Commentators on the Second Woe

William Barclay

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 God 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 race 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.