Wormwood, the Star
Every entry below is printed as its editors wrote it, with the edition named.
ISBE 19152 verse references
ISBE 1915
From the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915). Where it reports or adopts critical theories, those are the views of its writers or the scholars they cite; Gospel Companion holds the historic Christian view of Scripture.
In Re 8:11, the name is figurative, given to a great star which, at the sounding of the third angel's trumpet, fell from heaven upon the third part of the rivers and on the fountains of the waters, turning them to a bitterness of which many died. Wormwood is used of bitter calamities (of La 3:15), and may here indicate some judgment, inflicted under a noted leader, affecting chiefly the internal sources of a country's prosperity. Older expositors, applying the earlier trumpets to the downfall of the Roman empire, saw in the star a symbol of the barbarian invasions of Attila or Genseric.
See also ASTRONOMY, sec. I, 8.
James Orr
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) · public domain
In Scripture
2 references found in the entries above · verse links open the World English Bible
Sources
- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) · Public domain