വ്യാഖ്യാനം നിലവിൽ ഇംഗ്ലീഷിൽ മാത്രമേ ലഭ്യമാകൂ. മലയാള പരിഭാഷ പുരോഗമിക്കുകയാണ്.
Revelation 9 — They Repented Not
The fifth angel sounds — a star fallen, the key to the bottomless pit. Smoke rises; locusts come forth with power as scorpions. They torment those without God's seal five months — men shall seek death, and shall not find it. Their king is Abaddon, Apollyon. The sixth angel — loose the four angels at Euphrates; an army of two hundred million; a third of men killed. And yet the rest of the men repented not of the works of their hands — devils, idols, murders, sorceries, fornication, thefts.
“And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:”
— Revelation 9:20
- v.1-12 The fifth trumpet — locusts from the pit
- v.13-19 The sixth trumpet — the army of horsemen
- v.20-21 They repented not
Two names for the destroyer — Hebrew and Greek. He is named because he is real. Revelation does not allow spiritual evil to remain abstract; it has a king.
Even this king is given the key (v.1); he does not seize it. The devil's power throughout Revelation is permitted, not autonomous. The throne is still on top.
The most chilling verse in Revelation's middle. After horrendous judgments, men repented not. The hard heart can survive disaster; the soft heart can repent at the smallest mercy.
A warning to every reader. Do not assume future disaster will bring you to repent if today's grace does not. The same heart that resists kindness resists thunder.
Verse 20 is a warning to today's reader. Do not bank on tomorrow's harder providence to break what today's gentler grace cannot. The heart that resists kindness will resist plague. Repent now, while the door is comparatively wide.
Revelation 9 shows the world without Christ's restraining hand. The horror is not the strangeness of judgment; it is the hardness of unrepentant hearts under it. The chapter is a long argument for the urgency of the gospel — Christ's saving work is the only door that does not close.
A horror inversion. The death that ordinarily comes to relieve suffering will withdraw. The world that built itself on autonomy from God will discover what the absence of His protective hand finally feels like.
The verse refutes any romance with non-existence. Those who imagined death as escape will find that the One who holds the keys of death (1:18) does not yield them to despair.