Revelation 9:1-11

The three Spiritual (or Woe) Trumpets, Revelation 9:1 - Revelation 22:6.

THE FIFTH ( first Woe) TRUMPET

Abysmal locust-demons emblems of infernal influences on earth, Revelation 9:1-11.

Rising from the curse-scarred surface of the earth into the sphere of spiritual woes, we now behold a vivid picture of diabolical influences issuing from hades, headed by Abaddon, and filling the moral atmosphere of our earth. They are presented as hellish locust swarms, in which the qualities of that insect being made the basis, all demoniac traits are added. This picture informed the early believers that the dominating influences of hell on earth were still to continue for awhile, even during the Messianic dispensation, making life a pessimism and death a desire to the profane world. These infernal locusts are an image of the infernal swarm of errors and vices issuing from hell and Satan, and filling men’s lives with misery.

Hengstenberg interprets the whole as a picture of human war, and justifies his interpretation by several Old Testament passages in which locusts are symbolical of armies, as Jeremiah 46:23; Jeremiah 51:27. Yet as these locusts come from the pit and are led by Apollyon, we may believe the image to be elevated from the idea of war between man and man to a moral war of the infernal upon the terrestrial. This is sustained by the prohibition to kill, Revelation 9:5, and the still stronger fact that death is sought in vain, Revelation 9:6.

It is a strange symbol of physical war which prohibits killing!