English
And the fifth angel blasted, and I saw a star falling from heaven to the earth, and he was given the key of the abyssal pit. And he opened the abyssal pit and smoke rose from the pit, like a large furnace’s smoke, and the sun and the air were darkened by the pit’s smoke. And locusts went from the smoke onto the earth, and authority was given to them, like the authority of the earth’s scorpions. And it was said to them that they should not injure the earth’s grass, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only the men who do not have God’s seal on their foreheads. And it was allowed that they should not kill them, but they should torture them for five months. And their torture was like a scorpion’s torture when it strikes a man. And in those days men will seek death and will not find it anymore. And they will be eager to die, but death will flee from them.
Interpretation
Like the first four trumpets, the fifth also borrows from the Exodus plagues. The author here applies the typical understanding of a ‘star’ as an angel.
Parallels
Exodus
10.13 So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night; when morning came, the east wind had brought the locusts.
Joel
2.1–2 Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of Yhwh is coming, it is near—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.
1.4 What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.
Sibylline Oracles
2.307–308 They will call death fair, and it will evade them. No longer will death or night give these rest.
Treatise of Shem
2.9 And devils will attack men but will not harm them in any way.
5.8 And the large locust will come and will not subside; but somewhat gradually they will swirl in circles and shrink back together.
8.8 And ulcers will develop within the bodies of men but will not injure them.
Luke
10.18 He said to them, ‘I watched the satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.’
2 Enoch
42.1 And I saw the guardians of the keys of Hades