Revelation 8:13

13. Annunciation of the three woe trumpets The four creational are succeeded by the three spiritual trumpets.

An angel The reading now adopted by all scholars is an eagle. Alford rejects Ewald’s idea that the eagle is a bird of ill-omen, as also Hengstenberg’s idea that it is the contrast to the dove, (John 1:32;) and holds it to be “the symbol of judgment rushing to its prey, as in Deuteronomy 28:49; Hosea 8:1; Habakkuk 1:8. We see not why all these Scripture uses do not blend together to characterize the eagle as a symbol. He is here certainly a bird of evil omen, the reverse of the dove, and an announcer of judgment; yet all this does not impute to the present announcer an evil or demoniac character, for a good messenger, a prophet, may be the divine announcer of woe. Hence we venture to suggest that an eagle messenger is not here a strange thing, as the fourth living being (Revelation 4:7) was like a flying eagle, the very phrase here used; and as this living being represents not, like an angel, the celestial, but the earthly, so he announces that even the three spiritual trumpets are to bring woes to the inhabitants of the earth.

Midst of heaven A single Greek compound for which the English compound mid-heaven is an exact equivalent. To an English reader the natural idea suggested by the word would be mid-air, the space conceptually half way between sky and earth. But Wetstein shows by copious examples that it means in classic Greek the middle or highest point of the sun’s course in the sky, the zenith. But the same word in Revelation 19:17, clearly means the heavens where all the birds fly. The angel in that passage stands in the zenith, and the birds fly in the mid-air below. And in Revelation 14:6, it is the region where an angel flies so low as to be supposed to be heard from the earth. It is in these three places alone of the Greek Testament that the word occurs, and we hold it to be unquestionable that St. John uses it in a sense of his own, and not the classic, meaning the mid-space between earth and the apparent sky.

Inhabiters of the earth An adverse descriptive phrase. The earthy announcer utters a menace against earthy men. The woes are for the evil and profane, “who have not the seal of God,” Revelation 9:4. The third woe trumpet will be terrible to such, but ultimately glorious for the sealed. The three woes are, 1. The infernal locust demons of Revelation 9:1-11; Revelation 2:0. The war-horse demons of Revelation 9:12-21; Revelation , 3. The antichristic dragon of Revelation 12:1-12; entailing as consequences the war between Christ and antichrist, resulting in the eternal triumph of the former.