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Revelation 16

1I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out the seven bowls of God's fury onto the earth.” 2The first went and poured out his bowl onto the earth. A foul and painful sore came upon the people who had the beast's mark and worshiped its image.

3The second poured out his bowl into the sea. It became blood like a dead person's, and every living soul died—the creatures in the sea.

4The third poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. 5I heard the angel of the waters saying, “You are righteous, the one who is and who was, the holy one, because you have judged these things. 6Because they poured out the blood of holy ones and prophets, you have given them blood to drink. They are worthy of it.” 7I heard the altar saying, “Yes, Lord God, the Almighty, your judgments are true and righteous.”

8The fourth poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was permitted to scorch people with fire. 9People were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God, who has authority over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.

10The fifth poured out his bowl on the beast's throne, and its kingdom became darkened. People gnawed their tongues in pain 11and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores. They did not repent of their deeds.

12The sixth poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the sunrise. 13I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming from the mouth of the dragon and from the mouth of the beast and from the mouth of the false prophet. 14For they are spirits of demons performing signs, which go out to the kings of the whole inhabited world to gather them for the war of the great day of God the Almighty.

15“Look! I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he does not walk naked and people see his shame.”

16They gathered them to the place called in Hebrew Harmagedon.

17The seventh poured out his bowl on the air. A loud voice came from the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” 18There were flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder, and there was a great earthquake, such as had not happened since people came to be on the earth—so vast an earthquake, so great. 19The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. 20Every island fled, and mountains were not found. 21Great hailstones, about a talent in weight, come down from heaven onto people. People blasphemed God because of the plague of hail, because its plague was exceedingly great.

Translation notes 3

16:3–7 — Souls and justice. “Living soul” here denotes a living creature, not a distinct human component. “They are worthy of it” preserves the worthiness word used positively elsewhere and turns it toward deserved judgment. The base makes the altar itself speak; no hidden speaker is supplied. Verse 5 calls God “the holy one,” rather than adding a future-tense form to “who is and who was.”

16:12–16 — Gathering and interruption. The warning in verse 15 interrupts the vision in the first person; Jesus is the likely speaker. The plural “they gathered” takes the demonic spirits as the subject of a Greek singular verb, which can accompany a neuter plural subject. “He gathered,” with a different implied subject, is also possible. Harmagedon, familiar as Armageddon, is commonly explained as mountain of Megiddo, but the name's precise force is disputed.

16:17–21 — Completion and hail. “Remembered” introduces action in judgment, not recovery from divine forgetfulness. A talent was a large weight, roughly 75–100 pounds depending on the standard. The image depicts immense hailstones; the translation retains the ancient unit rather than asserting an exact modern weight.