The Roman army was a very sizeable and mighty force to reckon with. They were noted for how swiftly they were able to mobilize their military forces and bring them to the battlefield. The locusts are compared with the war horse in Revelation 9:7, which are mentioned again in Joel 2, concerning a day of darkness and thick clouds (cf. Revelation 9:2), when a mighty army comes as horsemen in battle (Joel 2:2-4). Any Jew who was acquainted with the Scriptures would have understood that his only hope in gaining victory over such a military machine was, if God would take his side against the Roman oppressor. Nevertheless Jesus and his disciples through their preaching the Gospel claimed this would be a time of judgment against his people. Now, all the Jews could do was wait for the battle to come to them. They rejected their only Savior, so they faced the greatest war-machine of their day without any hope of victory (Luke 23:29-30; cf. Revelation 6:16).
Centuries earlier, the Lord, speaking to Job, mentioned the courage of the horse in the time of war:
Have you given the horse might? Have you clothed his neck with a quivering mane? Have you made him to leap as a locust? The glory of his snorting is awesome. He paws in the valley, and rejoices in his strength. He goes out to meet the armed men. He mocks at fear, and is not dismayed, neither does he turn back from the sword. The quiver rattles against him, the flashing spear and the javelin. He eats up the ground with fierceness and rage, neither does he stand still at the sound of the trumpet. As often as the trumpet sounds he snorts, ‘Aha!’ He smells the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting (Job 39:19-25).
One is given pause with such a vivid picture of the love of war. Such was the attitude of the Roman army. The crown mentioned in Revelation 9:7 is the same as the victor’s crown in (1Corinthians 9:25), which was often given to the athlete who was victorious in his competitive games. The sense in Revelation 9:7 seems to be that the Roman military force that the Jews expected to come against them was one that had been highly trained and already victorious in previous battles, as, indeed, Vespasian’s armies were. As it pertains to faces of men, the countenance of these “locusts” was that of men, which, no doubt, refers to the Roman army, intelligent, well trained and experienced in battle. Josephus gives us a very dramatic portrait of the daily training the Roman soldier exercised in an effort to become the world’s most proficient killing machine.[1] It was these locusts, who were coming against an untrained, inexperienced and ill-equipped Jewish defense force. Why wouldn’t the Jews be in a state of fear?
John adds that the locusts had hair like women, but teeth like lions (Revelation 9:8). Again, this is symbolic language. There simply are nothing in the Lord’s creation that would resemble the locusts described in this chapter. Locusts fly, but they don’t have heads like men, nor do they have teeth like lions. They eat vegetation but don’t have tails like scorpions, which they use to attack men. So, the descriptions we find here means something other than the literal appearance we find here.
Whether or not the Romans had hair like women is not the point, but a woman’s long hair described something about them. Paul tells us that the hair of a woman is given her for her glory and for a covering (1Corinthians 11:15). A covering has to do with submission. When Absalom performed a successful coup against his father, David retreated up Mount Olivet with his head covered (2Samuel 15:30), mourning and to show his submission to the will of God. The woman’s long hair expresses her submission to her head, the man (1Corinthians 11:7, 10). In the context of Revelation 9:8 the hair of the woman expresses the locusts’ submission to their king (cf. Revelation 9:11), pointing to the Roman army’s submission to their leader, Vespasian, because real locusts have no king (Proverbs 30:27).
The fact that these locusts are described as having teeth like lions is an obvious reference to Joel 1:4, 6. There a great and destructive nation was coming against Jerusalem, and they are described as having teeth like lions. John continues to describe these locusts as having breastplates of iron and their sound is like that of horses and chariots charging in battle (Revelation 9:9), which is another obvious reference to the prophecy of Joel (Joel 2:5-8), showing the effectiveness of their training and their experience in warfare.
Thus, the Roman military machine prepared for the war, while the Jews retreated to the walled cities, the caves and the mountain fortresses, hoping that such a strategy would be enough to wear out and defeat their oppressive enemy.
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[1] Josephus: Wars of the Jews; 3.5.1; see also an excellent comment below by one of my readers.
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2 responses to “The Locusts Prepare for Battle!”
Hi Eddie,
Just a note about the “hair like women” description of these locusts, as well as the “crowns like gold” upon their heads in Revelation 9:7-8. These are a description of the Roman soldier’s helmets, which were known for their crests of horsehair (called a “crista”), mounted like a brush in a frame on top of the helmet. These horsehair embellishments were of varying lengths, and so could have easily been compared to the hair of women. Romans copied this horsehair feature from the Greek helmets, and it was originally worn by every soldier. Later on after Gaius Marius’ military reforms, they were reserved for officers’ use, probably to denote rank, and to be identifiable on the battlefield.
If you google a picture of the typical Imperial Gallic G helmet, you will also see the bronze band across the forehead of those helmets, which quite literally looks like the “crown of gold” that Revelation 9:7 mentions. There were fragment samples of this type of helmet found in the rubbish pits of Colchester, reassembled and put in Colchester’s Castle Museum, that can verifiably be dated to the revolt of Queen Boudica in AD 61 during Nero’s reign. That means this helmet style would have been in vogue during the AD 66-70 era of the Jewish/Roman war.
It’s my belief that this particular 5-month torment by the “locusts” was meant to symbolically mimic the natural 5-month period in Israel when real locust swarms typically made an appearance – from April/May to August/September. In real time historically, it matched the approximate 5 months in AD 66 when the oppressive treatment by the overbearing Roman governor Florus deliberately goaded the Jews into the rebellion. This 5 months of tormenting treatment of the Jews by the troops under Florus came to a head in August of AD 66, when Eleazar the governor of the temple convinced the priests to cease offering the daily sacrifice for Rome and its emperor. At that very season, the Roman troops in the Antonia fortress were attacked, as well as the Roman troops at Masada, thus launching the Jewish/Roman war in earnest.
The beginning of this 5 months is noted in Josephus Wars 2.14.3, when at the feast of unleavened bread, the Jews asked the visiting Cestius Gallus (who was making a census of the people at Passover for Nero) to bring them some relief from governor Florus’ treatment. Even though Florus laughed at the Jews, Gallus assured them that he would curb Florus’ calamitous rule. However, once Gallus had left Jerusalem, Florus not only continued to harass the Jews, but he deliberately multiplied his efforts to irritate them, in order to force them into a rebellion to defend themselves.
So, in the 5 months of time between the Feast of Unleavened Bread at Passover until August of AD 66, Florus’ Roman troops were encouraged to oppress the Jews freely, which resulted in officially launching the rebellion by the murder of the Romans at the Antonia Fortress and at Masada, as well as cutting off the “daily sacrifice” in the temple for Rome and the emperor.
The main emphasis in Revelation 9:5 on the activity of these “locusts” was “NOT to kill” men at that point, but to render them absolutely miserable, which Florus and his Roman troops certainly did accomplish during that 5 months in AD 66.
Greetings Patrica and thank you for this comment. I like it and fully endorse its first half. As far as the five months is concerned, I still believe it pertains to Vespasian and his preparing his men for war. Nevertheless, your interpretation might be a good alternative. The only thing I would question would be how the ‘scorpion’ metaphor would apply, because Eleazar’s command was out of anger, not fear, which seems to point to the pain the scorpions give to their victims. But, all in all, I really like what you say here, and if I can, I’ll put a footnote in my study to link to it.
Lord bless you.