Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Revelation · About this commentary
The Sixth Trumpet
Revelation 9:13-16
13 The sixth angel sounded. I heard a voice from the horns of the golden altar which is before God, · WEB
The command comes from the altar of the prayers, four bound angels are released on a prepared schedule, and the army is counted beyond counting.
The sixth angel sounded. I heard a voice from the horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Free the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates!"
The voice's address is the trumpet-series' signature: it speaks from the horns of the golden altar — the altar of the incense and the prayers, where the whole series was kindled Revelation 8:3–5. The horns were where sacrificial blood was applied Exodus 30:10, the altar's points of atonement and appeal; judgment's next release is commanded from the exact geography of the saints' prayers. The series never forgets what it is: the answer to how long Revelation 6:10.
Free the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates — bound, therefore restrained until now, and restrained at the Euphrates: the great river that was Scripture's northern frontier, the boundary out of which the destroying empires historically came against God's people Isaiah 8:7 Jeremiah 46:10. Assyria and Babylon crossed that water; the river is the Bible's compass-point for invasion permitted as judgment — and the book will return to it when the sixth bowl dries it for the last confederacy Revelation 16:12.
The four angels were freed who had been prepared for that hour and day and month and year, so that they might kill one third of mankind Revelation 9:15.
The schedule-clause is the verse's theology: prepared for the hour and day and month and year — a release calibrated to the calendar's smallest unit. What looks, from inside history, like the random breaking of restraints is, from the altar's side, an appointment kept to the hour. And the fraction holds the series' character even at its darkest: one third — the second woe kills where the fifth trumpet only tormented Revelation 9:5, and still stops at warning's boundary, two-thirds left standing for the repentance the series is aimed at Revelation 9:20.
The number of the armies of the horsemen was two hundred million. I heard the number of them Revelation 9:16.
Two hundred million — myriads of myriads doubled, an army in the vocabulary heaven used for its own hosts Revelation 5:11, counted here on the other side. John heard the number — as he heard the 144,000 Revelation 7:4: the two armies of the book's long war, both mustered by exact count, the sealed and the destroying, and the reader is meant to hold the two censuses side by side.
held with reason What this mark means