Revelation 9

¹ The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss.

² It opened the shaft of the Abyss, and smoke rose from the shaft like smoke from a huge furnace. The sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the shaft.

³ Out of the smoke came locusts onto the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth.

⁴ They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or any tree, but only the people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.

⁵ They were not allowed to kill them, but only to torment them for five months; and the torment they inflicted was like the sting of a scorpion when it strikes someone.

⁶ In those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.

⁷ The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore what seemed to be crowns of gold, and their faces were like human faces.

⁸ Their hair was like women's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth.

⁹ They had chest armor like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thunder of many horses and chariots charging into battle.

¹⁰ They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails lay their power to harm people for five months.

¹¹ They have a king over them, the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon.

¹² The first woe has passed; two more woes are yet to come.

¹³ The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God.

¹⁴ It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates."

¹⁵ So the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of humankind.

¹⁶ The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million; I heard their number.

¹⁷ This is how the horses and riders appeared in my vision: their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses were like the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and sulfur.

¹⁸ A third of humankind was killed by these three plagues: the fire, the smoke, and the sulfur that came out of their mouths.

¹⁹ For the power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, with heads, and with them they inflicted harm.

²⁰ The rest of humankind, who were not killed by these plagues, still did not turn away from the work of their hands. They did not stop worshiping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk.

²¹ Nor did they repent of their murders, their sorceries, their sexual immorality, or their thefts.