Revelation 8:5

The censer, having offered incense to heaven, is now used to hurl fire upon the earth (adopted from Ezekiel 10:2-7; cf. Leviticus 16:12). As at the close of the trumpets (Revelation 11:19) and the bowls (Revelation 16:18), physical disturbances here accompany the manifestation of God's wrath and judgment. In answer to the prayers and longings of the saints (Renan, 393), God at last visits the impenitent pagan world with a series of catastrophes (Revelation 8:8-9., cf. Revelation 9:4), which herald the end and also give (though in vain, Revelation 9:20-21) an opportunity for repentance.

Note on Revelation 8:3-5. This episode (in dumb show) of angel and incense, though apparently isolated, is an overture for the series of judgments, of which the successive trumpet-blasts are precursors. The prayers of all the saints, which, like those of the martyrs in Revelation 6:10, crave punishment upon God's enemies throughout the earth, are supported and reinforced by the ministry of this angel, and answered at once by the succession of incidents beginning with Revelation 8:5. This object of Christian prayers, i.e., the final crisis, when Christ returns to crush his enemies and inaugurate his reign, pervaded early Christianity as a whole. At special periods of intolerable persecution, it assumed under the stress of antagonism as here a more sensuous and plastic form than the ordinary consciousness of the church would have been usually disposed to cherish; yet the common prayer of the church in any case was for the speedy end of the world (ἐλθέτω χάρις καὶ παρελθέτω ὁ κόσμος οὗτος Did. x.). In Apoc. Mos. (tr. Conybeare, Jewish Quart. Rev., 1895, 216 235) 33, when the angels intercede for Adam at his ascension to heaven, they take golden censers and offer incense; whereupon smoke overshadows the very firmament. The intercession of angels on behalf of the saints, a result of their function as guardians, goes back to post-exilic Judaism with its inarticulated conception of the angels as helpful to mankind (Job 5:1; Job 33:23; Zechariah 1:12); subsequently the idea developed into a belief that the prayers of the pious won special efficacy as they were presented to God by angels such as Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, or the seven archangels (cf. Tobit, loc. cit.; Slav. En. vii. 5; En. ix. 2 11, xv. 2, xl. 6, xlvii. 2, xcix. 3, 16, civ. 1). In Christianity this rôle was naturally absorbed by Christ, who alone ratified and inspired his people's supplications. But the old belief evidently lingered in pious circles of Jewish Christianity (cf. Test. Leviticus 3:5), side by side with a complete acceptance of Christ's heavenly function. The latter did not immediately or universally wither up such survivals of the older faith; popular religion tended then as now to be wider at several points than its theoretical principles (as in Origen, Cels. Revelation 8:4; and Tertull. de Orat. xii.). Plato, in Sympos. 202 E., makes the δαίμονες present men's prayers and offerings to the gods, and mediate the latter's commands and recompence to men (cf. Philo, de Somniis, i. 22, and on i. 1). See further Revelation 17:1; Revelation 21:9, for a similar state of matters in primitive Christianity with regard to the corresponding function of Jewish angels as intermediaries of revelation.