Revelation 8:10 Commentary and Bible Study

This is all about the inland waters. What’s special about the inland rivers and fountains, the springs that source so many watercourses? They are places of beauty and tranquillity. They are not like the heaving seas. People are awed and afraid of the sea when it’s heaving powerfully, but the inland waters – with a few exceptions – are relatively tranquil and manageable. So you can think of the inland waterways – because this is all symbolic – as being mankind’s places of peace and tranquillity. Even they will be subject to severe judgements. There is nowhere where the sinner can escape. There is nowhere where the persecutors of God’s people can hide without the possibility of some token judgement. In the vision the inland waters are spoiled by a star which falls to earth. Curiously the star has a name, Wormwood. It is the name of an extremely bitter herb, absinthe. The Hebrew name of this plant also refers to bitter things, perverted justice, the result of idolatry, chastisement, the bitterness of intercourse with a strange woman. Bitterness is an unpleasant taste, associated usually with food that is inedible or has gone bad. The star is called Wormwood because of its ability to turn bitter the waters which it falls on. Those waters would otherwise be sweet to the taste, able to quench the thirst. It represents bitter influences on the waters, and the people who drank it died. Inland floods: our comforts and happiness are blighted. The image seems to come from two Old Testament passages mingled together. The first is the plague on the rivers (Exodus 7:19); the second is a prophecy found in Jeremiah 9:15 (repeated in Jeremiah 23:15). In it, God warns apostate Israel that he will give them wormwood and water of gall to drink. They will experience bitterness in many aspects of their lives. They will know the bitterness of disappointment when the idols they have gone after let them down; they will know the bitterness of a conscience that accuses them of sin. They will experience the bitterness of the loss of their own land, their temple and the worship of Jehovah, and of being handed over to their enemies and finally scattered among the Gentiles. All the things they feared most will come upon them. Wormwood is associated with all these sorrows. Its bitterness can make even things that have long been sought after and desired, to be of no pleasure. So Israel had thirsted in the wilderness without finding water for three days, but when they found the water it was bitter and in spite of their thirst they could not drink it.