Revelation Chapter 9 Commentary

Remember the Beatles White Album?  Revolution number 9 was an amalgam of voices, sounds, and John Lennon’s attempts at trying to present an audio version of what a Revolution actually sounded like.  Charles Manson took the music and applied it to his interpretation of some of the Book of Revelation, including chapter 9 (after all, the use of 9 was repeated over and over again by the Beatles).  So, let’s read the content of Revelation 9 (without the input of Manson) and see if we can figure out what is being described:

Revelation 9:1 And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. 2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 3 And there came out of the smoke locusts (which, by the way, Manson believed was a way to describe the Beatles – Locusts, Beatles – get it?) upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. 4 And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. 5 And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. 6 And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. 7 And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. 8 And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. 9 And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.

10 And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months. 11 And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.  12 One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.  13 And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, 14 Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. 15 And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.  16 And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.  17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.  18 By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.  19 For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.  20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:  21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Let’s go back to the first three verses – I’m going to read them slowly for emphasis:

Revelation 9:1 And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. 2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 3 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

Okay, we are going to get into some really wild stuff at this point in Revelation.  Things I have certainly never considered when studying scripture, but it may go a long way to helping us understand what the heck is going on here.  And I am going to allow myself to teach some things along the way that may seem not so important but in the end I hope everything will prove itself necessary to our understanding of scripture.

Let me begin by talking about books or writings that are linked to the Old Testament but are not found in most of our translations here in America today.  We will categorize them as the Old Testament Apocrypha and the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha – they are not the same thing.   The contents of the OT Apocrypha is pretty much fixed. The Apocrypha is, by definition, those extra books beyond the canonical 39 which are accepted by all Jews (and Christians) as part of the Old Testament canon.  These extra books are found, for example, in Roman Catholic Bibles and include Judith, Tobit, 1 and 2 Maccabees,  the book of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Susannah and the additions to Daniel (called Bel and the Dragon).  The Ethiopian Coptic Church also includes 1 Enoch in its canon.

This little caveat is important to our discussion of Revelation 9:1-3 – because most list 1^st Enoch as a pseudepigraphal book and not an apocryphal one.  But the Coptic Christians differ with most and include it in their canon.

The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha is a loosely-defined set of Jewish writings from about 250 BC to about 150 AD.   These books are said to have been written by an important Old Testament character who in all probability was not the author. Therefore, they are considered fraudulent (or pseudo).  With this definition, 1 Enoch (and sometimes Baruch) are at times considered part of the “Pseudepigrapha.”  In these two books we see some overlapping between the OT Apocrypha and the OT Pseudepigrapha. 

There are a number of Pseudepigraphal books and they include, Odes of Solomon, 1, 2, 3, and 4th Esdras, Revelation of Moses, 2 and 3 Baruch, the Book of Adam, and frankly a whole bunch more.  Neither the OT Apocrypha nor the OT Pseudepigrapha is accepted as inspired scripture by the majority of Christian (or by many Jews for that matter) for a few reasons.   The primary reason is that the Jews themselves did not ever accept these as canonical and even if they did (for which we have no evidence) they certainly are not accepted today.    God gave to the Jewish scribes and teachers the job of collecting the list of inspired writings. We have to accept (by faith) that God had them pick properly which were conclusively inspired and which were not.   So there’s that.

Another reason these books might be viewed with some suspicion is in the content of the books themselves.   Read “Bel and the Dragon” or “3 Baruch,” (or even 1 Enoch) and it's pretty easy to see that they bear clear marks that these are not inspired.  And while the Book of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus contain wise sayings there are blatant false doctrines present as well.

A third reason these books are to be questioned is that, without exception, they were written hundreds of years after the Old Testament was complete.   In other words, we make the argument that God brought to an end prophetic utterance through the Jews from the time of Nehemiah or Malachi until the coming of the Messiah.  This is not a Christian view but the opinion of virtually all Jews and is the main reason they reject all of these apocryphal and pseudepigraphal books.

Another reason that these are rejected by virtually all concerned is that they were not even written in Hebrew in the first place, but in Aramaic (in some cases) or in Greek (in most cases).  This is not as strong a reason as the others but we can take it into account when judging these writings - at least it is one reason Jerome rejected these writings at the end of the 4th century AD.   Got all that?

Okay.  In our text of the first three verses of Revelation 9

Revelation 9:1 And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. 2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 3 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

We have a similar attestation in the Book of Enoch, which, again, is one of those books that hovers between the Apocryphal and the Pseudepigraphal, meaning the Coptics include it in their Bibles but most rest reject it as not even being Apocryphal.  This book attributes its existence to Enoch,  the great-grandfather of Noah (who was also the son of Jared) dating all the way back to Genesis 5:18.   Enoch is also one of the two people in the Bible taken up to heaven without dying (the other being Elijah), as the Bible says "And Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for God took him." (Genesis 5:24; see also Hebrews 11:5).  What is interesting is that Jude in the New Testament quotes from the Book of Enoch in verses 14-15, 

“Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: ‘See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.’” 

But this does not mean the Book of Enoch is inspired by God and should be in the Bible but it does cause us to wonder why the author of Jude would cite that Enoch himself said something in a book considered fraudulent?   Did the author of the book actually cite from things that Enoch of Old actually said amidst the fraud of the rest of the book? Perhaps.  Jude’s quote is not the only quote in the Bible from a non-biblical source.  For example, the Apostle Paul quotes Epimenides in Titus 1:12 but this does not mean we should give any additional authority to Epimenides’ writings!  In the end, because of the fact that Jude referred to Enoch, we might treat the Apocryphal writings as possessing some truths but not being entirely canonical.

In any case, 1 Enoch 10:4-7 reveals that the Abyss, like the fiery magma of the earth’s core, is located under the earth.  This idea is confirmed by Numbers 16:31, Ezekiel 26:20, Luke 16:23 and 2 Peter 2:4.  Here in Revelation 9:1-3 an angel opens the Abyss which releases smoke and fire. This smoke is so dark that according to v. 2 it darkens the sun and sky. We might suggest that this was describing  a volcanic eruption as they have the capacity to release so much smoke and ash into the air that they can shroud vast areas around the eruption in darkness so thick that it can blot out the sun sometimes hundreds of miles away.   This was the case with the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 which buried Pompeii in hot ash.  But in his historical account of A.D. 69, which was a most calamitous year before the rise of the Flavian Dynasty, Tacitus the Roman historian writes, 

“Whole towns were burnt down or buried throughout the richest part of the coast of Campania” [or the central, coastal part of Italy]  Could these towns in Campania have been burned down and buried from a volcanic eruption in explicit fulfillment of Revelation 9:1-3?

Even today, Campania is part of a known volcanic chain with three main centers of volcanic activity so it is not beyond reason that Tacitus was describing a volcano thus fulfilling the description here in Revelation 9:1-3  Regardless of whether or not a volcano actually erupted in A.D. 69, Revelation 9:1-3 is full of imagery that points to the release of the beast from the Abyss, or from the underworld of the dead.  

In Revelation 9:2-3 a locust army is released from the Abyss and in Revelation 9:11 the king of this army is identified as “the angel of the Abyss, whose name . . .  Apollyon.”  In Revelation 17:8 Apollyon is the beast that “once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss.” Because the Abyss is the spiritual realm of the dead, the expression “once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss” is a cryptic way of saying, “This beast once was alive, now is dead, and yet will rise from the dead.”  

I would suggest that this is describing a beast who once was alive, then dies, then rises out of the Abyss and it is describing Rome (represented by its Caesars.)  Specifically though, how can this be justified?  

After the death of Nero Caesar in June of A.D. 68, Rome collapsed because of civil war and the Roman legions withdrew from Israel.   This period of civil war from the death of Nero in the summer of A.D. 68 to the rise of Vespasian in A.D. 70 represents the death of the beast.  This period from A.D. 68 to A.D. 70 is the period represented by the fifth trumpet of Revelation 9:1-12 and the fifth bowl of Revelation 16:10-11.  

The fact that Rome, the beast, had been hurled into darkness in Revelation 9:2 and Revelation 16:10 (during the fifth trumpet and bowl) implies that the beast had been cast into the Abyss or the dark underworld of the dead (as described in Job 10:19-22) as “the land of deepest night, of utter darkness” and called outer darkness by Jesus in the Gospels.   As explained in Revelation 13:3, the Flavian Dynasty (the Caesar Vespasian, Caesar Titus and Caesar Domitian) is the beast whose wound had been healed.   At Vespasian’s coronation as Emperor of Rome, Vespasian and his two sons and successors, Titus and Domitian, were simultaneously granted the title Caesar.  Thus, the beast is embodied by Caesar Vespasian, Caesar Titus and Caesar Domitian who shortly after coming to power brought peace back to Rome (after destroying Jerusalem).  

Having restored the unity of the empire by putting an end to the civil war at the fall of Jerusalem, the Flavian Dynasty brought the Roman beast (which had died as a consequence of civil war) back to life.  In other words, the Roman Empire under “the trinity” of Flavian Caesars is the beast whose wound had been healed of Revelation 13:3 and the beast that rises out of the Abyss in Revelation 9:2-3, Revelation 11:7 and Revelation 17.  

Perhaps Revelation 9 is incorporating all that this resurrected beast would do including the wrapping up of the age and all things.

We also read in verses 1-3 that “a star” is given the key to the shaft of the Abyss.  The fact that this star has the key to the Abyss shows that it has power over the temporary death of Rome itself.  This star appears to be Jesus Christ who says, “I hold the keys of death and Hades” in Revelation 1:18.  Jesus also implies that He is the star of vs. 1-3 when He says that He “holds the key of David” in Revelation 3:7.  

I suggest that He opens the Abyss causing the “locusts” to be released under the authority of Apollyon (Revelation 9:11).   The ascent of Apollyon and his army of locusts from the Abyss is resurrection imagery and is probably a metaphorical depiction of the resurrection (coming back to life) of the Roman beast under the Flavians.   But why is the resurrection of Rome (also mentioned in Revelation 13:3, Revelation 11:7 and Revelation 17) portrayed as a locust army rising out of the Abyss which is the dark underworld of the dead?

In the Book of Revelation, the Abyss is not just the land of the dead. Abyss also has a symbolic meaning that represents foreign nations, in this case Rome, throughout the Apocalypse, just as the earth symbolizes Israel.  This can be proven by considering the contents of Revelation 17:15; Daniel 7; Psalm 65:7; 144:7; Isaiah 8:7-8; 17:12; 60:5; Jeremiah 46:7-8; 47:1-2; 51:55-56; Ezekiel 26:3).  

After the death of Nero Caesar, Rome ceased its assault on Judea and Titus and Vespasian left Israel not long after.  Therefore, around the time of the death of the beast (Nero)  Vespasian and Titus left Israel (the earth) and went to Lebanon and Egypt in Gentile Rome (the sea or Abyss) in order to plot the overthrow of their rival for the emperor’s throne, Vitellius.  So during the time in which the beast was “dead,” Vespasian and Titus were in “the Abyss,” Gentile Rome.  Immediately after supplanting Vitellius and usurping the throne, Caesar Vespasian dispatched Titus back to Israel, and “the earth” was once again under the control of the Roman military.  

Therefore, at the coronation of Vespasian (which represents the resurrection of the beast, Titus and the Roman army) Gentile Rome leaves the Abyss and returns to Israel. Put simply, when the beast (Vespasian and or Titus and the Roman army) was present on the earth (Israel) the beast was symbolically alive.   When the beast departed (to the sea or Abyss - represented by both Gentile Rome or other foreign gentile nations) it was back in the realm of the dead meaning that “the beast was metaphorically dead.”   When the beast rises out of the sea or Abyss, the beast is viewed as alive again.  

So we now enter into the period when the beast returns from the Abyss of Gentile lands, reanimates in the spirit of Nero, and is like a “locust army.”

As stated, Revelation 9:1-3 were fulfilled metaphorically from A.D. 68-A.D. 70 with the death of Nero and the rise of the Vespasian and the Flavian Dynasty which represented the resurrection of the beast.  That having been said, it should be noted that an interesting historical peculiarity may hint at the fact that the Flavian Dynasty (Caesar Vespasian, Caesar Titus and Caesar Domitian) represented the resurrection of the beast. 

During the reign of the second emperor of the Flavian dynasty; Titus, Vespasian’s son and successor, someone appeared that may represent the beast with the wounded head (which we will read about in Revelation 13:3).  Cassius Dio writes:

“In his (Titus’s) reign also the False Nero appeared, who was an Asiatic named Terentius Maximus.  He resembled Nero both in appearance and in voice (for he too sang to the accompaniment of the lyre).  He gained a few followers in Asia, and his advance to the Euphrates attached a far greater number, and finally sought refuge with Artabanus, the Parthian leader, who . . . both received him and set about making preparations to restore him to Rome.”

As we will see in our study of Revelation 13 Nero, Vespasian and Titus are all represented by the 666 cryptogram.  I would therefore suggest that in Revelation these three men symbolically represent a beast who dies and resurrects from the dead. 

Vespasian and Titus represent the beast whose wound had been healed while Nero represents the beast with the wounded head.   If the Nero imposter was not the actual miraculous resurrection of Nero (and thus a literal fulfillment of Revelation 13:3) he at least represents a kind of counterfeit resurrection, a symbol pointing to Titus, one of the Flavians, as the beast who rises from the dead. 

As we shall see he is called Apollyon in verse 11 and then the beast that comes out of the Abyss in Revelation 17:8, so Titus (like his father, Vespasian) may also be seen as some kind of resurrected devil.