Chapter 9

Another resemblance of the locusts was that “they had faces as faces of men.” This distinguished them from the Goths and other kindred barbarian hordes; the faces of these being noticed by Jerome, who was contemporary with their earliest invasions, as having faces shaven and smooth, like women’s faces. The beard was not always worn by the Romans. From Nero to Hadrian, the imperatorial custom was to have the beard shaven; from Hadrian to Constantine, unshaven; after­wards (with the exception of Julian), down to Phocas, shaven. But the locusts did not shave.

The use of this tormenting Saracen fire constituted the resemblance of the Arabs to scorpion-tailed locusts. Besides this, they had other re­markable “resemblances” in their equipment for war.

The bite or sting of the scorpion is generally fatal. Hence, the power of the locusts was a fatal power. They had scorpion-like tails, and in these tails was some of their power for destruction. But scorpion-like tails and stings were only symbolical of something analogous thereto. In Gibbon, I find the following solution of the mystery. “A Roman knight,” says he, “who despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates his own fears at the sight and sound of the mischievous engines that discharged a torrent of the Saracen fire.

“Locusts,” says Daubuz, “begin to appear in spring, about a month after the equinox, and are only seen at most during five months. They are wont to arise in such vast companies, that they form a kind of cloud which eclipses the sun and darkens the sky; and make so great a noise with their wings as that, according to some, the sound thereof may be heard at six miles distant. Wherever they fall they make a most terrible havoc of all the fruits of the earth; and therefore the people, when they see them flying, are in the greatest consternation.

The sun is here the symbol of the same imperial majesty as that which was darkened in its third by the judgments of the fourth trumpet. The darkened third had recovered its light in the process of re-annexing Italy and Africa to the Byzantine, Greek, or Constantinopolitan, em­pire in the reign of Justinian. The “deadly wound” the Sixth Head had received, had been “healed;” and its affairs restored to order in Italy by the Pragmatic Sanction, A.D. 554. The sun now shining forth, “the third of the day and of the night,” then recovered their brightness.

Until the power of the Prophet-King, or Star, was matured in “the pit of the abyss,” the pit was shut; so that neither “smoke” nor “locusts” could issue forth upon “the earth” to torment and destroy the unsealed. The furnace was roaring with flaming blast in the pit, from which no­thing could come forth until the acquisition of undisputed authority and power by the star.

This leads me to remark, that in these places of the apocalypse, abussos is improperly rendered “bottomless pit.” In Isa.

A key is symbolical of governmental power and authority.

But, before the star was seen by John “in the earth,” it had acquired possession of “the Key of the Pit of the Abyss” — he kleis tou phreatos tes abussou. The pit of the qbyss is the geographical locality of the “smoke,” out of which the locusts issued to invade “the earth.” When the pit was opened smoke arose out of it.

On the sounding of the fifth angel, John saw “a star.” I need not re­peat here what has already been said about stars. The reader is referred to my explanation of the symbols of the third trumpet, the subject of which is the “great star Apsinthos.” The star of the fifth trumpet may also be styled a falling star; or rather, when John saw it in vision, & fallen star.