Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Revelation 9:2 - 9:3
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Rev_9:2-3. The smoke arising from the opened well, comparable to the smoke of a great furnace,[2533] was so thick that thereby ( ἐν τ . καπν ., cf. Rev_8:11) the sun and moon were obscured.
ὁ ἥλιος καὶ ὁ ἀήρ is not an hendiadys,[2534] but, according to the more natural view, it is apparent that both, viz., the sun and the air, are darkened by the thick mass of smoke.
καὶ ἐκ τ . καπν . ἐξῆλθον ἀκρίδες εἰς τ . γ . The καπνός , therefore, was not merely an apparent mass of smoke, yet in fact a dreadful swarm of locusts;[2535] but the infernal smoke is the covering under which the miraculous locusts ascend, and from which they “come out,” in order to execute the plagues with which they are commissioned.[2536] Against the force of the words, Klief. explains: “The material for the locusts already existed on earth, but the smoke ascending from hell converts it into locusts.”
καὶ ἐδόθη
οἱ σκορπίοι τῆς γῆς . The power given (cf. Rev_9:5) these locusts corresponds with their form and equipment (Rev_9:10). The τῆς γῆς with οἱ σκορπἱοι does not refer to the distinction, which is here entirely out of place, between land-and sea-beasts,[2537] but to the fact that the locusts are not from the earth; the infernal locusts receive a power like that of earthly scorpions. Hence no allusion should be made[2538] to the statement of Jewish writings, that hell is full of scorpions.
[2533] Cf. Gen_19:28; Exo_19:18.
[2534] “The air, so far as illumined by the sun” (Beng.).
[2535] Vitr., Eichh., Züll., Ebrard.
[2536] Cf. Ewald, De Wette, etc.
[2537] Against Ew. i., without reference to Ew. ii.: “known to men.”
[2538] Ew. ii.