The Morning Star
Hello friends and dissidents!
Today, I wanted to dive into a fascinating piece of imagery in the text and unpack its layers of meaning. It is a part of the Seven Trumpets narrative and it reaches back into the earliest history of Israel, repositioning it squarely in their own context. It is found in Revelation 9:1-6:
“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. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace.”
In this imagery, John describes a star, but it is personified, it seems to be alive. It falls to the earth from the heights of heaven, but when it lands it receives a key to unlock a sinister force upon the earth unleashing all sorts of chaos.
What's going on here?
What was John thinking about here?
And how did his Jewish Christian audience receive this?
With this imagery, John is conjuring up the imagery of the "Morning Star" mentioned in Isaiah, which is often used to refer to the devil in evangelical theology. I remember as a kid in Sunday school, asking my teacher where the devil came from. She read from Isaiah 14:12-15:
“How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.”
Many years later I would come to realized that this passage isn't actually about the devil as I understood it. Rather, Isaiah was writing about King Nebuchadnezzar II, the king of — you guessed it, Babylon! If you have been following along then you know that Babylon is a trope used by the early church to describe the cities of the earth “filled with arrogance, sin, injustice, oppression of God’s people, and idolatry.”1
Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned from 605 to 562 BCE, was the original and ultimate embodiment of the Beast of Revelation. He lived in utter opulence made possible by slave labor, he was famous for his military conquests and extensive building projects, including the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The Falling Star
Isaiah's text, rather than referring to some supernatural being, is a taunt against Nebuchadnezzar's pride and eventual downfall, and in Revelation 9, it is used to help the people envision the eventual fall of Rome, the Babylon of their day.
Nebuchadnezzar aspired to incredible glory and achieved much, but ultimately died. And as if to prove Isaiah’s point, less than 25 years later Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great. Isaiah 14:12-15 symbolizes the oppressive and arrogant nature of Babylonian rulers.
It’s no surprise that we see this imagery echoed in Revelation. John uses Isaiahs imagery of the fall of the morning star to make a statement about Rome, drawing parallels between the ancient Babylonian empire and the current oppressive Roman regime.
In John's vision, the fall of Babylon's king doesn’t end the evil work of Babylon or the Beast. Instead, it opens wide the Abyss, unleashing all sorts of evil which spreads through the world.
And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. 6 During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.
7 The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. 8 Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. 9 They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. 10 They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. 11 They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer). (Re 9:3–11).
He paints a terrifying picture: smoke billowing out, giant locusts with scorpion tails and armor emerging, bringing death and destruction. But there is a tell in verse 7; these creatures that spread throughout the earth and create misery have “human faces,” likely prompting the audience to ponder the human leaders in their world who have become beastly in their treatment of others. John's audience would have recognized this imagery and linked it to their own experiences with Roman oppression.
This is yet another example of dissident writing in the book of Revelation. John seems to be arguing that Rome is the offspring of Babylon, ruled by the same beastly powers that throughout human history have caused destruction, separation, war, genocide, and starvation.
But just as Babylon did not end with the fall of Nebuchadnezzar, neither did it end with the fall of Rome. John wants the Christians in every time to remember that Babylon is timeless, existing even today in the nations in which Christians live around the world. The creatures, the purveyors of Babylons darkness, still wear human faces and we ought to keep our eyes on Jesus so that we can recognize them when they arise.
McKnight, Scot; Matchett, Cody. Revelation for the Rest of Us: A Prophetic Call to Follow Jesus as a Dissident Disciple (p. 44).
Very insightful, as always. Both the rise and the fall of Babylon are timeless, I suppose in this sense we could call it prophetic in the foretelling sense? Had to look up the origins of Christian’s interpreting Isaiah 14 to be about the devil, and ironically Origen, Jerome and Tertullian all thought Lucifer to refer to Satan, contrasted to Cyrillus, Eusebius, Hieronymous who thought it referred to Nebuchadnezzar. Wonder if Enoch had anything to do with it…
And the powerful chain of dissident writing continues… Thanks for this important work!