The four angels of the Euphrates

Bound at the great river and released at an appointed hour to kill a third of mankind, bound like the Watchers and released on a schedule set elsewhere. DDD's Euphrates article (K. van der Toorn) places this in a real ancient Near Eastern cosmology. In Mesopotamian myth the Euphrates is a branch of the primeval cosmic river marking the boundary between the world of the living and the netherworld, the same function it has in Revelation. DDD reads Revelation 9:14 and 16:12 as two expressions of one idea. In 9:14 the river is the boundary between the living and the dead, with four death-dealing angels held there, and in 16:12 its drying up opens a road for "the kings from the east," a phrase DDD suggests may mean rulers of the underworld as well as earthly armies. DDD also points to a close Jewish apocalyptic parallel. In 2 Esdras 13:39-47 the exiled ten tribes cross the narrows of the Euphrates into a far country called Arzareth, "Other Land," and at the end of time "the Most High will stop the channels of the river again" so they can cross back, the same picture of the river as passage to and from the realm of the dead.