And they had a king Whereas "the (natural) locusts have no king," Proverbs 30:27. In Amos 7:1 the LXX. has the curious mistranslation or corrupt reading, "and behold one locust grub [was] Gog the king;" which possibly arose from, or suggested, a superstition that St John uses as an image.

the angel of the bottomless pit Either the fallen star of Revelation 9:1, who opened the pit and let them out of it, or a spirit presumably, if not quite certainly, a bad one made the guardian of that lowest deep of God's creation. See Excursus I.

Abaddon Properly an abstract noun, "destruction," but used apparently in the sense of "Hell" in Job 26:6, &c. But

Apollyon is a participle, "destroying," and so "Destroyer."

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