Interpreting the seven trumpets of Revelation

William Barclay

1st trumpet

Here we have a picture of the elemental forces of nature hurled in judgment against the world. At each blast on the trumpet, a different part of the world is attacked; the destruction that follows is not total, for this is only the prelude to the end. First, the blast of destruction falls on the earth (verse 7); then it falls on the sea (verses 8-9); then it falls on the fresh-water rivers and springs (verses 10-11); then it falls on the heavenly bodies (verse 12). The tide of destruction is let loose on every part of the created universe.

We have further to note where John found his imagery. For the most part, the pictures find their origin in the descriptions in Exodus of the plagues which fell on Egypt when Pharaoh refused to allow the people of Israel to go.

In John's picture, hail and fire and blood fall upon the dry land. In Exodus 9:24 we read how there came upon Egypt fire mixed with a hail of unparalleled destructiveness. To increase the terror, John adds blood, remembering Joel's picture of the day when the sun would be turned to darkness and the moon to blood (Joel 2:10). In John's picture, a third part of the sea becomes blood, and the fish in it die. In Exodus, when Moses lifted up his rod and struck the waters, the waters of the Nile turned to blood, and the fish in the river dies (Exodus 7:20-1) In Zephaniah's picture of the day of the Lod, the threat of God is: 'I will sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea' (Zephaniah 1:3) There is no parallel for the picture of the fall of a flaming star, but there are many parallels to the ideas of waters turning to wormwood.
   
Wormwood is a general name for the class of plants known as artemisia whose characteristic is a bitter taste. They are not really poisonous in the sense of being fatal, although they are harmful; but the Israelites dreaded their bitterness. Wormwood was the fruit of idolatry (Deuteronomy 29:17-18). It was the threat of God through Jeremiah that God would give his people wormwood to eat and poisonous waters to drink (Jeremiah 9:14-15, 23:15). Wormwood always stood for bitterness of the judgment of God on the disobedient.

In John's picture, there came a darkening of a third part of the lights of heaven. In Exodus, one of the plagues was a darkness that could be felt over the whole land (Exodus 10:21-3).

As we have so often seen, the Old Testamant is so much a part of John's thinking that its visions come to him as the natural background of all that he has to say.

In this case, it is by no means impossible that John is taking at least a part of his picture from actual events which he had seen or of which he had heard. The falling of rain which looks like blood has more than once been reported from the Mediterranean countries. There is, for instance, a record of such rain in Italy and all over south-east Europe in 1901. The reason for it is that fine red sand from the Sahara Desert is caught up into the upper air; and when the rain comes it seems to be raining blood, as the rain and the fine red particles of sand fall together on to the earth. It may well be that John had seen something like this or had heard of it.

Further, he speaks of a flaming mass falling into the sea. This sounds very like a volcanic eruption. There was an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in August of AD 79 which brought devastation to Naples and its bay. That would be within a very few years of the writing of Revelation. The Aegean Sea has volcanic islands and volcanoes beneath the sea. Strabo, the Greek geographer, reports an eruption in the Aegean Sea, in which Patmos lay, in the year 196 BC, which actually resulted in the formation of a new island called Palaia Kaumene. Such events may also have been in John's mind.

In this picture of terror, John has the vision of God using the elemental forces of nature to warn men and women of the final destruction to come.

2nd trumpet

3rd trumpet

4th trumpet

5th trumpet

There is nothing more destructive in the world than an invasion of locusts; and this is the terrible devastation which John sees, although demonic locusts from the pit are different from any earthly insect.

It is not the vegetation of the earth which the locusts are to attack; in fact, they are forbidden to do that (verse 4); their attack is to be launched against the people who do not have the seal of God in their foreheads.

The ordinary locust is devastating to vegetation but not harmful to human beings; but the demonic locust is to have the sting of a scorpion, one of the scourges of Palestine. ... The demonic locusts have the power of scorpions added to them.

Their attack is to last for five months. The explanation of the five months is probably that the lifespan of a locust from birth, through the larva stage, to death is five months. It is as if we might say that one generation of locusts is being launched upon the earth.

The suffering caused by the locusts will be so great that people will long for death but will not be able to die. Job speaks of the supreme misery of those who long for death and for whom it does not come (Job 3:21); and Jeremiah speaks of the day when people will choose death rather than life (Jeremiah 8:3). A Latin writer, Cornelius Gallus, says: 'Worse than any wound is to wish to die and yet not be able to do so.'

The king of the locusts is called in Hebrew Abaddon and in Greek Apollyon. Abaddon is the Hebrew for destruction; it occurs most often in the phrases 'death and destruction' and 'hell and destruction' (Job 26:6, 28:22, 31:12; Psalm 88:11; Proverbs 15:11, 27:20). Apollyon is the prpesent participle of the Greek verb meaning to destroy and itself means the Destroyer. It is fitting that the king of the demonic locusts should be called Destruction and the Destroyer.

6th trumpet

The horror of the picture mounts. The demonic locusts were allowed to injure but not kill; but now come the squadrons of demonic cavalry to annihilate a third part of the human race.

This is a passage containing mysterious imagery and details that no one has ever been able to explain fully.

No one really knows who the four angels bound at the River Euphrates were. We can only set down what we know and what we can guess. The Euphrates was the ideal boundary of the territory of Israel. It was God's promise to Abraham: 'To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates' (Genesis 16:18). The angels, therefore, came from distant lands, from the alien and hostile places from which in the past the Assyrians and the Babylonians had descended with destruction upon Israel.

Further, in the Book of Enoch, we frequently meet angels who are described as the Angels of Punishment. Their task was at the right time to release the avenging wrath of Gdo upon the people. Undoubtedly, these four angels were included among the Angels of Punishment.

We have to add another fact to all this. We have frequently seen how the pictures of John are coloured by actual historical circumstances. The most dreaded warriors in the world were the Parthian cavalry; and the Parthians lived beyond the Euphrates. It may well be that John was visualizing a terrible descent of the Parthian cavalry on all humanity.

The seer adds horror to horror. The number of the hosts of this terrible cavalry is 200,000,000, which simply means that they were so many that they could not be counted, like the chariots of God (Psalm 68:17). They seem to be armoured in flame, for their breastplates are fiery red like the glow of a blazing furnace, smoky blue like the smoke rising from a fire, and sulphurous yellow like the brimstone from the pit of hell. The horses have heads like lions and tails like serpents; they breathe out destructive fire and smoke and brimstone, and their serpent-tails deal out hurt and harm. The consequence of all this is that one-third of the human rac is destroyed.

It would have been only natural to think that the remainder of all humanity would take warning from this dreadful fate; but they did not, and carried on worshipping their idols and demons and continued in the evil of their ways. It is the conviction of the biblical writers that the worship of idols was nothing less than devil-worship and that it was bound to result in evil and immorality.

7th trumpet