And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.
The trumpets shook the world-kingdoms in longer process: the vials swiftly and suddenly overthrow the kingdom of the beast who invested himself with the world-kingdom. The Egyptian plagues were inflicted with but a month between them severally (Bengel, referring to Seder Olam). As Moses took ashes from an earthly furnace (Exodus 9:8), so angels, as priestly ministers in the heavenly temple, take holy fire in sacred vials from the heavenly altar, to pour down (cf. Revelation 8:5). The same heavenly altar which would have kindled sweet incense of prayer, bringing down blessing upon earth, by man's sin kindles the fiery descending curse. Just as the Nile, ordinarily the source of Egypt's fertility, became blood and a curse through Egypt's sin.
A great voice - namely, God's. These seven vials (the detailed expansion of the vintage, Revelation 14:18-20) being 'the last,' must be just when the beast's power has expired (whence reference is made in them all to the beasts worshippers as objects of the judgments), close to the coming of the Son of man. The first four are distinguished from the last three, as in the case of the seven seals and seven trumpets. The first four are general-affecting the earth, sea, springs, and sun: not merely a portion of these natural bodies, as the trumpets, but the whole; the last three are particular-affecting the throne of the beast, the Euphrates, and the grand consummation. Some of these judgments are given in detail, Revelation 17:1-18; Revelation 18:1-24; Revelation 19:1-21; Revelation 20:1-15.
Out of the temple. B, Syriac, omit; but 'Aleph (') A C, Vulgate, Andreas, support.
The vials. So Syriac, Coptic; but 'Aleph (') A B C, Vulgate, Andreas, read, 'the seven vials.'
Upon - `unto.'