Revelation 9:20

ἐκ τῶν ἔργων τῶν χειρῶν αὐτῶν. Primas[345] reads factorum suorum malorum = ἐκ τῶν ἔργων αὐτῶν τῶν πονηρῶν.

[345] Primasius, edited by Haussleiter.

20. ἐκ τῶν ἕργων τῶν χειρῶν αὐτῶν. A common Old Testament formula both for idolatry, Jeremiah 1:16, and other sins, ib. Jeremiah 25:14.

ἵνα μή προσκυνήσουσιν. This verse gives us the only clue we have to the interpretation. It is a plague on idolaters that is here described—neither on unfaithful Christians, nor on antichristian infidels of a more refined type—unless the latter shall in the last days, as in the age of the Roman persecutions, and one may almost say of the Renaissance and Reformation, ally itself against the Gospel with the vulgar or sensuous idolatry which it was its natural tendency to despise.