Who is Abaddon or Apollyon?

Question 8017.

Abaddon and Apollyon are two names for a single figure, and Revelation 9:11 gives us both because John is writing for readers in two languages. He is called the angel of the bottomless pit, and both of his names mean the same thing: Destroyer.

That is a rare piece of transparency in a book full of symbol. Most figures in Revelation have to be worked out from their behaviour. This one arrives with his function stamped on his forehead.

The text and its setting

The verse belongs to the fifth trumpet judgement, the first of the three woes. A star fallen from heaven is given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. Smoke rises like the smoke of a great furnace, the sun and air are darkened, and out of the smoke come locusts with power like scorpions.

These are not ordinary locusts. They are forbidden to harm grass or trees, which is exactly what locusts do, and are instructed instead to torment people who lack the seal of God on their foreheads. The torment lasts five months and is so severe that people will seek death and not find it.

And then verse 11: they have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon. Abaddon and Apollyon name the commander of that swarm. Read the chapter at Revelation 9.

What the names mean

The Hebrew abaddon comes from a root meaning to perish or be destroyed, and in the Old Testament it functions almost as a place name. Job uses it repeatedly in parallel with Sheol and with death. Proverbs 15:11 says Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD.

So in Hebrew usage Abaddon is destruction personified, or the realm of destruction. What John does in Revelation 9 is take that word and attach it to a person. The place becomes a being with a throne over an army.

The Greek Apollyon is the participle of a verb meaning to destroy utterly. Abaddon and Apollyon are therefore not two figures but one, presented under a Hebrew and a Greek label so that no reader misses the point. John does the same thing elsewhere, giving both Hebrew and Greek forms so that his audience across the empire can follow.

Is he Satan?

This is the natural question, and the answer is probably not, though I hold it without dogmatism. Revelation 9:1 describes a star fallen from heaven who is given the key to the shaft, and many readers identify that figure with Satan. If that is right, then Abaddon and Apollyon would be a distinct being, since the one with the key opens the pit while the king is inside it.

The wider evidence points the same way. Satan is not confined to the abyss until Revelation 20, where he is bound and shut in for a thousand years. In chapter 9 he is still active. A being described as the angel of the bottomless pit sounds more like a prisoner given command of other prisoners.

My own view is that Abaddon and Apollyon is a high ranking fallen angel, possibly one of the imprisoned beings of 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6, released for a season under judgement. But this is a place where certainty is not available, and I would not divide with anyone over it.

A king in the pit

Notice a detail that is easy to hurry past. Proverbs 30:27 observes that locusts have no king, yet these locusts do. The contrast is deliberate. What comes out of the abyss is organised, commanded, and directed.

That tells us something about the demonic realm generally. It is not chaotic. There is authority, structure, and coordination, and Abaddon and Apollyon is presented as holding a position within it. Ephesians 6 uses similar organisational language of rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers.

It should also correct a sentimental picture of evil as simply the absence of order. Scripture presents it as a rival order, disciplined and purposeful, which is a great deal more dangerous. See what powers and principalities means.

Destruction under permission

Here is what keeps this passage from being simply frightening. Every element of the judgement is granted rather than seized. The key is given. The locusts are given power. They are told what they may not harm. The five months is fixed. They may torment but not kill.

Count the constraints and a pattern emerges. Abaddon and Apollyon commands an army that operates entirely within limits set by someone else. The Destroyer destroys on a leash, which is the same picture we get in Job 1 and 2, where the enemy must ask permission twice and is refused something both times.

So the terror of Revelation 9 is real, and it is not out of control. That distinction is the difference between a nightmare and a judgement.

The people who are protected

The locusts are told to harm only those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. That single clause changes the complexion of the chapter. In the middle of the worst judgements the world has seen, there are people who are marked and untouched.

Chapter 7 introduced them: the hundred and forty four thousand sealed from the tribes of Israel. Whatever else one concludes about their identity, the sealing is protective and it is effective. Abaddon and Apollyon has authority over a great deal, and not over them.

This fits the pattern from Exodus onwards, where God distinguishes between those who are His and those who are not in the middle of judgement. The blood on the doorpost did not make the plague less real. It made the house exempt.

Why the name matters

I keep coming back to the fact that the being is named by function. Not by rank, not by beauty, not by history, but by what he does. Destroyer.

Set that beside the name given to the Son in Matthew 1:21. You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Yeshua, the LORD saves. Two names, two functions, and the entire biblical drama sits between them.

Jesus made the contrast Himself in John 10:10. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. Abaddon and Apollyon is the thief’s job description written out in two languages.

Abaddon and Apollyon in the wider book

Revelation gives us several figures associated with the abyss, and it helps to keep them apart. There is the star with the key in chapter 9. There is Abaddon and Apollyon, the king of the locusts. There is the beast who rises from the bottomless pit in chapter 11 and again in chapter 17. And there is the dragon, bound and shut in the pit in chapter 20.

These are not obviously the same being, and John does not treat them as interchangeable. What they share is a location. The abyss functions across the book as a holding place from which judgement is released and into which rebellion is finally shut.

Reading the book with that geography in mind clears up a good deal. Abaddon and Apollyon belongs to the released category rather than the confining one, which is one more reason to distinguish him from Satan. See what is the abyss or bottomless pit.

The torment that will not kill

One feature of the fifth trumpet deserves a paragraph of its own. The locusts are not allowed to kill, only to torment, and Revelation 9:6 says people will seek death and not find it, and will long to die but death will flee from them.

That is one of the bleakest sentences in Scripture. It describes a condition in which the ordinary exit is closed, and it is worth handling gently, because there are readers for whom that sentence is not abstract. If that describes you, please speak to someone today; this passage is describing a future judgement on a rebellious world, not a comment on your worth.

What the verse establishes theologically is the limit again. Abaddon and Apollyon may torment and may not kill. Even the Destroyer’s remit is bounded, and the boundary was drawn by someone else. Read Job 2 for the same arrangement in an earlier setting.

So, now what?

Read Revelation 9 without flinching and without sensationalising. There is a being called Abaddon and Apollyon, he is real, he is a destroyer, and he operates strictly within limits that God has set.

Then notice which name you are living under. The Destroyer has an army and a season and a boundary. The Saviour has a cross and a resurrection and no expiry date at all. Which of those two has been shaping the way you think about the future?

They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.

Revelation 9:11 (ESV)