Revelation 8:6-13 closes with three cries of woe. The fifth trumpet now brings the first of them, and the vision is terrifying: smoke darkens the air, a swarm rises from the abyss, and human beings long for death. Yet the passage keeps interrupting terror with limits. The key is given. Authority is given. A target is set. Killing is forbidden. Five months are appointed. The abyss fills the scene, but it never occupies the throne. Revelation teaches the Church to recognize evil by its fruit, to refuse both fascination and panic, and to remain with Christ, the life-giving King.
The Abyss Is Opened under Limits (Revelation 9:1-4)
1 Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit.
2 And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit.
3 Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
4 They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
John sees a star already “fallen from heaven.” The Greek participle presents the figure in a fallen state, but neither the grammar nor this vision settles his exact identity. The clearer point is what happens next: the key is given to him. Even a fallen heavenly agent cannot open the abyss by independent right.1
Isaiah’s fallen morning star (Isaiah 14:12) and Christ’s declaration in Luke 10:18 bring the image into a wider scriptural history. The star’s exact identity here is not named, but the greater authority is clear: in Luke 10:19 the Savior gives His disciples power against serpents and scorpions. The enemy who wounds does not become the Lord of those who belong to Christ.2
The smoke resembles a great furnace and darkens the sun and air. The imagery recalls the darkness of the Exodus plagues and the locust army of Joel, but Revelation introduces a deliberate reversal. Natural locusts consume vegetation; these agents are commanded to leave grass, green growth, and trees untouched. Their scorpion-like authority is directed toward people. John is showing a visionary judgment, not describing an ordinary swarm or hiding a diagram of modern military hardware inside the text.3
The command in verse 4 distinguishes people by the seal of God. Revelation 7:1-8 has already shown God’s servants sealed before the trumpet judgments. The seal first declares belonging: God knows His own. Its protection here is exact and limited to this plague; elsewhere in Revelation, faithful witnesses still suffer and may be killed. Grace is not a charm against every wound. It is the Lord’s claim upon His servants, which no abyss can cancel.
For the Church, that belonging becomes a sober call to remain in Christ through faith, repentance, prayer, and communion with Him. It also forbids a cruel conclusion: another person’s illness, anguish, addiction, persecution, or trauma is not proof that he or she is “unsealed.” Verse 4 gives courage to God’s servants; it does not give them permission to judge the wounded.
Language insight
The NKJV’s “bottomless pit” translates the phrase to phrear tēs abyssou. Phrear is the shaft, well, or opening; abyssos is the abyss. The image is an opened access point into a depth of confinement, not a geographical location that can be plotted on a map.1
More important than locating the abyss is hearing the repeated grammar of restraint. In verses 1, 3, and 5, the key or authority “was given”; in verse 4, a command “was said” to the swarm. These passives do not answer every question about divine providence and demonic agency, but they do establish the vision’s pattern: destructive power is delegated and bounded. Evil acts terribly, yet never as a second god.
Gems from the Fathers 💎
St Athanasius’s Life of Antony exposes the distance between demonic boasting and actual authority. He calls the demons “like serpents and scorpions to be trodden underfoot by us Christians.”4 In Job’s trial the devil needed permission; the demons likewise had to ask before entering the swine. Antony’s confidence is not bravado. Athanasius joins it to Christ’s grace, prayer, meekness, freedom from anger, and love of the poor. The scorpions torment only by permission; the faithful resist by the Savior’s grace.
Athanasius also presents faith in Christ as a protecting seal. Belonging to the Lord, rather than mastering the anatomy of the abyss, gives the Christian courage.4
Torment Is Terrible but Bounded (Revelation 9:5-10)
5 And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man.
6 In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.
7 The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men.
8 They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth.
9 And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle.
10 They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months.
Verse 5 joins permission to prohibition. The agents receive authority to torment, but they are forbidden to kill. Their term is repeated at the beginning and end of the description: five months. Its unmistakable force within this passage is limitation. The anguish is severe; its duration is not self-determined.
Joel 2 pictures horses, chariots, and darkened lights in the locust judgment, then calls the people back to the Lord and promises restoration of the years the locust ate. The movement is from terror to return, not from terror to fascination. Revelation’s warning likewise addresses a people still being called to faithful allegiance.5
Verse 6 gives that anguish a human voice: people seek death, desire it, and cannot find it. The horror is meant to be felt. The verse neither romanticizes self-destruction nor gives believers grounds to shame a person who longs to die. If someone recognizes his or her present life in these words, the Christian response is immediate presence, practical protection, qualified help, prayer, and pastoral care. Christ receives the tormented with mercy. The Church must do the same.
John then describes the swarm through a chain of comparisons. The figures are like horses prepared for battle; their crowns are something like gold; their faces, hair, teeth, breastplates, sound, tails, and stings are each compared to something familiar. Together the images communicate disciplined menace, apparent triumph, intelligence, predatory violence, armor, overwhelming noise, and concealed pain. The repeated “like” and “as” govern the reading. John gives a cumulative portrait of terror, not a one-to-one code in which each body part must become a weapon, nation, ethnicity, technology, or modern event.6
The description also exposes evil’s fraud. The crowns only resemble gold. The faces suggest human intelligence, while the teeth and tails reveal predation and pain. The swarm looks organized and crowned, but it cannot produce a kingdom of life. Much of sin works this way. Resentment can feel like strength, occult curiosity like privileged knowledge, domination like safety, and addiction like relief. Their promised crown is thin; their fruit is bondage.
The comparison to women’s hair belongs to the same composite chain. It cannot be isolated to mock women, femininity, men with long hair, or anyone’s appearance. The spiritual warning lies in the whole figure: attraction and terror, intelligence and brutality, splendor and torment are bound together in a single deceptive power.
A victory that leaves people tormented is empty, however brightly it presents itself.
The Destroyer Is Named (Revelation 9:11-12)
11 And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon.
12 One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes are coming after these things.
The swarm’s king is “the angel of the bottomless pit.” John gives his name in Hebrew and Greek: Abaddon and Apollyon. The names carry the force of destruction and destroyer. The text names the fruit of his rule without resolving his identity more precisely; an equation with Satan, a historical ruler, or a present-day figure would go beyond what this passage establishes.7
Job 26:6 says that destruction has no covering before God. The king who terrifies the earth is not hidden from Him. No depth of the abyss gives evil a private place outside the Creator’s knowledge.8
This naming is a judgment in itself. The swarm’s crowns, armor, and battle noise can intimidate the eye and ear, but its king’s name tells the truth. Whatever destroys worship, freedom, love of neighbor, and hope in God belongs to a kingdom whose destination is already disclosed. Christ’s kingship is different in kind. The Lamb was slain and stands alive; He gathers servants, receives their prayers, and leads them toward life. Revelation does not leave the Church between two equal thrones.
“One woe is past” closes the fifth trumpet, but the warning remains open: two woes are still coming. Relief would be premature, and speculation would miss the mercy of the announcement. The proper response to a woe is repentance while there is still time, faithful worship while pressure continues, and hope fixed on the Lamb whose kingdom outlasts every destroyer.
The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪
On the Night of the Apocalypse, the Church hears this bounded terror while keeping watch beside Christ’s tomb. The Overview describes the vigil.9
At St Luke the Evangelist’s feast on Baba 22, the Liturgy reads Luke 10:1-20, including the Savior’s authority over serpents and scorpions.10 The Church commemorates St Antony on Toba 22, honoring a life of prayer and faithful resistance to the demons, not admiration of their displays. The point of hearing their defeat is freedom to serve Christ.
Spiritual Fruit 🍇
Bring fear back under the words of the passage. When anxiety makes darkness feel limitless, pray through the verbs: the key was given, the target was restricted, killing was forbidden, and the time was bounded. This does not make suffering small. It places real suffering before the greater sovereignty of Christ.
Examine every promise of power by its fruit. Resentment may promise protection, control may promise security, occult curiosity may promise knowledge, and addiction may promise relief. Ask what each one is making of your freedom, prayer, love, and attention. Bring the bondage into confession and seek concrete help before its false crown becomes familiar.
Receive God’s seal as belonging, not as a charm. Remain in Christ through daily prayer, repentance, the sacramental life of the Church, and obedience in ordinary duties. Refuse the temptation to interpret another person’s suffering as evidence against his or her faith. The sealed servants belong to God even when discipleship passes through suffering.
Stand near the tormented. Verse 6 trains the Church to hear unbearable anguish without ridicule or easy spiritual diagnoses. If someone speaks of wanting death, listen, stay present, help secure immediate safety and qualified care, involve trusted pastoral support, and pray with the person. Mercy is not a departure from the text; it is fidelity to Christ in the presence of pain.
Let the woe become repentance rather than fascination. Turn from whatever darkens prayer, feeds secret cruelty, or makes destruction entertaining. The passage has done its work when the abyss loses its glamour, sin is named honestly, and the heart returns to the Lamb who was slain and lives.
Teaching Notes
The Abyss Is Opened under Limits (Revelation 9:1-4)
- Ask: Which words show that the abyss and its agents do not possess independent sovereignty?
- Emphasize: Trace “was given,” “were commanded,” and the restricted target. Distinguish real judgment from unlimited evil.
- Connect: Read Revelation 7:1-8 with Exodus 10:12-15, Joel 2:1-11, and Luke 8:26-33.
- Watch for: Do not settle the fallen star’s identity, map the abyss, promise immunity from all suffering, or label sufferers as unsealed.
- Practice: Build a simple limits chart with access, authority, target, kind of harm, and duration.
Torment Is Terrible but Bounded (Revelation 9:5-10)
- Ask: What do the repeated comparisons communicate, and why does John keep saying “like” and “as”?
- Emphasize: The five months bound the torment; the composite imagery exposes organized, deceptive, and painful power.
- Connect: Compare natural locust behavior with Revelation’s command to spare vegetation. If useful, place the passage beside Joel’s battle imagery.
- Watch for: Do not decode the figures as modern machines or peoples, shame anyone through the women’s-hair simile, or treat suicidal desire as a debate topic.
- Watch for: Before teaching verse 6, know the parish’s procedure for immediate pastoral and crisis support.
- Practice: Name a trusted person and a qualified service to contact if someone speaks of wanting death.
The Destroyer Is Named (Revelation 9:11-12)
- Ask: How do Abaddon and Apollyon interpret the apparent crowns and military strength of the swarm?
- Emphasize: Destruction names the fruit of this kingship; Christ is the life-giving King, not a competing power of equal rank.
- Connect: Recall the Lamb standing before the throne in Revelation 5:1-14 and anticipate the continued warning in Revelation 9:13-21.
- Watch for: Do not identify the king with a current person, ethnicity, religion, nation, or political power.
- Practice: Give the class a quiet moment to name one bondage before Christ and ask for the grace to repent.
Sources
Scripture is from NKJV. Old Testament comparisons use Brenton’s English Septuagint; quotations from Daniel use the version of Theodotion printed by Brenton.
Brenton, Isaiah 14:12.
St Athanasius, Life of Antony 9, 24, 29-30.
Brenton, Joel 2:4-12, 25.
Brenton, Job 26:6.
Fr Jacob B. Nadian, comp., Rites of Pascha Week, Book 6: Night of Apocalypse, pp. 220, 221, 222.
Coptic Katameros, Baba 22, Liturgy, Luke 10:1-20; Coptic Synaxarium, Toba 22; Coptic Reader.
Footnotes
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Brenton, Isaiah 14:12. ↩
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Revelation 9:3 and 9:4, Greek text. ↩
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St Athanasius, Life of Antony 9, 24, 29-30. ↩ ↩2
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Brenton, Joel 2:4-12, 25. ↩
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Fr Jacob B. Nadian, comp., Rites of Pascha Week, Book 6: Night of Apocalypse, pp. 220, 221, 222. ↩
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Coptic Katameros, Baba 22, Liturgy, Luke 10:1-20; Coptic Synaxarium, Toba 22; Coptic Reader. ↩