as the primary evidence for a pre-70 CE date for this book, since some argue that the passage implies the temple in Jerusalem was still standing. But that is probably to take too literally an apocalyptic passage that is serving a quite different purpose. After all, John has placed himself in exile on Patmos (1:9), which is one of the few instances where nothing apocalyptic or figurative is intended. Thus when he “was given a reed like a measuring rod” and told to “go and measure the temple of God,” this can only be the imagery of apocalyptic, not something to be envisioned as literal.

35. Cf. Isa 63:18: “For a little while your people possessed your holy place, but now our enemies have trampled down your sanctuary.”

36. With an echo of Jer 5:14: “I will make my words in your mouth a fire and these people the wood it consumes.”

37. For this imagery see the narrative that begins in 1 Kgs 17:1.

38. The Daniel passage reads (in a literal rendering of the LXX), “And I was watching that horn [the great one] engaging in battle with the holy ones [God’s people] and was defeating them.”

39. This is probably to be understood as a direct, and thus intentional, parody of the three and a half years (1,260 days) of their prophetic activity.

40. See n. 27 above.

41. Since one of these witnesses is Elijah, this appears also to be an echo of an OT narrative, this time from 2 Kgs 2:11.

42. Although this sentiment can be found throughout the OT, the present language is a close echo of the LXX of Ps 10:16.

43. This cannot be proven, of course, since the sentence is thoroughly ambiguous; and a strong case can be made for its referring to God the Father here, since the worship that follows is strictly theocentric. The view taken here is that vv. 16–18 offer response to God the Father in light of what is said here regarding Christ.

44. For this language see the LXX of Ps 2:1.

45. This, of course, reflects the OT reality, marked historically in 1 Kgs 8:6.

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