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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 9:2, smoke from the shaft darkens the sun
The smoke that pours from the Abyss and darkens the sun joins Joel's darkened sun to the land darkened by the locusts of Exodus and the furnace smoke over Sodom.
Revelation 9:2, in every translation this tool compares.
Wildfire smoke can turn noon to dusk, and older people in town remember the last time. When the shaft opens, smoke pours out like smoke from a huge kiln. The sun and the air go dark. Joel says the sun grows dark when the locust army comes. In Exodus the locusts covered Egypt until the land went black. Sodom's ruin rose like kiln smoke too.
The sun goes dark. Joel 2:10 in Greek uses a related verb for sun and moon (syskotazo); John has eskotothe ho helios. The smoke of a furnace (kaminos) rises over Sodom in Genesis 19:28 and over Sinai in Exodus 19:18. In Exodus 10:15 the locusts darken the land.
John's darkness comes from smoke, not from locusts or from God's coming as in Joel. One verb covers the sun and the air. The darkened land of Exodus 10:15 is in the Hebrew; the Greek translation says instead that the land was ruined, a point drawn here. Genesis 19:28 has a furnace's vapor, while Exodus 19:18 has a furnace's smoke, as John does.
Darkness was a sign of judgment in Egypt and in Joel's day of the Lord. Beale reads the smoke as judgment spreading from the demonic world to people on earth. He adds that the darkness stands for the blindness that comes with it. Out of this smoke come the locusts of the next verse.
Not an eclipse or a volcano. The smoke rises from the Abyss, which MacArthur calls the prison of demons, and Beale reads the darkening as a sign of judgment, as in Joel and Exodus.
Beale calls the darkened sun an allusion to the repeated line in Joel 2:10, 31 and 3:15, with Exodus 10:15 partly included, where the locusts darkened the land; the Palestinian Targum on Exodus 10, he notes, says the sun went dark too. Joel's locusts are themselves modeled on Exodus 10, so the two fit. For the smoke he notes that smoke of a furnace is tied to judgment in the Septuagint, at Sodom in Genesis 19:28 and perhaps at Sinai in Exodus 19:18. In the vault's Septuagint, Genesis 19:28 reads atmis kaminou, vapor of a furnace, and Exodus 19:18 kapnos kaminou, smoke of a furnace, John's own words. The Hebrew of Exodus 10:15 says vatechshach haarets, the land grew dark, but the Septuagint has ephthare, the land was ruined; that difference is drawn here. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible notes that locusts could cloud the sky (Joel 2:2, 10). The ESV Study Bible hears the eighth plague and Joel. The CSB Study Bible lists Genesis 19:28, Exodus 19:18 and Joel 2:2, 10. The grade is drawn here: the sun and the smoke each have a clear source, but no single text holds both.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 9:2
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 9:2
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 9:2-3
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references on Revelation 9:2
- Septuagint, Joel 2:10, Exodus 10:15, Exodus 19:18 and Genesis 19:28, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Hebrew text of Exodus 10:15, Miqra according to the Masorah (Sefaria)
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 9:2
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 9:1
