¹ Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven onto the earth, and the angel was given the key to the shaft leading down to the Abyss.

² When he unlocked the shaft of the Abyss, smoke rose out of the Abyss like the smoke from a huge furnace so that the sun and the sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss,

³ and out of the smoke dropped locusts onto the earth: they were given the powers that scorpions have on the earth:

⁴ they were forbidden to harm any fields or crops or trees and told to attack only those people who were without God's seal on their foreheads.

⁵ They were not to kill them, but to give them anguish for five months, and the anguish was to be the anguish of a scorpion's sting.

⁶ When this happens, people will long for death and not find it anywhere; they will want to die and death will evade them.

⁷ These locusts looked like horses armoured for battle; they had what looked like gold crowns on their heads, and their faces looked human,

⁸ and their hair was like women's hair, and teeth like lion's teeth.

⁹ They had body-armour like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings sounded like the racket of chariots with many horses charging.

¹⁰ Their tails were like scorpions' tails, with stings, and with their tails they were able to torture people for five months.

¹¹ As their leader they had their emperor, the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek Apollyon.

¹² That was the first of the disasters; there are still two more to come.

¹³ The sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a single voice issuing from the four horns of the golden altar in God's presence.

¹⁴ It spoke to the sixth angel with the trumpet, and said, 'Release the four angels that are chained up at the great river Euphrates.'

¹⁵ These four angels had been ready for this hour of this day of this month of this year, and ready to destroy a third of the human race.

¹⁶ I learnt how many there were in their army: twice ten thousand times ten thousand mounted men.

¹⁷ In my vision I saw the horses, and the riders with their breastplates of flame colour, hyacinth-blue and sulphur-yellow; the horses had lions' heads, and fire, smoke and sulphur were coming from their mouths.

¹⁸ It was by these three plagues, the fire, the smoke and the sulphur coming from their mouths, that the one third of the human race was killed.

¹⁹ All the horses' power was in their mouths and their tails: their tails were like snakes, and had heads which inflicted wounds.

²⁰ But the rest of the human race, who escaped death by these plagues, refused either to abandon their own handiwork or to stop worshipping devils, the idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood that can neither see nor hear nor move.

²¹ Nor did they give up their murdering, or witchcraft, or fornication or stealing.