Revelation 9

¹ Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star[*a] that had fallen from heaven on to the earth, and he was given the key to the shaft leading down to the Abyss.[*b]

² When he unlocked the shaft of the Abyss, smoke poured up out of the Abyss like the smoke from a huge furnace[*c] so that the sun and the sky were darkened by it,

³ and out of the smoke dropped locusts which were given the powers that scorpions have on the earth:

⁴ they were forbidden to harm any fields or crops or trees and told only to attack any men who were without God’s seal on their foreheads.

⁵ They were not to kill them, but to give them pain for five months, and the pain was to be the pain of a scorpion’s sting.

⁶ When this happens, men will long for death and not find it anywhere ;[*d] they will want to die and death will evade them.

⁷ To look at, these locusts were like horses armoured for battle[*e]; they had things that looked like gold crowns on their heads, and faces that seemed human,

⁸ and hair like women’s hair, and teeth like lions’ teeth.

⁹ They had body-armour like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings sounded like a great charge of horses and chariots into battle.

¹⁰ Their tails were like scorpions’, with stings, and it was with them that they were able to injure people for five months.

¹¹ As their leader they had their emperor, the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, or Apollyon[*f] in Greek.

¹² That was the first of the troubles; there are still two more to come.

¹³ The sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice come out of the four horns of the golden altar in front of God.

¹⁴ It spoke to the sixth angel with the trumpet, and said, ‘Release the four angels that are chained up at the great river Euphrates’.

¹⁵ These four angels had been put there ready for this hour of this day of this month of this year, and now they were released to destroy a third of the human race.

¹⁶ I learnt how many there were in their army: twice ten thousand times ten thousand mounted men.

¹⁷ In my vision I saw the horses, and the riders with their breastplates of flame colour, hyacinth-blue and sulphur-yellow; the horses had lions’ heads, and fire, smoke and sulphur were coming out of their mouths.

¹⁸ It was by these three plagues, the fire, the smoke and the sulphur coming out of their mouths, that the one third of the human race was killed.

¹⁹ All the horses’ power was in their mouths and their tails: their tails were like snakes, and had heads that were able to wound.

²⁰ But the rest of the human race, who escaped these plagues, refused either to abandon the things they had made with their own hands[*g] – the idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood[*h] that can neither see nor hear nor move – or to stop worshipping devils.

²¹ Nor did they give up their murdering, or witchcraft, or fornication or stealing.