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Rev_9:12. These words,[2594] serving as well to conclude Rev_9:1-11 ( Ἡ ΟὐΑῚ Ἡ ΜΊΑ ἈΠῆΛΘΕΝ ), as to point to what follows ( ἸΔΟῪ ἝΡΧΕΤΑΙ , Κ . Τ . Λ .) belong to John’s report, and are not to be taken as the words of the eagle,[2595] or any other heavenly messenger. After the vision just described, John makes prominent that now the one woe of the threefold cry is fulfilled, and accordingly past.
Ἡ ΜΊΑ , cardinal number, that one of the three, as immediately afterwards ἝΤΙ ΔΎΟ . Cf. Rev_6:1.
Ἡ ΟὐΑῚ . The striking feminine form is explained by the fact that the conception of a ΘΛῖΨς is involuntarily substituted for this announced woe.[2596]
ἸΔΟῪ , ἜΡΧΕΤΑΙ ἜΤΙ ΔΎΟ ΟὐΑῚ Μ . Τ . The sing. ἜΡΧΕΤΑΙ contains an hypallage, which is inoffensive since the verb precedes.[2597]
[2594] Cf. Rev_11:14.
[2595] Cf. Rev_8:13.
[2596] Cf. Winer, p. 169.
[2597] Cf. Winer, p. 481.
The allegorical mode of interpretation applies to Rev_9:1 sqq., as everywhere, the most arbitrary expedients, and does the greatest violence to the context, and that, too, alike in the expositors who make their explanations from an overstrained conception of biblical prophecy, no less than in those who in a more or less rationalistic way consider the prophetic visions of John as vaticinia post eventum, and transform them into allegorical outlines of the events of the Romano-Judaic war. The plague of locusts is regarded as heresy only by interpreters of the first class;[2598] as calamities of war, and similar afflictions, by interpreters of both classes.[2599] N. de Lyra, like many others proposing the Arians, interprets the individual chief features thus: the star, Rev_9:1, is the Emperor Valens, “who from the height of Catholic faith fell into the Arian heresy;” the key is the power of exalting this heresy; the locusts are the Vandals whom this heresy infected; the verdure, Rev_9:4, represents the Christians in Africa spared by the Vandals; the five months designate the period of the five Vandal rulers. Stern understands by the locusts all imaginable heretics, down even to the Pantheists and German Catholics of our times. The scorpion-tails indicate that “false doctrine bears its sting in its consequences;” the hair of women admonishes that “many false doctrines, occasioned by inordinate love to women, have almost all been diffused by women, to begin with Helena the associate of Simon Magus, down to the bacchantes of modern times, who, with Ronge and his followers, drank the cup of the Devil, and won admirers for the prophet of Laurahütte.”
[2598] Beda, Andr., Areth., N. de Lyra, Luth., Calov., Boss., Stern, etc.
[2599] Vitr., Beng., Hengstenb., Grot., Wetst., Herd., Eichh.
Many older Protestants understand by the star the Pope; by the locusts the degenerate clergy, viz., the monks of the Catholic Church.[2600] This was, as C. a Lap. says, a retaliation for the interpretation of Bellarmin and other Catholics, that it refers to Luther, Calvin, and the Evangelical Church.
If by the locusts warriors are understood (and even Klief. forces from the passage the ideas of military power and its oppression), expositors like Grot., Wetst., Herd., Eichh., Heinr., find a more minute determination derived from the fundamental view of the entire Apoc. The locusts are the Zealots.[2601] The star is, according to Grot., Eleasar, the son of Ananias; according to Herd., Manaim. The abyss opened by him is, according to Grot., “the seditious doctrine that obedience must not be rendered the Romans,” for ( ΚΑῚ , Rev_9:3 = nam) from this the party of the Zealots arose to the injury of the Jews; according to Herd., “the fortress Masada.” Abaddon is, according to Grot., “the spirit which animated those Zealots;” according to Herder, Simon, the son of Gorion. To Vitr. and Beng., chronology suggests a more minute determination; in the time succeeding the fourth events of the trumpet-vision, something must be found to which the fifth trumpet-vision could be referred. Hence Vitr. conjectured the incursions of the Goths into the Western Roman Empire in the beginning of the fifth century; Beng. understood the persecution of the Jews in Persia in the sixth century. Volkm. understands the army of Parthians to be led by Nero against Rome.[2602] Without any more minute determination, Hengstenb. interprets the fifth trumpet as referring to the distresses of war, and the locusts to soldiers. “One of the many incarnations of Apollyon” was Napoleon, whose name has a “noteworthy similarity” to the name of the king of the locusts.[2603] A special indication will be found in the text, that the locusts are to be understood allegorically. Beda, already, said that such locusts as, according to Rev_9:4, are to eat neither grass nor leaves, could not be actual locusts, but must be men. But Rev_9:4 is with more justice understood by other allegorists as a “figurative” mode of expression; as, e.g., by Bengel, who suggests “a lower, middle, and higher class of the sealed.” Otherwise N. de Lyra, Vitr., etc. If there be an allegory anywhere, every individual feature must be allegorically interpreted. But for this the text itself nowhere gives the least occasion. It cannot even be said, with De Wette, that what is demoniacal in the plague of locusts here portrayed is only to be conceived of as a symbol of their extreme destructiveness; for however seriously and literally the demoniacal nature of these locusts be intended, it follows that they have no power,[2604] even as demoniacal, over the sealed, who remain absolutely untouched[2605] by all the other plagues of the trumpet-visions. The plagues of the one vision are just as literally meant as those of the other, the infernal locusts with the tails of scorpions no less than war, famine, the commotion and darkening of the heavenly bodies. For John beholds a long series of various, and, as a whole, definitely shaped plagues, as foretokens and preparations of the proper parousia. Whoever, then, as Hebart,[2606] expects the literal fulfilment of all these visions, and, consequently, e.g., the actual appearance of the locusts described in Rev_9:1 sqq., it is true, does more justice to the text than any allegorist; but, because of a mechanical conception of inspiration and prophecy, he ignores the distinction between the actual contents of prophecy, and the poetical form with which the same is invested in the enlightened spirit of the prophet, and not without a beautiful play of his holy fantasy.
[2600] Aret., Bull., Laun., etc.
[2601] According to Wetst., the army of Cestius.
[2602] Cf. Rev_9:14.
[2603] Gerken also, who, through an entire series of trifling expedients, puts a forced construction on the name Napoleon, thinks (p. 26) that we may venture to derive it from ἀπόλλυμι , and therefore writes it Napolleon.
[2604] Rev_9:4.
[2605] Cf. Rev_7:1 sqq.
[2606] Die Zweite Sichtbare Zukunft Christi, Erl., 1850.