Read Revelation 9 at Bible Gateway.
And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue his name is Apollyon. Rev 9:11
Abaddon is an intensive proper noun from the Hebrew verb abad, Strong’s H6.
TO DESTROY OR TO BE DESTROYED אבד abad. The first occurrence is in Exo 10:7.
aleph א = ox head, thus strength, power, leader
bet ב = house, thus house, household, family, in, within
dalet ד = door, thus enter, move, hang
The head (aleph) of the family (bet) sat in the tent door (dalet) to judge matters for the family. He was separated from the rest of the family by this responsibility of leadership.
And YHVH God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suited for him.” Gen 2:18
The original meaning of the verb is “to lose oneself, to wander, to go astray.” Once someone is lost from their tribe or family, they are alone. If they remain alone, or lost, then destruction waits for them. In order to get to Abaddon, the Destroyer, the verb for “to be lost” had to first be intensified.
Abaddon is the fallen angel who has the key to the bottomless pit, or abyss, (Rev 9:1) and is the king over the fifth trumpet army of locusts. We will see later in chapter 11 that a beast ascends from the bottomless pit. Beasts, we learned from Daniel, symbolize empires, and empires are ruled by kings, who are ruled by demons, or protected by angels. (See Spiritual and Natural Rulers.) Let us just keep the connection between the angel Abaddon and the beast from the bottomless pit on the back burner, until we get to chapter 11 in the study.
My book The Revelation of Jesus Christ Revealed, based on these studies but greatly expanded, is now available from Nothing New Press. You may also be interested in reading the Book Extras and joining in on the Discussion.
Likewise, Revelation in Chiastic Structure eBook is also now available from Nothing New Press.
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