Revelation 16:9Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Perhaps men will be scorched by the heat of the perceptible sun, when God the Lover of mankind restrains those who disobey Him with bit and bridle (Ps 31:9), in order to turn them to repentance.

Yet those who have reached the depth of evil will be directed by their evil will and reason not toward conversion, but toward blasphemy.

But perhaps the sun also signifies the course of the day, during which those deserving punishment will be burned by the heat of temptations. Through afflictions they may come to hate their cause, which is sin.

Yet the senseless, not acknowledging their fall into sin, will sharpen their tongue against God. So even now some, oppressed by afflictions from barbarians, accuse divine grace because it has permitted our race to fall into such calamities.

It is not difficult to interpret this according to the laws of rhetoric. For the sun scorching men may perhaps be drought, or confusion, or the need of those abandoned in war.

Being in distress, they experience the necessity of turning to God, who can help them and free them from the sorrows they endure. Yet they blasphemed and did not repent.

Certainly plagues are needed for this purpose: after they did not recognize the Master in the benefactions of God, they might recognize Him in punishments.

Such is the character of blasphemy: they prefer to revile God, not for their own sake, but for the sake of impiety and lawlessness. After recompense, they do not seek repentance, but even under torment they continue to curse.

Bronze vessels, when subjected to a great fire, cast outward bubbles that rise from within and overflow the limits of their capacity. So too the portion of men belonging to the beast rejects the Invincible One.

When they see the Church of Christ fighting with unwearied steadfastness, they are scorched by the fire of impatient envy. In the blasphemies of impious lips, they breathe out the fire conceived in the heart.

The persecutors of the Church, blazing like the sun and striving to dry up the seed of the word of God, will themselves in the future burn in the fire of Gehenna.

Or, if the sun is understood as the radiance of wisdom, it was not given to the angel to pour out the bowl upon the sun. Rather, it was given to the sun itself to scorch men with fire and heat.

For when wise men, yielding under torments, err by doing evil, the weak follow their example and are inflamed with temporal passions.

Heat may also be understood as that by which the steadfastness of the saints torments the body of the devil and provokes it to blasphemy.

Perhaps at the coming of the antichrist, men will also be burned by the perceptible scorching of the sun, so that they may turn to repentance.

Perhaps the sun signifies the course of the day in which those worthy of punishment will be scorched by the heat of temptations. St. Andrew says this is "so that, by dwelling in afflictions, they may hate their cause: sin."

But sinners, instead of recognizing their sins, will sharpen their tongue in blasphemy against God.