Revelation — Chapter 8

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: After the pause of chapter 7, the Lamb opens the seventh and last seal. Instead of a final blast, there is silence. Then a new series of seven begins: seven trumpets, which run through 11:19. Like the seals, the trumpets come in a pattern of four and three. The first four strike the natural world (this chapter). The last three, announced as "woes," strike people directly (chs 9 and 11). Like the seals, they also pause before the seventh (10:1–11:14). The trumpets are modelled closely on the plagues of Egypt: hail and fire, water turned to blood, darkness. As in Exodus, they are meant to show that the world's gods are powerless and to call people to repent (9:20–21).

How the trumpets relate to the seals, and to what, is read differently:

• Futurists (Guzik) usually take the trumpets as real future judgments in the tribulation, following the seals in time, often coming out of the seventh seal.
• Historicists like Henry read them as stages of history: the barbarian invasions that broke the Roman Empire, then the rise of false teaching and of "antichrist."
• Preterists connect them with the Roman war against Judea in AD 66–70, or with disasters of the first century.
• Idealists, and many who see the seals, trumpets and bowls as overlapping cycles, take the trumpets as God's warning judgments throughout the age, telling the same story again with rising intensity: a fourth in the seals, a third here, everything in the bowls.

All agree that God hears his people's prayers and answers with justice.

The Seventh Seal and the Golden Censer (vv1–5)

• "When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour" (v1). After the ceaseless songs of chapters 4–7, everything stops. The prophets call for silence before God comes to judge: "Be silent before the Lord GOD! For the day of the LORD is near" (Zeph 1:7; Hab 2:20; Zech 2:13). Jewish tradition also held that heaven fell silent so that the prayers of God's people could be heard, which fits vv3–4. It may also recall the quiet in the temple when the priest went in to offer incense (Luke 1:10). Half an hour is a short time, but in a heaven filled with constant worship it is a long and awful pause.
• What the seventh seal contains. Nothing seems to happen except silence, and then the trumpets begin. Many readers conclude that the seventh seal contains the seven trumpets, much as the seventh trumpet then opens onto the seven bowls. Others see the silence as the end of the age itself, after which the story is told again from a new angle.
• "The seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them" (v2). "The" seven angels suggests a known group. Jewish writings of the time named seven archangels who stood before God (Tobit 12:15, where Raphael calls himself "one of the seven holy angels"; 1 Enoch 20). Gabriel says he "stand[s] in the presence of God" (Luke 1:19). Trumpets in Israel called the people together, sounded the alarm for war, marked feasts and announced a new king (Num 10:1–10; 1 Kings 1:34). They also announce the day of the Lord (Joel 2:1; Zeph 1:16). At Jericho, seven priests with seven trumpets circled the city seven times before the walls fell (Josh 6).
• "Another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer" (v3). A censer was a firepan for carrying burning coals, on which incense was sprinkled. The scene is the heavenly version of the daily incense offering in the temple, at the golden altar just in front of the Holy of Holies (Exod 30:1–8). Readers differ on who this angel is: - Christ as the great high priest who presents his people's prayers (Heb 7:25; 8:1–2). Henry holds this view. - An ordinary angel serving in heaven's temple. JFB holds this, because Christ in Revelation is always named with one of his own titles. The word "another" (allos) normally means another of the same kind. The lexicon supports that general distinction, though it is not something to press too hard.
• "Much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints" (vv3–4). "Saints" means all God's holy people, not a special class. "Let my prayer be counted as incense before you" (Ps 141:2). In 5:8 the elders hold bowls of incense, "which are the prayers of the saints." The prayers here are above all the martyrs' cry of 6:10: "how long before you will judge and avenge our blood?" The smoke rising "before God" means those prayers reach him and are accepted.
• "The angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth" (v5). The same coals that carried the prayers up now come down as judgment. It recalls Ezekiel 10:2, where burning coals from between the cherubim are scattered over Jerusalem. The point is startling and encouraging: the prayers of ordinary believers are part of how God moves history to its end.
• "Peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake" (v5). These are the signs of Sinai, when God came down on the mountain (Exod 19:16–18). In Revelation they come from the throne (4:5) and come again, each time stronger, at the end of each series of judgments (11:19; 16:18). Many see that repeated "signature" as a clue that the seals, trumpets and bowls each end at the same place, the final judgment.
• Commentators: Henry calls the half hour "a silence of expectation; great things were upon the wheel of providence." He thinks it "very probable that this other angel is the Lord Jesus, the high priest of the church," and writes, "The prayers of the saints come up before God in a cloud of incense." JFB disagrees on the angel: "not Christ, as many think; for He, in Revelation, is always designated by one of His proper titles." It adds, "The saints themselves are priests; and the angels in this priestly ministration are but their fellow servants." JFB compares the silence to the hush in the temple during the incense offering. Guzik leaves the angel's identity open. He reads the silence chiefly as awe before judgment, and he presses the point that prayer helps bring the end, citing Daniel 9 and the idea of "hastening" the day of God in 2 Peter 3:12. The Tyndale notes add that the silence may echo God's rest on the seventh day of creation.

The Seven Trumpets (vv6–13)

• "The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood" (v7). This is the seventh plague on Egypt, when hail and fire ran down to the earth (Exod 9:23–25), with blood added (Joel 2:30). A third of the earth, the trees and "all green grass" are burned. Later the locusts are told not to harm "the grass of the earth" (9:4). Futurists take that as regrowth over time. Others see each vision as its own picture, not a strict timeline.
• "A third" (vv7–12). The phrase appears twelve times in these verses. Ezekiel divided his hair into thirds as a sign of judgment (Ezek 5:1–4, 12), and Zechariah speaks of two-thirds cut off and a third left (Zech 13:8–9). A third is serious but limited. God's judgment has begun but has not reached its full measure. The seals touched a fourth (6:8). The bowls will touch everything (ch 16). At every stage the restraint is mercy, leaving room to repent.
• "Something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood" (v8). This is the first Egyptian plague, the Nile turned to blood (Exod 7:20–21). "Something like" warns that John is describing what the vision looked like. In Jeremiah 51:25 Babylon is called a "destroying mountain" that God will make "a burnt mountain." John's first readers may also have thought of Mount Vesuvius, which erupted in AD 79, buried Pompeii and darkened the bay of Naples. Pliny the Younger described the eruption in two letters.
• "A third of the ships were destroyed" (v9). For a church in port cities like Ephesus and Smyrna, ships meant food, trade and livelihood. Rome itself depended on grain ships from Egypt. When God strikes the sea, the whole economy of the empire shudders (compare 18:17–19).
• "A great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch… The name of the star is Wormwood" (vv10–11). Wormwood (apsinthos, the plant behind the word "absinthe") is a shrub with a very bitter taste. In Scripture it stands for bitterness and judgment. God says of idolatrous Israel: "I will feed this people with bitter food [wormwood], and give them poisonous water to drink" (Jer 9:15; 23:15; Deut 29:18; Lam 3:19). At Marah, God made bitter water sweet for his people (Exod 15:23–25). Here the reverse happens to those who refuse him. "Many people died" is the first time a trumpet is said to kill people.
• "A third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars" (v12). This is the ninth plague, the darkness over Egypt (Exod 10:21–23), and the day-of-the-Lord darkness of Amos 8:9 and Joel 2:10. The lights made on the fourth day of creation (Gen 1:14–19) are struck by the fourth trumpet. Creation itself begins to come undone. The verse can be read as dimmer light or as darkness for a third of each day and night. Guzik prefers the second.
• How literally to take the first four trumpets. - Guzik insists on a real, physical reading. He argues that readings which turn everything into symbols often end up meaning nothing. He suggests the burning mountain and the star could be an asteroid or a comet, though he says the method matters less than the fact that God sends it. - Henry, following the scholar Joseph Mede, reads them historically: the Gothic invasions of the empire about AD 395, the repeated sacking of Rome, and a "falling star" such as a heretical teacher corrupting the springs of doctrine. - The Tyndale notes take the star and the thirds as symbolic. The message is that judgment over the whole physical world has begun. - Preterists link the scenes with the devastation of Judea in the Jewish war.

Whichever view is taken, the Exodus pattern stands: as with Pharaoh, God strikes the things people depend on and worship, so that they will know he is the Lord.

• "I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead" (v13). "Directly overhead" is literally "in mid-heaven," the highest point of the sky, where everyone could see and hear. The best early manuscripts read "eagle." Later ones, followed by the King James Version, read "angel." The two words look alike in Greek. The eagle may recall the fourth living creature (4:7), or the eagle or vulture as a sign of coming disaster: "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather" (Matt 24:28; Hos 8:1).
• "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth" (v13). "Woe" (ouai) is a cry of grief and doom. The Tyndale notes point out that it even sounds like an eagle's screech. Three woes for three trumpets still to come. "Those who dwell on the earth" in Revelation always means people who belong to this world and oppose God (3:10; 6:10; 13:8), not believers. The last three trumpets will be worse than the first four.
• Commentators: JFB sums up the pattern: "The common feature of the first four trumpets is, the judgments under them affect natural objects," while the woe-trumpets "affect men's life with pain, death, and hell." On v8 it reads "not literally a mountain: a mountain-like burning mass." On v13 it prefers "an eagle," the reading of the oldest manuscripts, and treats it as a sign of judgment. Henry, as a historicist, says the trumpets "are designed to represent the rise of antichrist, some time after the empire became Christian." Following Mede, he takes the second trumpet to mean the city of Rome, "five times sacked by the Goths and Vandals." He reads v13 with the King James "angel" and says the three woes show "how much the calamities coming should exceed those that had been already." Guzik notes that the first four trumpets hit the basics of life: food, water and light. He sees mercy in their being partial. They are a call to turn to God while there is still time. He mentions the historical identifications of the star, such as Attila or Arius, only to set them aside.

Pointing to Christ

The trumpets are terrible, but they begin in a place of prayer. The cries of God's suffering people rise like incense before the throne, and the judgments that follow are God's answer to them. Behind the scene stands the Lamb who opened the seal and the High Priest who "always lives to make intercession" for his people (Heb 7:25). As at the Exodus, these plagues expose the world's false gods and call people to the true one. The God who struck Egypt also brought his people out through the blood of a lamb. The warning trumpets are severe, and they are also a summons to come to him before the last trumpet sounds.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik covers the silence, the prayers/fire connection, each trumpet judgment, and the three woes announcement.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Revelation -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

Links open on the publisher's own site. Nothing here is reproduced on this page.

Reflection

• Silence Before Judgment (v.1) — After the ceaseless worship of chapters 4-5, heaven falls silent for half an hour as judgment approaches. Do you treat God's coming judgment with the same weight and seriousness heaven does?
• Prayers That Trigger Action (vv.3-4) — The prayers of God's people are offered with incense before the throne, and what follows is fire cast down to earth. Do you pray as though your prayers actually move God to act?
• Judgment That Leaves Room (vv.7-12) — Each of the first four trumpets strikes only a third of the earth, sea, rivers, and sky — severe, but not total. What does God's restraint here tell you about His patience toward a world still given the chance to repent?
• Worse Still to Come (v.13) — An angel announces three woes still ahead, warning that the worst of the judgments haven't arrived yet. Does the certainty of coming judgment create any urgency in how you share the gospel with others?