Revelation
Chapter 9
Overview
This chapter continues John’s vision of seven trumpet blasts, signals that terrible forces have been released. With the fifth and sixth blasts, creatures rise from the bottomless pit, and a vast cavalry sweeps into view. The imagery is deliberately strange: a nightmare made of insects, horses, smoke, fire, and human stubbornness. Yet the chaos has limits—its timing and reach are controlled. The chapter moves from prolonged torment to massive death, then pauses over a sobering puzzle: suffering can expose a person’s choices without necessarily changing them.
1The fifth angel blew his trumpet. I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth, and it was given the key to the shaft leading into the bottomless pit.
2The star opened the shaft of the bottomless pit. Smoke rose from it like the smoke from a huge furnace, and the sun and the air grew dark because of the smoke.
3Locusts came out of the smoke and spread over the earth. They were given power like the power of earthly scorpions.
4They were told not to harm the grass, any green plant, or any tree. They could harm only those people who did not have God’s identifying seal on their foreheads.
5The locusts were not allowed to kill those people, but they were allowed to torture them for five months. The pain they caused was like the pain of a scorpion sting.
6During those days, people will look for death but will not find it. They will long to die, but death will escape from them.
7The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were what looked like crowns of gold, and their faces were like human faces.
8Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth.
9They had armor on their chests like iron armor. The sound of their wings was like the thunder of many horse-drawn war chariots charging into battle.
10They had tails with stingers like scorpions’ tails. Their tails held the power to harm people for five months.
11They had a king ruling over them: the angel of the bottomless pit. His Hebrew name is Abaddon, and his Greek name is Apollyon—both names mean “Destroyer.”
12The first horror has passed. But look—two more horrors are still coming after it.
13The sixth angel blew his trumpet. I heard a single voice coming from the horns at the corners of the gold altar that stands before God.
14The voice said to the sixth angel, the one holding the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great Euphrates River.”
15The four angels were released. They had been kept ready for that exact hour, day, month, and year, so that they could kill one-third of humanity.
16The number of mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number.
17In my vision, the horses and their riders looked like this: the riders wore chest armor that was fiery red, dark blue, and sulfur yellow. The horses’ heads were like lions’ heads, and fire, smoke, and burning sulfur poured from their mouths.
18These three deadly forces—the fire, smoke, and burning sulfur pouring from the horses’ mouths—killed one-third of humanity.
19The horses’ power was in their mouths and in their tails. Their tails were like snakes with heads, and they used them to injure people.
20The rest of humanity—the people who were not killed by these disasters—still did not turn away from the things they had made. They did not stop worshiping demons and idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood—things that cannot see, hear, or walk.
21They did not turn away from their murders, their magic practices, their sexual immorality, or their thefts.