The fifth angel trumpeted, and I saw a star from the sky that had fallen to the earth. The key to the shaft of the abyss was given to him. He opened the shaft of the Abyss, and smoke ascended from the shaft, like the smoke from a great furnace. The sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke from the shaft. Then out of the smoke locusts came on the earth, and power was given to them like the power the scorpions of the earth have. They were told that they should not damage the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only those humans who don’t have God’s seal on their foreheads. It was given to them not to kill them, but to torture them for five months. Their torture was like the torture of a scorpion when it strikes a human. In those days humans will seek death, but they will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.
The form of the locusts resembled horses prepared for war. On their heads were something like golden crowns, and their faces were like human faces. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like those of lions. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of many chariots and horses rushing into war. They have tails with stingers resembling those of scorpions, and their power to injure humans for five months is in their tails. They have over them as king the angel of the Abyss. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, he has the name Apollyon.
The first woe has passed. Look, there are still two woes coming after these things.
The sixth angel trumpeted. I heard a sound from the horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “You must free the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates!”
The four angels who had been prepared for that hour and day and month and year were freed so that they could kill one third of the humans. The number of the soldiers on the horseback was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard the number of them. This is how I saw the horses and those who sat on them in the vision: They had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfurous yellow, and the horses’ heads were like lions’ heads. Out of their mouths proceed fire, smoke, and sulfur. By these three plagues, one third of the humans were killed: by the fire, the smoke, and the sulfur, which proceeded out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, because their tails, which resemble serpents, have heads with which they do harm.
The rest of the humans, who were not killed in these plagues, did not repent from the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, but which cannot see, hear, or walk. They did not repent of their murders, their magic drugs, their sexual immorality, or their thefts.