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Rev_8:7-12. The first four trumpets are expressly distinguished by Rev_8:13, from the last three. The instrument with which the terrible war alarm[2458] and signals of various other kinds are given[2459] is employed by the seven angels to signalize a series of threatening signs preceding the judgment which is to enter at the coming of the Lord; but just as from the opened seals the impending visitations themselves come forth, so from the trumpets—the comparison of which, in other respects, with the sevenfold trumpet-blasts before Jericho is very remote[2460]—not a mere sound, which could give the signal for the expected horrors, but in consequence of the trumpet-blast, the very things themselves to be announced are presented to the gazing prophet. This is not acknowledged by those interpreters who have imagined that while the good angels, whose trumpet-tones through evangelical preachers like Hus, Luther, etc., from the time of the apostles until the end of the world have not been silenced, call to Christ, a conflict is raised by Satan, who cast (Rev_8:7) hail and fire (i.e.; erroneous doctrine) upon the earth, so that the trees (i.e., the teachers of godliness) and the grass (i.e., ordinary Christians) are injured.[2461]
Other distorted explanations, as the opinion of Bengel, that the prayers of the saints (Rev_8:3 sqq.) and the trumpets of the angels are contemporaneous, and the conjecture of Ebrard, that the first six trumpets occur before the sealing of ch. 7,[2462] or,—as the subject also is changed,—that “the sealing in reference to the first four trumpet-visions is intended to represent only a relation, but in reference to the last three, an event,”[2463]—are decided already by the general remarks on ch. 7 and on Rev_8:1. Arbitrary interpretations of this kind necessarily accompany the effort to derive the “meaning” of the trumpet-visions from allegorizing.
[2458] Job_39:25.
[2459] Cf. Winer, Rwb., ii. 147: Musikal. Instrum.
[2460] Vitr., Rinck, Hengstenb., etc.
[2461] Aret., Zeger, etc.
[2462] p. 311.
[2463] p. 581.