And the first sounded [his] trumpet and there was hail and fire, mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of the earth was burnt up, and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
The seventh seal opens into silence, and then seven angels take up seven trumpets. At the first blast, judgment falls on land, trees and grass. No weather system could produce this storm, because blood is mixed into it.
Commentators see the change of instrument as a change in how God addresses the world. The seals could be mistaken for ordinary history. No one can miss a trumpet blast.
The trumpet sets forth a loud and solemn call of God. It is God summoning men. If they have rejected His grace, they must hear these sharp warnings of His judgment, even if they forget them. We might not so easily have seen the seals as God stepping in, unless He had told us beforehand that this is what they were... With the trumpets there is less need to say that they are heaven-sent judgments. Their sound or summons is quite plain and urgent.
The two series also differ in reach and force.
The seals in general appear to have a larger extent, but the blows were not so severe... The trumpets, then, may be less extensive in their range, but it will later be clear that they are more intensely judicial than the seals.
Each element has a settled meaning elsewhere in Scripture. The writers read them there, not as weather.
Hail signifies a sudden, sharp, and overwhelming judgment from above, with God carrying it out (see Isa. 28:2, 17; Rev. 11:19; Rev. 16:21). Fire is the expression of God's wrath... Fire stands for thorough, unsparing, agonising judgment... Blood signifies death, both physical and moral. Moral death would take the form of apostasy — a complete abandonment of revealed truth, all religious profession given up.
Hail and fire are strange partners: cold and heat do not usually arrive together. One writer draws out what the pair pictures about God.
Hail with fire is one of the most solemn pictures of God's judgment that nature gives us. It was one of the plagues of Egypt... Cold, like darkness, stands for God withdrawing. Fire, which is both heat and light, stands for the glow of His presence — and against sin that presence is wrath. The two can come together, however contradictory they seem: "hailstones and coals of fire" poured out at once. When God forsakes, it is always in anger. So what would have refreshed becomes a storm of judgment. There is a concord of contraries against those that cast off God; as for those who love Him, all things work together for good.
The verse does not say the storm fell. Something threw it down, and writers take that word as deliberate. "The earth" it lands on is a symbol too.
In both cases (vv. 5 and 7) the term "cast" implies irresistible power behind. The judgment of the hail and fire with blood cannot be traced to natural causes. They were cast down. They did not fall from the heavens in an ordinary way — an unseen but powerful arm drove them... The earth here means the part of the world that is civilised and under settled, established government.
The fraction marks out which part of the world is struck. Writers have not all agreed on which part.
You will notice that the third part keeps coming up in these divine visitations. What is the prophetic meaning of "the third"? The answer seems to be given us in Rev. 12 (that is, the distinctively Roman or western empire)... If this is so, "the third" would mean the varied wasting away of the Roman empire in the west... One able writer contends for the Greek or Eastern Empire, because the Macedonian was the third of the four great empires of Dan. 2 and Dan. 7. But "the third part" is quite another thought and phrase.
None of this is literal farmland. Notice the difference in the verse: the trees lose a third, the grass loses everything.
This clearly does not refer to the literal earth, trees, or grass. In Scripture grass is the symbol commonly used for man in his weakness, his very glory being like the flower of grass. Human prosperity, then, would be set forth by green grass. Here we have a judgment of God upon it. Not a certain part only, however large, but the whole of it is destroyed. The trees represent those who are high and exalted among men... So the blow falls on one marked-off part of the scene of God's moral dealings. All the lowly feel the ruin, and the higher classes feel it to a large extent.
Commentators differ on the grass. Another reading keeps two possibilities open.
The burning up of "all green grass" may refer to the withering of the means of support; or, if grass is here used as a figure of man in his frailty, it indicates a destruction of the choicest and most vigorous portion of the human race, such as the wholesale slaughter of young men called out to serve in war.
- Summons. The trumpet is God calling men who have refused His grace. It is too loud to mistake for ordinary history.
- Sharper. Compared with the seals, the trumpets cover less ground but strike harder.
- Supernatural. Hail is judgment from above, fire is wrath, blood is death. The blood puts this storm outside nature. "Cast" shows an unseen arm behind it.
- Limited. "A third" fences the judgment into one region, not the whole globe. Most writers point to the Roman west, though not all agree.
- Levelling. Trees are the great, grass the ordinary and prosperous — and all the grass goes, so no rank escapes.
And the second angel sounded [his] trumpet and as a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and the third part of the sea became blood;
The second trumpet does not strike solid ground. It falls on open water, and what lands there is something like a burning mountain. The picture raises two questions at once: which power is falling, and why the damage stops at a third.
The verse does not say a mountain, but something like one. One writer sets the first two trumpets side by side:
In the first trumpet, we see hail, fire, and blood cast on the earth, and some trees and all green grass burnt up. In the second trumpet, a great mountain, as it were — that is, something similar to a great burning mountain — is cast into the sea. In the first trumpet, the earth, trees and grass are affected; in the second, the sea, its creatures and its ships. Both are fiery, burning judgments.
So why hit objects, when it is people God is dealing with?
The judgments fall on things rather than men. Yet the things listed — earth, trees, grass, sea and creatures in it, ships, rivers, fountains, sun, moon, stars — are not moral beings, and so are not accountable to God. Man is the rebel sinner who has to be dealt with. The things are symbols of man and of what is connected with him.
Jeremiah calls Babylon a mountain marked for burning, and that gives the key:
"Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, declares the LORD, which destroys the whole earth; I will stretch out my hand against you, and roll you down from the crags, and make you a burnt mountain." The LORD speaks against the Chaldean kingdom. It looked so firmly established in its might and greatness that no one could overthrow it. Yet He threatens it with consuming judgment, a "burnt mountain." … A mountain as a symbol represents a kingdom or a firmly established power. The key idea in these prophetic symbols is a strong, solid, established power. And this power is itself the target of God's governmental vengeance.
The mountain does not just collapse where it stands. It is thrown, and where it lands others suffer:
A mountain is the usual symbol of high, settled power. But here it is thrown into the sea, because it becomes the means of judgment to others, and not just the object of judgment itself.
The verse names three things: a mountain, fire, and the sea it lands in. One writer takes each in turn:
A great mountain speaks of a great governing power, while burning with fire points to a fearsome character of oppression. Thrown into the sea speaks of God's own sovereign power inflicting this scourge upon the nations (the sea of the Gentiles). The waters of the sea speak of "peoples and multitudes and nations and languages" (Revelation 17:15).
Commentators differ on what the blood and the dying creatures mean. One takes the dying to be a spiritual death:
First, all through the peoples (the sea) of the Roman earth, the "blood," the "deathful power of evil," prevails. A third part of the creatures in the sea that had life died. As another writer has put it, "I take dying here to be departure from the profession of association with God, public separation from Him, or apostasy." Unbelief and atheism always flourish in times of great disturbance, social earthquakes and revolutions.
Another holds that both senses are present at once:
Does blood here symbolise a violent natural death, or does it refer to the spiritual death of apostasy? In our judgment these two forms of death are here combined.
The third loss touches how people make a living:
This trumpet seems to foretell the overwhelming destruction of a great world power. In its fall it will bring ruin and death on a third part of the nations. The destruction of the ships brings trade to a standstill, and so they lose their means of living.
Each of these trumpets stops at the same fraction:
The language is still highly symbolic. A feature common to each is that the judgments only fall on a third part of the things affected. This shows that for the moment the effects are not universal but limited. The phrase "the third part" occurs again in Revelation 12:4, where the Roman Empire is in question. So here it points to the Roman earth: practically the western European powers, or, we may say, Christendom.
- Symbol — The verse says something like a mountain. Earth, sea, creatures and ships stand for people and what belongs to them, because objects cannot answer to God.
- Mountain — In prophecy a mountain is a kingdom or a firmly established power. Jeremiah's "burnt mountain" is Babylon: it looked unshakeable, yet God condemned it.
- Cast — The throw makes this power both the object of judgment and the tool of it. It falls, and its fall wrecks others.
- Sea — The mountain lands in the sea of the nations: "peoples and multitudes and nations and languages." The sovereign power of God sends it there.
- Third — Blood, death and lost shipping follow, yet each stops at a third. The judgment is severe, but not yet universal.
and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea which had life died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.
The second trumpet has sounded, and a burning mountain falls into the sea. Verse 9 counts the cost — so what is that mountain, who are the creatures, and why does the damage stop at a third?
Scripture sets the pattern. A mountain stands for a settled power, and God once used that picture of Babylon.
In the judgment of the second trumpet John saw "something like a great mountain, burning with fire," thrown into the sea. In Scripture a mountain pictures a great and long-established power. So Scripture calls Babylon a "destroying mountain," and the LORD says to her, "I will roll you down from the crags, and make you a burnt mountain" (Jer. 51:25). The sea never stops moving, so it often pictures the nations in a state of unrest (see Rev. 17:15).
History has already staged smaller versions of this scene.
It is a power that is mighty, seated firmly and lifted high, yet full of volcanic forces in conflict. These will tear out her own insides and spread ruin all around. Thrown into the sea of the nations — already in commotion, as the word "sea" implies — this power produces death and disaster beyond that of the previous trumpet. It attacks human life more directly. Such a state of eruption was in France at the end of the eighteenth century, and it may well illustrate what seems intended. History is full of such warnings of what is coming, and we do well to take note of them. We may expect this all the more as the end approaches. Things grow towards it, and at last it takes by surprise those who have not heeded the warning.
In this vision the sea is not water.
The ever-restless sea is here the chosen figure for the peoples of the earth in terrible anarchy. They have no strong controlling power or firm hand over them. God ordains civil and governmental authority (Rom. 13:1). So the prophetic sea stands for the general state of the nations with no civil or spiritual government. Into these seething masses of mankind this burning power is cast.
Commentators differ over the death meant here. Some argue from the word "creatures" that individual people are in view, and that the death is moral, not physical.
Persons, and not peoples or nations in general as in the first judgment, are in question. The term "creatures" would imply as much... Moral, spiritual death is the undoubted force of the judgment carried out here. It is death towards God, and death towards the principles of truth and righteousness. In fact, it is moral death in its widest sense.
Others read the death as physical, and see the falling power itself as the instrument of it.
A great power that seemed settled is removed from its place. That power is not so much shattered itself as made the means of suffering to others. It is burning with fire, and the result is destruction to a third of the living creatures and ships in the sea. The whole thing is a figure taken from what a volcano would do if it were cast into the sea. In this way the Lord fills out the picture of destruction. A great consuming power falls on confused masses of people, and the result is human slaughter and political anarchy.
The wrecked ships carry trade, and trade feeds nations far from the disaster.
This trumpet appears to foretell the overwhelming destruction of a great world power. Its fall will bring ruin and death on a third of the nations. The destruction of the ships brings commerce to a standstill, and so destroys the way they make their living.
The same fraction runs through these judgments. It sets both a limit and a place.
A feature common to each is that the judgments fall only on a third part of the things affected. This shows that for the moment the effects are not universal but limited. The phrase "the third part" occurs again in Revelation 12:4, where the Roman Empire, energised by Satan, is in question. This leads to the conclusion that here it shows the Roman earth — in practice the western European powers, or perhaps we may say, Christendom.
A narrower blow is not a lighter one.
The trumpets may reach less far than the seals. But it will appear later that they strike with heavier judgment.
- Mountain — a great, long-standing power. God once pictured Babylon this way: rolled down and left burning.
- Sea — masses of people with no firm government. The mountain falls into a crowd already in turmoil.
- Death — a third of the creatures die. Some read this as death towards God and truth; others as real slaughter and anarchy.
- Ships — trade stops, and the loss of livelihood spreads ruin far beyond the point of impact.
- A third — the damage is limited, not universal. The trumpets hit a smaller area than the seals, but hit it harder.
And the third angel sounded [his] trumpet and there fell out of the heaven a great star, burning as a torch, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.
The third trumpet does not strike the land or the sea but the fresh water — the rivers and springs people drink from. What falls is a "great star" — a picture of authority — and its name tells you what it does.
The picture comes from government. A star ranks below the sun, so it stands for a power that answers to someone higher, yet still rules and still shines. One writer traces the height it held and the strange fact that it keeps glowing after the fall:
A star is the symbol of authority in government. It is not supreme authority — the sun stands for that — but authority held under another. So the very picture used shows a man who should have been a source of light and order to people. But he falls "from heaven," from the place where God had set him, for God appoints the powers that rule. By that fall he is now cut off from all connection with God. Yet he still burns — not as a star now, but as a lamp — and so he still attracts people by his light and brightness.
Where he falls from matters, and so does the word for the fall:
The Heaven is the source of authority, a fixed position; all spiritual, civil, and political authority has its source above… Under the two trumpets before this, the instruments of judgment were "cast" upon the earth and the sea. Here this apostate ruler "fell" out of the Heaven. "Cast" would imply that an unseen actor used irresistible power, and that the judgment was violent. "Fell" points rather to a sudden, unexpected downfall.
Where the star lands is as symbolic as the star itself. Water in these visions stands for peoples. Springs and rivers stand for what refreshes them and shapes their course:
Waters are the symbol of peoples with no settled shape. Fountains are the sources of their refreshment, and a river stands for what marks the course they take… This blow seems less political than the judgment before it. It is rather the poisoning of everything that ought to bring blessing to people and that touches their ordinary life.
Wormwood is a bitter plant. The star's name describes its effect, and that effect reverses an old mercy: God once turned bitter water sweet for Israel.
The name "Wormwood" shows his character… Everyone under the withering influence of this fallen being shares his character, "Wormwood." There is a reference here to that striking event in Israel's history told in Exodus 15:22-25. There God made the bitter waters sweet; here the sweet waters become bitter… It poisons their springs of action — their motives, principles, and moral life.
Commentators differ. Some read a civil ruler, others a religious teacher, others the Antichrist himself. The case for a fallen teacher rests on where the star lands:
The heavens are the sphere of government, whether civil or spiritual, so this could point to a ruler of either kind… Yet the fall from heaven and the poisoning of the sources of refreshment seem to point much more strongly to an apostate teacher. His fall turns the springs of spiritual truth bitter, and people perish… They refused to love the truth and so be saved, so God sends them a strong delusion and they believe what is false. Here would seem to be the beginning of this.
Another writer narrows it further, to a man who first claimed God's authority and then abandoned it:
It is some person who claimed authority and then becomes an apostate. His fall produces the awful results given here. It may be the final Antichrist. He may first have claimed to be a great teacher for Israel with divine authority, and then he takes the awful plunge.
The deaths come by drinking, not by disaster. One writer reads them as the death of the soul, not of the body:
He corrupts the truth of God by his poisonous teaching (1 John 2:22). Many die through it — not in body, but by falling away, so that they become dead to any recognition of the living God.
Judgments like this leave hearts where they were. Only one thing changes them:
One would think that such mighty displays of divine power would soften people's hearts. But it is not so… Love, God's own love to man as a sinner, in the cross of Christ, alone breaks and captivates the human heart.
- Height. A star is subordinate authority, set in place by God to give light and order to others.
- Fall. Falling "from heaven" means being cut off from God — yet the star keeps burning like a lamp, so it still attracts.
- Poison. It lands on rivers and fountains, so the sources that refresh and guide people's lives turn bitter.
- Name. "Wormwood" names its character, and it reverses an old mercy: God once made bitter waters sweet; now sweet waters go bitter.
- Death. Many die from drinking. One writer reads this as moral death — people dead to the living God through false teaching. Only God's love in the cross breaks a heart that judgment only hardens.
And the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood, and many of the men died of the waters because they were made bitter.
The third trumpet drops a burning star on the rivers and springs — the water people drink, not the land or the sea. Its name is its verdict, and what should refresh now kills.
The star stands for a person, not a lump of rock. In this book a star pictures someone set in authority under God, and this one has come down from his place.
A star, as we saw in an earlier chapter in another connection (Revelation 1:20), pictures someone who holds a lower place of authority. He may give light to others. He is under another himself, but he still rules. Here it is a degraded ruler, a dignitary fallen from his place of authority. Waters are the symbol of peoples not yet formed. Fountains are the sources of their refreshment, and a river is what gives their course its character.
He has lost his standing yet keeps his shine, and that is exactly what makes him dangerous.
But he falls "from heaven," out of the place where God had set him — for God appoints the powers that exist. His fall now cuts him off from all connection with God. Yet he still burns, not as a star but as a lamp, so he still attracts people by his light and brightness. He falls on all the sources of life, the moral sources, pictured by the rivers and fountains of waters. You can often see this when someone prominent in the church of God turns unfaithful or apostate and morally destroys his hearers by unbelieving teaching.
"Wormwood" is an Old Testament word. Earlier passages explain what the name means here.
His name was Wormwood. Deuteronomy 29:19-20 speaks of the man who hears the curses of the law and says, "I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst." Scripture compares him to a root that bears gall and wormwood. See also the immoral woman of Proverbs 5:4, and Jeremiah 23:15. In Jeremiah 9:15, wormwood seems to be the bitter result of disobedience — even the scattering among the nations. Here, as in Amos 5:7, "You who turn justice to wormwood," it seems to mean the corruption of the waters, and the death of those who drank them.
Everything the star touches takes on its flavour. Israel's history shows the exact reverse of this scene.
The name "Wormwood" points to character... The fountains, the sources of national life, are poisoned. All who come under the withering influence of this fallen being share his character, "Wormwood." There is a clear reference here to a striking incident in Israel's history, told in Exodus 15:22-25. There the bitter waters were made sweet; here the sweet waters are made bitter.
Commentators differ over who this ruler is. One reading sees the poisoning of the springs as a matter of teaching, not politics.
The heavens are the sphere of government, whether civil or spiritual, so a ruler of either kind might be meant here... Yet the fall from heaven, the poisoning of the sources of refreshment, and the connection with the sixth trumpet — a parallel, if not something deeper — seem to point much more strongly to an apostate teacher. His fall would embitter the springs of spiritual truth and cause men to perish... People have not received the love of the truth so that they might be saved. So God will send them a strong delusion, so that they believe a lie. Here would seem to be the beginning of this.
Others name a candidate. "It may be the final Antichrist. He may first have claimed to be a great teacher for Israel with divine authority, and then he takes the awful plunge" (Arno Clemens Gaebelein).
Many die from the water. Several writers read this death as spiritual, not bodily: "not physically, but by apostasy they become dead to any recognition of the living God" (L. M. Grant). The damage is terrible, but it has a limit — "a third," not everything.
The language stays highly symbolic. One feature is common to each judgment: it falls only on a third part of the things affected. This shows that for the moment the effects are not universal but limited.
The passage records no repentance. Judgment on this scale does not soften anyone:
One would think that such mighty displays of divine power would soften people's hearts. But it is not so... Love, God's own love to man as a sinner, in the cross of Christ, alone breaks and captivates the human heart.
- Fall. The star is no rock from space. It is a ruler who leaves the place God gave him — still shining, and so still attractive.
- Poison. He lands on rivers and springs: not the surface of life but its sources, the moral wells people drink from.
- Name. "Wormwood" is Scripture's word for the bitterness of turning from God. Whatever he touches takes his character.
- Reversal. In Exodus God made Israel's bitter water sweet. Here sweet water turns bitter — that mercy run backwards.
- Limit. A third, not all. The death is mainly moral. The judgment warns, yet leaves room for the love that alone melts hearts.
And the fourth angel sounded [his] trumpet and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so that the third part of them should be darkened, and that the day should not appear [for] the third part of it, and the night the same.
The fourth trumpet strikes the sky itself. Is this astronomy, or a picture of human authority collapsing over a limited part of the earth?
Commentators read the three lights as three ranks of rule. Edward Dennett sets out that order, then names what happens when it falls:
It is the governments of the earth that are affected by the sound of the fourth trumpet (v. 12), and no form of it escapes. As pointed out before, the sun is a symbol of supreme authority. The moon stands for authority derived from the supreme, just as the moon takes her light from the sun and reflects it. The stars just as plainly speak of what is subordinate. Sun, moon, and stars, therefore, express every order of human authority in government… The effect is that confusion and darkness reign instead of peace and security. Little do men realise how much they owe to orderly and stable governments.
The wording itself resists a physical reading. One commentator starts from the strange detail that the day itself loses a third of its light:
The day does not shine in a third part of the sphere of its rule, and neither does the night, in its moon and stars. This would certainly not be the natural result of darkening a third part of sun and moon. It shows us that we do not have here a literal event of the kind described, but figures of other things. Royal or imperial authority has collapsed, along with all the lesser powers that depend on it, within such limits as a "third part" may mark out; and with this, the first series of the trumpets ends.
F. B. Hole reads the repeated fraction as a limit, and finds its meaning in a later chapter of the same book:
The language stays deeply symbolic. A feature common to each is that the judgments only fall on a third part of the things affected. For the moment the effects are not universal but limited. The phrase "the third part" occurs again in Revelation 12:4, where the Roman Empire, energised by Satan, is in question. This leads to the conclusion that here it means the Roman earth.
Walter Scott compares this verse with an earlier vision where no such limit appears:
Under the sixth Seal (Rev. 6:12-13) the same symbols express a total collapse of all governing authority on earth. There, however, nothing restricts the breakdown of the whole social fabric and the overthrow of every seat of power… Here under the fourth Trumpet the judgment and its effects reach the "third part" of the prophetic scene, the western part of the revived empire. The term "third part" occurs five times in this one verse (v. 12). The effect of this judgment is that moral darkness settles down on the empire like a funeral shroud.
The night loses its light as well as the day. J. N. Darby sees that loss reaching into private life:
The public course of things was thrown into confusion and darkness, the day darkened in its sunlight. But more than that, the private and hidden life of man lost the light that guided it. There was darkness and stumbling. There was no perception of God's will, and no way or light to walk by that human understanding could use.
Most read the lights as ranks of government. One writer takes the darkening as loss of light of another kind:
Of course this cannot be literal. The sun (which is the supreme source of light to the earth) speaks of the light of the glory of God. So this darkening speaks of people being plunged into the darkness of atheism, not seeing the sun. They become closed even to the reflected light of the moon and the stars. The light of heavenly testimony is gone from the whole kingdom of the beast.
This verse closes a set of four. William Kelly marks how the three that follow differ:
We have had the preliminary judgments brought in by the first four trumpets… and last of all, the whole fabric of political rule, both supreme and subordinate, has to suffer a notable eclipse. So it was a judgment of circumstances, not a judgment falling on people themselves. But we also see a closing hint of still deeper blows. They are marked off in the clearest way from the series that came before: "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth!"
- Lights — Sun, moon and stars stand for the top rank of authority, the rank derived from it, and the ranks below. Strike them, and every level of government falls at once.
- Limit — The fivefold "third part" fences the judgment in: not universal, but the Roman earth, and only part of it.
- Figure — A third of the day going dark is not how a dimmed sun works, which shows the scene is a symbol, not an eclipse.
- Reach — Day and night both go dark. Public order collapses, and private life loses the light it walked by.
- Warning — This judgment strikes men's circumstances, and it ends the milder four. The three woes that follow strike men themselves.