"And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is in the presence of God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels." That is, the four corners of the earth which hold the four winds.
"Which are bound in the great river Euphrates." By the corners of the earth, or the four winds across the river Euphrates, are meant four nations, because to every nation is sent an angel; as said the law, "He determined them by the number of the angels of God," until the number of the saints should be filled up. They do not overpass their bounds, because at the last they shall come with Antichrist.
In the altar that is in the sight of God we are to understand the church. In the time of the last persecution she will despise the words and commands of that most inhumane of kings and will separate from those who have submitted to him.
And the sixth angel sounded his trumpet, etc. The sixth angel represents the preachers of the final battle, who, at the prompting of the Gospel, expose the frauds of the Antichrist. The horns of the golden altar indeed represent the preeminent Gospels of the Church.
He says that when the angel sounded the trumpet, I heard a voice from the horns of the altar. By the horns of the altar he means those among the angels who are superior and distinguished above the others. He says the altar was golden, because he depicts the altar as wonderful since it was valuable and divine, made out of material which we consider precious. Just as we understood the horns of the altar to be rulers of the angels, so it is natural to understand the altar itself to be all “the ministering spirits,” because they offer to God “a spiritual sacrifice.”
What is the voice that was heard from the horns of the altar? Release, it says, the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.
Holy Scripture told us about the rebel angel—I mean Satan and those who rebelled with him—how on the one hand we were told that they were “kept in eternal chains in the nether gloom,” and on the other hand how they were condemned to the depth of the sea.
For it says in the second epistle of Peter, “For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment,” and in the epistle of Jude it says, “The angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling he has kept in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day.”
The book of Job says that the rebel has been thrown into the sea, expounding allegorically in various ways his shape and size and the bitterness of his condition; he says, “He is mocked by the angels of God.” And Isaiah cried out about him that “The sword of God will be brought against the serpent, the fleeing snake, against the serpent, the crooked snake, and he will destroy the serpent in the sea on that day.”
And the prophet, too, after detailing all created things, goes on to add this about those in the sea: “This serpent, which you formed to sport in it.” In accordance with these words the blessed prophet Ezekiel, too, when speaking about Egypt, says, “You were like a lion of the nations, and as a serpent in the sea, and you were thrusting with your horns in your rivers.”
Yet no one ever told us that they had been bound in the river Euphrates, or that they would ever be released, nor even that human beings were to be punished by them. For Jude, in saying that they had been bound “with eternal chains,” denied that they would ever be released. And when Isaiah said that the serpent in the sea will be destroyed on the day of judgment, he did not say that he would destroy others, but only the serpent. So, too, the Lord in the gospels, when sending the sinners “to the fire prepared for the Devil and his angels,” denied that he would use them as avengers and tormentors, but rather that they were going to undergo punishment.
So how could anyone understand the present saying to mean, on the one hand, that they had been bound in the river Euphrates and that they will be released and, on the other, that they themselves will punish the sinners? I suspect that the words are figurative, in line with the manner of the whole vision. I think he means by the angels those who had been spiritually bound to the joyful contemplation of God. For the river is used allegorically by Isaiah to refer to the divine: “See, I am turning to them as a river of peace, and as a torrent enveloping the glory of the nations.” And the prophet says, “The waves of the river make glad the city of God.” And the Lord himself, in John, in the twenty-second section, said about the Spirit, “He who believes in me, as Scripture says, ‘From out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’”
He says, “Release them from the contemplation of God and send them to punish the impious.” He means that these are those who have been appointed for the day of his presence. But who does he say the four angels are? Perhaps they are those designated in the Scripture: Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael.
After this they went out with an ineffably large army of cavalry. By this he means the invincible force of the holy angels, comparing it with a huge force of cavalry.
He says, I saw their riders with their breastplates of flame color, hyacinth-blue, and sulfuryellow: fire is a symbol of wrath and punishment; blue indicates that those who were sent were heavenly, for heaven is blue like a hyacinth; being sulfur-yellow makes them pleasing to God, in that they are singing to God, for it is pleasing to sing. Who rather than the holy angels would be pleasing to God?
Then the vision changes course and ceases to refer to the power of the holy angels, and now provides an image of lions and fire, of smoke and sulfur and snakes, all of which clearly indicate their fearfulness and irresistibility.
[AD 304] Victorinus of Pettau on Revelation 9:13-14
"Which are bound in the great river Euphrates." By the corners of the earth, or the four winds across the river Euphrates, are meant four nations, because to every nation is sent an angel; as said the law, "He determined them by the number of the angels of God," until the number of the saints should be filled up. They do not overpass their bounds, because at the last they shall come with Antichrist.