The Seven Trumpets

This note is interpretation, not translation. It sets out the seven trumpets of chapters 8 to 11: what comes before them, what each one does, where the pictures come from, how the series is built, and how it lines up with the seven bowls. It adds no reading of Jon’s. The reading on the bowls is its companion and carries the same table.

Before a trumpet sounds. The seventh seal opens into silence, “about half an hour” (8:1; Habakkuk 2:20 and Zephaniah 1:7, marked there). Then “the seven messengers who stand in front of God” are given seven trumpets (8:2), and before any of them blows, another messenger offers incense “along with the prayers of all God’s people” on the gold altar (8:3–4; Psalm 141:2, marked), and then fills the censer with fire from the altar and throws it to the earth, “and there was thunder and voices and lightning and an earthquake” (8:5; Ezekiel 10:2 and the sounds of Sinai, marked). The order matters: the prayers go up, the fire comes down, and only then “the seven messengers holding the seven trumpets got ready to blow them” (8:6). The prayer the book has recorded is the one under the altar, “how long … until you judge and avenge our blood?” (6:10). The trumpets are the answer to it.

The seven, one by one.
The first: hail and fire mixed with blood thrown onto the earth; a third of the earth, a third of the trees and all the green grass burned (8:7).
The second: something like a great mountain burning with fire thrown into the sea; a third of the sea blood, a third of its creatures dead, a third of the ships destroyed (8:8–9; Jeremiah 51:25, marked).
The third: a great star falls, burning like a torch, on a third of the rivers and springs; its name is Wormwood, and many die of the bitter water (8:10–11; Jeremiah 9:15, marked).
The fourth: a third of the sun, moon and stars struck, so that a third of the day and night go dark (8:12; Isaiah 13:10, marked).
Then an eagle: “Trouble, trouble, trouble for those living on the earth,” because of the three trumpets still to come (8:13; Hosea 8:1, marked).
The fifth, the first trouble: a star already fallen is given the key to the shaft of the bottomless place; smoke like a furnace darkens the sun; locusts come out with the power of scorpions, told to torment for five months only those without God’s seal, and not to kill (9:1–11; Joel’s army, marked at 9:7–9; Isaiah 14:12, marked at 9:1).
The sixth, the second trouble: a voice from the horns of the gold altar, the four messengers tied at the Euphrates released, two hundred million horsemen, and a third of humanity killed by the fire, smoke and sulphur from the horses’ mouths (9:13–19; Exodus 30 and Genesis 15:18, marked). And then the sentence the series turns on: “the rest of humanity, the ones not killed by these plagues, still did not change their minds” (9:20–21).
The seventh, the third trouble: loud voices in the sky, “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Anointed,” the elders’ thanks, and the temple in the sky opened with the chest of the covenant in view, and lightning, voices, thunder, an earthquake and heavy hail (11:15–19).

Egypt again. Four of the first five trumpets are plagues of Egypt in another order: hail with fire running along the ground (Exodus 9:23–24), water turned to blood so that the fish die (7:20–21), darkness (10:21–22), and locusts that “covered the face of the whole land, and the land was darkened” (10:15), which is what the fifth trumpet’s locusts do with their smoke. The bitter water of the third trumpet turns the first miracle after the sea the other way: at Marah the water was bitter and was made sweet (Exodus 15:23–25); here sweet water is made bitter. The green marker at 8:7 covers the set, and the Bowls reading counts the same plagues a second time.

A third. The word runs through the trumpets, fifteen times between 8:7 and 9:18, and nowhere in chapter 16. A third of the earth, trees, sea, creatures, ships, rivers, sun, moon, stars, day, night, and of humanity. Judgment dealt out in thirds is Ezekiel’s: he is told to burn a third of his hair, strike a third with the sword and scatter a third to the wind (Ezekiel 5:2), because “a third of you will die by plague and famine, a third will fall by the sword, and a third I will scatter to every wind” (5:12; the Greek translation has “a fourth” each time). Zechariah has two thirds cut off and a third brought through the fire and refined (13:8–9, marked at 3:18). The trumpets leave two thirds standing, and the text says why that matters at 9:20: the rest could still have turned.

The three troubles. The eagle divides the seven: four trumpets on the world, then three on its people, each announced as a “trouble” (ouai, 8:13). “The first trouble has passed. Look — two more are still coming after it” (9:12); “the second trouble has passed. Look — the third is coming quickly” (11:14). The first two are armies, the locusts from below and the horsemen from the east. The third is announced and then the seventh trumpet sounds, and what follows is not an army but the kingdom (11:15), with the elders saying, “the nations were angry, and your anger has come, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for giving the reward … and for destroying those who destroy the earth” (11:18). The book does not say in so many words which of those is the third trouble; it says the trouble is coming, and then gives the seventh trumpet.

Between the sixth and the seventh. As chapter 7 stands between the sixth seal and the seventh, chapters 10 and 11 stand between the sixth trumpet and the seventh. A strong messenger with a little scroll swears “that there would be no more waiting: in the days when the seventh messenger is about to sound, when he blows his trumpet, God’s secret will be finished — as he announced to his servants the prophets” (10:6–7; Amos 3:7, marked). John eats the scroll (Ezekiel 3, marked) and is told to prophesy again; the temple is measured and the outer court left to the nations for forty-two months; the two witnesses prophesy, are killed, rise and go up, and a tenth of the city falls (11:1–13). Only then: “the seventh messenger blew” (11:15). The bowls have no such pause.

The trumpets and the bowls, side by side. The two series strike the same seven places in the same order, and the pairing is the kind of thing a reader can check line by line.
First: the trumpet falls on the earth, hail and fire, a third of the earth burned (8:7); the bowl onto the earth, sores on those with the stamp (16:2).
Second: into the sea, a third becomes blood and a third of its creatures die (8:8–9); into the sea, it becomes blood and everything in it dies (16:3).
Third: on the rivers and springs, a third turned bitter (8:10–11); into the rivers and springs, they turn to blood (16:4).
Fourth: the sun, moon and stars, a third darkened (8:12); onto the sun, it scorches people with fire (16:8–9).
Fifth: the shaft of the bottomless place opened, the sun darkened by its smoke, locusts that torment (9:1–6); onto the throne of the animal, its kingdom goes dark, people chew their tongues in pain (16:10–11).
Sixth: the four messengers at the Euphrates released (9:14); onto the Euphrates, it dries up for the kings from the east (16:12).
Seventh: lightning, voices, thunder, an earthquake and heavy hail (11:19); lightning, voices, thunder, the greatest earthquake there has been, and hail the weight of a talent (16:18–21).

Three things differ, and they are the point of the pairing. First, the reach: every trumpet says “a third” (fifteen times between 8:7 and 9:18), and no bowl does; under the bowls the sea is blood entire and “every living thing in the sea died”. Second, the room to turn: after the sixth trumpet the book says “the rest of humanity … still did not change their minds” (9:20–21), and under the bowls it says it twice more, with people insulting God instead (16:9, 16:11, 16:21). Third, only the bowls end: the seventh trumpet brings the kingdom and the opened temple (11:15–19), and the seventh bowl brings “It is done” (16:17), the series of which 15:1 says “with them God’s anger is finished”. Behind both runs the same set of plagues, Egypt’s, which also came in a run and ended at the sea. The shape of the two sevens differs as well: the seals and the trumpets each pause between the sixth and the seventh (chapter 7; chapters 10–11), and the bowls run straight through, with one verse of warning between the sixth and the seventh (16:15). Whether the bowls follow the trumpets in time, or tell the same end again more fully, the text does not say.

The trumpet in the Hebrew scriptures. Four trumpets stand behind these seven. Sinai’s: “the voice of a trumpet, very strong,” before God speaks (Exodus 19:16, 19; marked at 1:10). Jericho’s: seven priests with seven trumpets, and “on the seventh day … at the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets,” the wall fell (Joshua 6:4, 16, 20; the Greek translation of Joshua 6 has shortened these verses, so the Hebrew is cited). The alarm for war: “when you go to war in your land against the enemy who oppresses you, you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, and you will be remembered before the LORD your God” (Numbers 10:9), which is the order of 8:3–6, prayer remembered and then the trumpets. And the day of the LORD: “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy mountain; let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming, it is near” (Joel 2:1; Joel’s locusts are marked at 9:7–9), with Zephaniah’s “a day of trumpet and alarm” (1:16) and Amos’s question, “Is a trumpet blown in a city and the people not afraid? Does disaster come to a city and the LORD has not done it?” (Amos 3:6), the verse before the one marked at 10:7. The jubilee trumpet on the day of atonement (Leviticus 25:9) and the great trumpet that gathers the lost (Isaiah 27:13) are trumpets of release rather than alarm; the seventh trumpet, which brings the kingdom, is nearer to those than to the first six.

The rest of the New Testament. Jesus: “he will send his messengers with a great trumpet, and they will gather his chosen from the four winds” (Matthew 24:31). Paul: “at the last trumpet; for it will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:52), and “the Lord himself will come down from the sky with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in the Anointed will rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). This book never calls its seventh trumpet “the last trumpet”, and Paul’s phrase (hē eschatē salpinx) is not in it; many readers join them, because the seventh trumpet brings the kingdom and the judging of the dead (11:15, 18), and this note reports the join without making it.

What a reader in the first century could have seen — readings people hold, not claims this note makes. The book was first read under or just after Nero (emperor 54–68), and the war between Rome and Judea ran from 66 to 70, so one line of reading, old and still held, sets the trumpets and bowls beside those years. What follows is that reading laid out, with its sources named; everything in it from Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius is outside scripture, and this note identifies nothing. Nero himself is looked for in two places, and both are the Euphrates. The sixth trumpet looses an army from the river (9:14) and the sixth bowl dries it for the kings from the east (16:12); the Euphrates was Rome’s border with Parthia, and after Nero died in June 68 a rumour ran for years that he was alive beyond it and would return with Parthian armies. Tacitus says a counterfeit Nero nearly set Parthia in motion, and tells of one in 69, a slave or freedman who gathered followers and was killed on the island of Cythnus (Histories 1.2; 2.8–9); Suetonius says people went on decorating his tomb and setting up his edicts “as if he were still alive and would shortly return”, and that a pretender twenty years later was backed by the Parthians (Nero 57). Readers who take it this way hear it in “was, and is not, and is to come” (17:8). The third bowl is the other place: it avenges “the blood of God’s people and prophets” (16:6), and Nero’s persecution after the fire of 64 is the first Rome is recorded as making; Tacitus says he fastened the guilt on the Christians, had them covered with the skins of beasts and torn by dogs, crucified, and burned to serve as lamps at night (Annals 15.44). The rest belongs to the war, which began under Nero and ended under Vespasian. For the first trumpet, fire on the land (8:7): Rome burned in July 64, three of its fourteen districts levelled and seven more half-burnt (Annals 15.38–41), and Josephus says Galilee was “all over filled with fire and blood” in 67. For the second, a third of the sea turned to blood and the ships wrecked (8:8–9): after the fight on the lake of Galilee in 67 Josephus writes that “one might then see the lake all bloody, and full of dead bodies”, the shores “full of shipwrecks”, with six thousand five hundred dead (War 3.10.9–10). For the fifth, five months of torment in which people seek death and do not find it (9:5–6): Titus’s siege of Jerusalem ran from Passover to the eighth of Elul in 70, about five months, and Josephus says those in the famine “were very desirous to die” (War 5.3.1; 6.10.1; 6.3.4). For the fifth bowl, the animal’s kingdom darkened (16:10): the year after Nero’s death, 68–69, had four emperors, three civil wars and the Capitol burned by Roman hands (Histories 1.2, 1.11). For the seventh bowl, “the great city was split into three parts” and hail “the weight of a talent” (16:19, 21): Josephus has Jerusalem held by three factions, and the Roman engines throwing white stones “of the weight of a talent” while the watchmen cried “the stone cometh” (War 5.1.4; 5.6.3); and the book itself calls “the great city” the place “where their Lord was crucified” (11:8). For the third bowl’s rivers of blood (16:4), Josephus says the city ran with blood until the fire of the houses was quenched by it (War 6.8.5). The 42 months and 1,260 days of chapter 11 come out near the length of the war, and the count of kings at 17:10, “five have fallen, one is”, lands on Nero or on Galba depending on whether Julius is counted. Josephus also records the portents some readers set beside the fourth trumpet, a star like a sword over the city and a comet for a year (War 6.5.3).

Where that reading stops. Every one of the fourteen fits Egypt’s plagues or the prophets more closely than it fits anything in Josephus: the hail and fire, the blood, the darkness and the locusts are Exodus 7–10, a third is Ezekiel 5’s thirds for Jerusalem’s siege, and a darkened sun and moon is the prophets’ language for the fall of any city, said of Babylon (Isaiah 13:10), of Egypt (Ezekiel 32:7) and of Jerusalem (Joel 2:10). Sieges, fires, famine and blood look alike in every age, which is why a reader in 70, or in 1348, or now, can find a fit, and why a fit is not proof. Five of the fourteen have nothing to match: the third trumpet’s wormwood, the fourth’s darkened lights, the first bowl’s sores, the fourth bowl’s scorching sun, and Armageddon. And the seventh trumpet is the kingdom of the world becoming the Lord’s and the dead being judged (11:15–18), which did not happen in 70; the bowls are called “the last” plagues, in which God’s anger is “finished” (15:1), which is not said of one war. So the first-century reading can hold some of the pieces and not the frame.

Does it repeat? The scriptures give the shape of these judgments as one that answers what people do, and so can come again. Leviticus 26 lays it down four times over: “if after these things you will not listen to me, I will go on to discipline you seven times over for your sins” (26:18, and again 26:21, 24, 28), each round conditional, each harder than the last. Jeremiah 18:7–8 states the rule: “at one moment I speak about a nation and a kingdom, to uproot and pull down and destroy; and if that nation turns from its evil, I relent of the evil I thought to do to it”; Nineveh under Jonah is the worked example (Jonah 3:10). This book keeps that shape inside the plagues: after the sixth trumpet “the rest of humanity ... did not change their minds” (9:20–21), and under the bowls the same is said twice (16:9, 16:11), which is the language of a judgment meant to turn people and not of one fixed in advance; and the plagues of Egypt are used twice over here, at the trumpets and at the bowls, which is itself a repeat. Jesus took Daniel’s abomination, which readers before Him had already seen once, and set it ahead of His hearers (Matthew 24:15), and compared His coming to the days of Noah and of Lot (Luke 17:26–30). So “it has happened before and will again” is scripture’s own way with these pictures. The limit is the one the text sets: it gives the trumpets no ending of their own, and gives the bowls one, “the last”, “it is done” (15:1; 16:17). Whether the trumpets have sounded before, or how many times, the text does not say, and this note does not.

Where the text leaves it open. Whether the trumpets are to be read as events or as pictures, as the plagues of Egypt they are drawn from were events. What the locusts and the horsemen are; the text gives their likeness (9:7–10, 17–19) and their king’s name (9:11, marked) and nothing more. Whether the bowls come after the trumpets or tell the same end again, which the Bowls reading also leaves open. And whether the seventh trumpet and the seventh bowl are one moment, which the shared sounds of 11:19 and 16:18 suggest and the text does not say. The chapter-20 note on this site keeps its silence about the thousand years, and this note keeps it here.