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" And the sixth angel sounded; and I heard one voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel' which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels that are bound at the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed; which were prepared for (or after the hour and day and month and year to slay the third part of men. And the number of the armies of the horsemen were [two] myriads of myriads:
I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and those that sate on them, having breast-plates of fire, and of jacynth, and brimstone. By the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions: and out of their mouths issued fire, and smoke, and brimstone. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths, and in their tails. For their tails were like to serpents, having heads: and with them they do hurt." Rev. 9:13-19.
I. THE OCCASION, LOCAL ORIGIN OF, AND NATION COMMISSIONED IN, THE SECOND WOE.
AND I heard one voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God; saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels that are bound by the great river Euphrates! And the four angels were loosed: which were prepared . . . . .for to slay the third part of men."
I The thing most observable in the voice here spoken of is the point whence it issued; viz. the four horns of the golden altar of incense. Now, when a voice of command, whether as here for the commissioning of judgment, or as elsewhere for its arrest, proceeded from the throne in the inner temple, from the heavenly Spirit, or from some divinely-sent angel, in cases like these the meaning is plain. It was an intimation that it originated from God.
But what when proceeding (which is more seldom the case) from some other local scene or source? In every such example we shall find, if I mistake not, that the locality whence the voice invocative of judgment proceeded, was one associated with the sin or guilt to be punished. So in the history of Cain, Gen. 4:10; "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground." So in Job's protestation of innocence, 31:38 If my land cry against me' or that the furrows thereof complain; if I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, or caused the owners thereof to lose their life."
So in Habakkuk's denunciation against Babylon, 2:11 "The stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it; Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity:" and, yet again, in the denunciation by St. James, 5:4, against the Jews of his time: "The hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth." One( more in Isaiah 66:6, (an example more exactly parallel with that before us,) we read; "A voice of noise from the city! a voice from the temple! a voice of the Lord that rendereth recompense to his enemies: "and we find, this preceded by an appalling statement of the manner in which not only otherwise had the Jewish citizens done evil against God, but even in the temple itself had provoke, Him, by profaning its holy sacrifices and services. "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that offereth an oblation as if he offered swine's blood: be that burneth incense as if he blessed an idol."
So that in that case the very incense-altar and altar of sacrifice, profaned as they had been by Israel, were scenes of their guilt; and scenes consequently from which, as well as from the city of their iniquitous lives, a voice issued denouncing vengeance against them: " A voice from the city; a voice from the temple; a voice of the. Lord rendering recompense!"
Just similarly, though with an inversion of the reasoning, in the case before us, since a cry was heard announcing and commissioning judgment against the third part of men, from the incense-altar, in the Apocalyptic temple of vision, it was to be inferred that that mystic incense-altar had been a scene of special sin, (whether through profanation or neglect,) on the part of the above- noted division of the men of Roman Christendom.
But this explanation is only partial. The Evangelist does not in mere general phrase describe the voice as issuing from the incense altar, but specifically from the four horns of it: "I heard one voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God." It would seem therefore as if there had been guilt contracted, in respect of some such particular ritual as these horns of the altar were one and all alike concerned in. And what, we inquire, the rites of this character?
I believe there were just three services in the Mosaic ritual, and only three, in which, agreeably with the divine injunction, this altar's horns were thus used. The two first were the occasional atoning services for sins of ignorance, when brought to light, either of the priests as priests, or of the people collectively as a people; the third that of the stated and solemn annual atonement, for the sins both of priests and people, on the great day of expiation.1
Thus the object of the three services was similar: and, with the exception of what was peculiar to the great day of atonement, in the High priest's entering into the Holy of Holies and the rite of the scapegoat, there was much of similarity in the ceremonials. In each case the hands of the party seeking reconcilement and forgiveness were to be laid on the head of the victim, and his sins told over it; then, after the sacrifice of the animal victim, its blood to be sprinkled by the priest seven times before the veil of the sanctuary, and then some of the blood to be put upon the horns of the altar of incense.
So was an atonement to be made for the sins of the transgressors, especially for their sins in respect of holy things; and so it was promised that their sins should be forgiven them, and that the holy place, tabernacle, and altar should be cleansed from the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and reconciled. It was thus that king Hezekiah, with all solemnity and earnestness, made atonement for Israel, after its notable apostasy under the reign of his father Ahaz.
For they had, both priests and people, for years previous, forsaken the house and altars of the Lord, and sacrificed and burnt incense to other gods in every city of Judah; in spite alike of severe national chastisements, sent to bring their sin home to them, and of the remonstrance's of Isaiah and other holy prophets. But, this rite of atonement having performed, the promised reconciliation with God followed.
From the temple, and altar, and each blood- bedewed horn of the altar, a voice as it were went forth, not of judgment, but of mercy; of mercy through Him whose expiatory blood-shedding, and its application by Himself to purify and to reconcile, the whole ritual of atonement did but combine to typify.
Instead of summoning destroying armies against Judah from the Euphrates, it staid them, when thence advancing to its invasion under Sennacherib: (thus direct was the contrast between Israel's case under Hezekiah, and that of Christendom as here figured in the Apocalyptic vision): it staid them, I say; and, with authority not to be resisted, bade them back. Such were the particulars common in these three rites of atonement; and with their real and spiritual meaning, just as with that of the rest of the Levitical ritual, St. John, we know, like his beloved brother Paul, was well familiar.
It was by this knowledge that he had been prepared to understand the intimations given-from time to time, respecting the religious state of the Christian Church, in the mute but significant language of what was enacted on the Apocalyptic temple-scene: specially, for instance, how at the time correspondent with the first preparing of the trumpets of judgment, the large majority in Roman Christendom would have forsaken the great High Priest of their profession, in respect of his connection with either altar; in other words both as their atoner for sin, and as their intercessor, mediator, and offerer of their incense of prayer, on the golden incense altar before God.
And now then, when, after the judgments of five successive trumpets against them, he heard a voice denouncing judgment yet afresh from the four horns of the golden altar, that altar which was appropriated to the true priest's offering the true incense, those horns of which the one and only use was in the rite of reconciliation for a transgressing priesthood and people, what could he infer from the figure but this, that in spite of the fearful previous rebukes of their apostasy from heaven, neither the priesthood nor the collective people, at least of this third of Christendom, would have repented and returned; but the offer, the means provided, and critical occasion of respite given for reconcilement, been let to pass unimproved and unheeded.
More particularly, as the rite had special reference to the sins connected with the incense-altar itself, it was to be inferred that those sins would be persisted in: to wit the abandonment of Christ, in his character of the one great propitiatory atonement, for other kinds of proprietary merit; and in his character of High Priest over the house of God, for other intercessors and mediators; just as we have seen was the very fact throughout the previous times of the Saracen woe thus the sin would be graven even on the four horns of the golden altar; and their one and common voice, or that of the intercessor High Priest himself from the midst of them, forced to pronounce the fresh decree of judgment, "Loose the four angels to slay the third part of men!"
Such, I say, as it appears to me, would be his interpretation of the voice in question.2 Issuing from the points whence it did, I think there could be no other meaning put upon it, accordantly with the spirit of the Levitical ritual: as also that no other imaginable typical action on the temple-scene could so accordantly with that spirit, and at the same time so simply and definitely, have intimated the important fact.
And alas! if the intent of the prefiguration was thus clear to St. John, there were answering facts in the religious character and state of Greek Christendom, at the time we speak of, equally clear to the discerning Christian.
The offered opportunity for repentance and reconcilement, in regard more particularly of those crying sins against Christ of which I have been speaking, did pass unheeded. Neither the bitterness of the former woe, nor the taunts of the Islamic foes, nor the reclamations of their own iconoclastic princes, or of certain purer witnesses for Christ amongst them, had the effect of bringing home a sense of their sin either to the priesthood or people.
The guilt of inveterate antichristian apostasy was fixed upon them. It was stamped on their ritual-worship. It was stamped on their hearts. It was stamped, and continued to be stamped, on their very coinage. Witness the specimens here set before the reader; a visible memorial of the fact that has been preserved to our own later age.
1On the rite of atonement for the priest's sins of ignorance see Lev.4: 3-7 on that for the people's, ib. 13-18; on that of the great day of atonement, Lev. 16:1-18 The original command of the last mentioned rite was given in Exod. 30:10. It had been previously said, with reference to that part of the usual ritualistic service with which the incense-altar was associated, "Aaron shall bum sweet incense thereon every morning,.. and at even;.. a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.
Ye shall offer no strange incense thereon." So that three points were herein enforced; the offering morning and even, the doing it by the Aaronic priesthood, and the offering sweet incense; besides what was added elsewhere, (Lev. 10:1, 2,) using fire from the great altar of sacrifice: in any of which points there might be transgression. Then it is added, verse 10; "And Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it, once in a year, with the blood of the sin offering of atonements: once in the year shall he make atonement upon it through out your generations. It is most holy unto the Lord."
2 Daubuz, alone of the commentators that I have seen, explains the passage under consideration by reference to these Jewish rites of atonement. But he does not particularize the special sin connected with the altar of incense. He at the same time supposes a reference to the horns of the altar, as a place of refuge for criminals. But in this supposition he seems to be in error. It was the horns of the altar of sacrifice, not of the altar of incense, that were thus used. See I Kings i. 50-53; where the expression " brought down from it" implies height and ascent.