ful. The same is true of the West Indian scorpion. Thomson says that those of North Africa are sazd to be larger, and that their poison frequently causes death. The wilderness of Sinai is especially alluded to as being inhabited by scorpions at the time of the Exodus (Deut. viii. 15); and to this very day they are common in the same district. A part of the mountains bordering on Palestine in the south was named from these Akrabbim, Akrdb being the Hebrew for scorpion.
4. Green. See on ch. vi. 8.
Men which (av9perrovs oftwes). The double relative denotes the class. Rev., such men as have, etc.
5. They should be tormented (GacanoJacw). See on torments, Matt. iv. 24.
Striketh (waion). Dr. Thomson says that the scorpion can- not strike sideways. All accounts agree as to the fearful pain from its sting.
6. Men. Rather, the men: those tormented.
Shall desire (éwiIupjoovewv). ‘Emi has the force of vehe- mently, earnestly.
Shall flee (fevEeras). Read devyer fleeth. Aischylus says: “ Not justly do mortals hate death, since it is the greatest de- liverance from their many woes” (“ Fragment”). Herodotus relates the address of Artabanus to Xerxes, when the latter wept on beholding his vast armament. “There is no man, whether it be here among this multitude or elsewhere, who is so happy as not to have felt the wish—I will not say once, but full many a time—that he were dead rather than alive. Ca- lamities fall upon us, sicknesses vex and harass us, and make life, short though it be, to appear long. So death, through the wretchedness of our life, is a most sweet refuge to our race” (vii., 46).
REVELATION OF JOHN. 509 7. Shapes (opordpara). Lit., likenesses.
Horses. Compare Joel ii. 4. The likeness of a locust to a horse, especially to a horse equipped with armor, is so striking that the insect is named in German Heupferd hay-horse, and in Italian cavaletta little horse.
Crowns. Not actual crowns, but as crowns. Milligan re- marks that any yellow brilliancy about the head of the insect is a sufficient foundation for the figure.
As the faces of men. There is a distant resemblance to the human countenance in the face of the locust. fen (dv9po- mov) is to be taken not as distinguishing sex, but in the generic sense: human faces.
8. Hair of women. The antenne of the locust. There is said to be an Arabic proverb in which the antenne of locusts are compared to girls’ hair.
Teeth of lions. Compare Joel. i. 6.
9. Breastplates. The breast of the locust resembles the plates of a horse’s armor.
Sound of their wings. Olivier, a French writer, says: “It in difficult to express the effect produced on us by the sight of the whole atmosphere filled on all sides and to a great height by an innumerable quantity of these insects, whose flight was slow and uniform, and whose noise resembled that of rain.” For a graphic description of their numbers and ravages, see Thomson, “Land and Book, Central Palestine and Pheenicia,”
295-302.
Of chariots of many horses. That is, of many-horsed chariots. The Rev., by the insertion of a comma, apparently takes the two clauses as parallel: the sound of charvots, (the
sound) of many horses.