Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Revelation 9:5

Revelation 9:5. While ‘men' are thus the object of the locust plague, its violence is even as to them restrained. And it was given them that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months. The killing of men is reserved for a still higher stage of judgment, under the sixth trumpet. In the meantime torment alone is to be inflicted, but that of a kind most painful and acute, as the torment of a scorpion when it striketh a man. The locust is generally said to have no sting (see below). Here, therefore, in order to bring out the terror of the plague, it has the sting of the scorpion assigned to it (comp. Deuteronomy 8:15; Ezekiel 2:6). The time during which the torment is to be inflicted is ‘five months,' and the explanation most commonly accepted is, that five months are the period of the year during which locusts commit their ravages. The explanation is improbable, because (1) There is no sufficient proof that five months is really the duration of a locust-plague. Such a plague is rather short and swift; (2) It is out of keeping with the style of the Apocalypse to give literal periods of time; (3) On the supposition that five months are the ordinary duration of a locust-plague, the ravages here referred to are committed during the whole time to which the plague naturally belongs; whereas the period of five months is named for the sake of showing that the plague is checked. We must, therefore, apply the same principle of interpretation as in chap. Revelation 8:1. Five is the half of ten: it denotes a broken, imperfect, limited, shortened time. The type of the period spoken of may perhaps be found in the Deluge, which lasted for five months.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Revelation 9:5

Old Testament

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