Revelation 8:10-11

The third part of all drinking waters is poisoned by a huge, noxious, torch-like meteor shooting down from the sky (Vergil's “de coelo lapsa per umbras Stella facem ducens multa cum luce concurrit,” Aen. ii. 693, 694). Wormwood, a bitter drug typical of divine punishment, was apparently supposed to be a mortal poison; thus Pliny (H. N. ii. 232) ascribes the bitterness of Lake Sannaus (Anava) in the Lycos valley to the circa nascente apsinthio. But this feature of the vision is taken from Iranian or Mandaean eschatology (Brandt, 584 f.), where among the signs of the end are famine, wars, a star falling from heaven and making the sea red [cf. Revelation 16:3], and a cyclone with a dust-storm. Cf.4Ezr 5 9, et in dulcibus aquis salae inueniuntur. Rivers and fountains were associated in the ethnic mind (cf. Nehemiah 2:13) with supernatural spirits and curative properties; hence upon them this stern prophet of monotheism sees the doom of God falling. ἐγένετο … εἰς, a Hebraistic constr., common in Apocalypse and in quotations from O.T., but “decidedly rare elsewhere” in N.T. (Simcox). Springs (like those, e.g., near Smyrna) and fountains naturally appeared to the ancient mind somewhat mysterious and separate; their lack of visible connexion with rivers or lakes suggested the idea that they sprang from the subterranean abyss or that they were connected with daemons. Hence their role in the final convulsions of nature (4 Esd. 6:24 uenae fontium stabunt, Ass. Mos. x. 8 et fontes aquarum deficient). Cf. Rohrbach's Im Lande Jahwehs und Jesu (1901), 30 f.; for their connexion with dragons, R. S., 157, 161 f., and for their bubbling as a mark of sacred energy, ibid. 154 f.