Altar. See on ch. viii. 3. 14. In the great river (é7). Rev., more correctly, af.
Euphrates. The Euphrates was known as the great River, the River, the Flood. It rises in the mountains of Armenia, breaks through the Taurus range, and runs south and southeast until it joins the Tigris in lower Babylonia. Its total length is from 1,600 to 1,800 miles, and it is navigable for small craft twelve hundred miles from its mouth. It was the boundary- line of Israel on the northeast (Gen. xv. 18; Deut. i. 7; Josh. i.4. Compare 2 Sam. viii. 83-8; 1 Kings iv. 21). It thus formed the natural defence of the chosen people against the armies of Assyria. The melting of the mountain snows causes an annual flood, beginning in March and increasing until May. These floods became an emblem of the judgments inflicted by God upon Israel by means of Babylon and Assyria. The brook of Shiloah which flowed past Zion and Moriah was a type of the temple and of its mighty and gracious Lord; and the re- fusal of allegiance to God by the chosen people is represented as their rejection of the waters of Shiloah which flow softly, and their punishment therefor by the bringing in of the waters of the mighty and great river (Isa. viii. 5-8; compare Jer. xvii. 18). To the prophets the Euphrates was the symbol of all that was disastrous in the divine judgments.
15. For an hour and a day and a month and a year. This rendering is wrong, since it conveys the idea that the four periods mentioned are to be combined as representing the length of the preparation or of the continuance of the plague. But it is to be noted that neither the article nor the preposition are repeated before day and month and year. The meaning is that the angels are prepared unto the hour appointed by God, and that this hour shall fall in its appointed day and month and year.
16. Of the horsemen (rod fa7mxod). Singular number, like the English the horse or the cavalry.