Revelation 9:1

Stars (as σώματα ἐπουράνια) drop from heaven in the form of beasts (Enoch lxxxvi. 1 f.) and men (ibid. lxxxviii.) throughout Jewish apocalyptic (cf. ibid, xviii. 16, xxi. 1, 6, xl. 21, 24); even earlier (Judges 5:20; Job 38:7) they had been personified. On falling stars, associated as evil portents with death or divine displeasure, see Frazer's Golden Bough (2nd ed.), Revelation 2:18 f. From what follows, it is possible that this angelic being who had fallen is conceived as an evil agent (reff.), permitted (ἐδόθη) to exercise malicious power on earth in furtherance of divine judgment. “The pit of the abyss” is the abode of the devil and daemons (reff. cf. Aen. vii. 583 f., viii. 243 f.), a subterranean chasm or waste underworld, located sometimes in the middle of the earth (Slav. En. xxviii. 3), and represented here (cf.Revelation 20:1; Revelation 20:1) as covered by a lid or great stone. To judge from Revelation 13:1, this abyss seems to contain, as in O.T., the flow of waters formerly upon the earth, and now confined (according to Jewish folk-lore) by God's decree and the magical potency of His name (cf. on Revelation 20:4 and Revelation 2:17 also Prayer of Manasseh, “O Lord Almighty … Who hast shut up the deep, τὴν ἄ βυσσον and sealed it by thy terrible and glorious name”.) A fearsome cavity (“ditis spiraculum”) emitting poisonous exhalations once existed near Hierapolis (Pliny, H. N. ii. 95). Such chasms (throughout Italy, Greece and Asia) seemed, to the superstitious, local inlets into Hades and outlets for infernal air in the shape of mephitic vapours. In Phrygia itself springs of hot vapour and smoke are a feature of the Lycos valley (C. B. P. i. 2, 3), and the volcanic cone in the harbour of Thera was believed to be such an aperture of hell. Fire belching from this subterranean furnace was a sure portent of the final catastrophe (4 Ezra 5:8); cf. Renan, 330 f., 396, R. S. 127, and Jeremias, 116 f.