Biblion Bible Commentary
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Wormwood, and a Darkened Third
Revelation 8:10-13
10 The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from the sky, burning like a torch, and it fell on one third of the rivers, and on the springs of water. · WEB
A fallen star embitters the waters and a third of every light goes dark, and an eagle cries three woes over the earth-dwellers.
The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from the sky, burning like a torch, and it fell on one third of the rivers, and on the springs of water. The name of the star is "Wormwood." One third of the waters became wormwood. Many people died from the waters, because they were made bitter.
A star falling from heaven is, in this book's own vocabulary, a ruler or angelic power come down — stars are angels by the book's first decoding Revelation 1:20, and the next trumpet will show a fallen star with a key and a name Revelation 9:1 Revelation 9:11; Isaiah's taunt-song watched shining ones fall from heaven before Isaiah 14:12. This star's name is its work: Wormwood — the bitter plant that is Scripture's fixed emblem for apostasy's aftertaste: forsaking God ends in wormwood and gall Jeremiah 9:15 Deuteronomy 29:18, and justice corrupted turns to wormwood Amos 5:7. What the fallen star poisons is the springs — the sources, the headwaters people drink from. Bitterness introduced at the wellsprings — teaching corrupted at its sources — kills downstream: many people died from the waters. The trumpet mourns an era when what should have carried life carried death.
The fourth angel sounded, and one third of the sun was struck, and one third of the moon, and one third of the stars... and the day wouldn't shine for one third of it, and the night in the same way Revelation 8:12.
Egypt's ninth plague Exodus 10:21, rationed to the trumpet-third: light itself struck — the lights God set to rule day and night Genesis 1:16 dimmed by a third. In the prophets, darkened luminaries mark the judgment of an age Joel 2:31 Ezekiel 32:7–8; here the darkness is partial and prolonged — an era of obscured light, seeing by thirds, truth's illumination struck at the same fraction as the waters and the woods. The first four trumpets have struck the creation's four estates — land, sea, freshwater, light — each at warning's depth.
And then the series pauses to change its own register: I saw, and I heard an eagle, flying in mid heaven, saying with a loud voice, "Woe! Woe! Woe to those who dwell on the earth, because of the other blasts of the trumpets of the three angels, who are yet to sound!" Revelation 8:13.
An eagle at the zenith — visible to everyone under heaven — cries a triple woe over those who dwell on the earth: the book's fixed name for mankind aligned against the saints Revelation 6:10 Revelation 13:8. Four trumpets struck things; the last three will strike people. The warning about the warnings is itself mercy: even the woes are announced.
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