This chapter and the greater part of the next, from the first to the fourteenth verse inclusive, is of the nature of a parenthesis; for the fifteenth verse of the 11th chapter evidently connects the narrative or series of events with the ninth chapter.  The ninth chapter closes with an intimation of impenitence on the part of those who had been punished by the plagues of the preceding trumpets.  Then it follows, as we have seen, that they are to be still farther visited by the infliction of the closing judgment symbolized by the seventh trumpet.  The immediate design, therefore, of interrupting the natural order of the narrative is to place before us the actual condition of society when the seventh trumpet sounds.

1.  And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: 

2.  And he had in his hand a little book open:  and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,

3.  And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth:  and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.

Vs. 1-3.—­The majestic description of this Angel agrees to no creature.  It is proper to God-man only.  It is partly the same display of the Mediator’s glory which we had in ch, i. 15.  Especially is this the case as to his face, his feet and his voice.  The “rainbow” is still the sign of the everlasting covenant.  “In wrath he remembers mercy.”

This “book” differs from the sealed book as a part from the whole, or a codicil from the will to which it is appended.  Also, it is distinguished from the former as being little and open.  They do therefore greatly err here, who would make this little book comprehend all the remaining part of the Apocalypse, which would make it larger than the sealed book.  The little book is open, because it is part of the large one, from which the last seal had been removed by the Mediator.  But another reason why the little book is represented as being open, is the fact that the most of the events to which it refers, had transpired prior to the sounding of the seventh trumpet.  That trumpet had been without its appropriate object, as presented in any preceding part of the prophecy.  To present that object is the special design of the little book.  All the events predicted in this book of Revelation are not successive in the order of time, but some are coincident; and the inspired writer of the Apocalypse, on several occasions goes back, as we shall see, in order to explain at greater length, what had been but briefly and obscurely narrated.