Apocalypse 9:19
For the power of the horses is in their mouths, and in their tails. For, their tails are like to serpents, and have heads: and with them they hurt.
Open Apocalypse 9:19 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Potestas enim equorum in ore eorum est, et in caudis eorum, nam caudæ eorum similes serpentibus, habentes capita : et in his nocent.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- ἡ γὰρ ἐξουσία τῶν ἵππων ἐν τῷ στόματι αὐτῶν ἐστιν καὶ ἐν ταῖς οὐραῖς αὐτῶν· αἱ γὰρ οὐραὶ αὐτῶν ὅμοιαι ὄφεσιν, ἔχουσαι κεφαλάς, καὶ ἐν αὐταῖς ἀδικοῦσιν.
Haydock's commentary
For the power of the horses. The power of the imagined horses or real cannon, lying in their mouths and in their tails, signifies that the mischievous power of the cannon is directed to the object by their mouths, but takes its birth in the tail or breech of the cannon, where the charge is lodged: whence the cannon's breech is here compared to the serpent's head, which contains its venom. (Pastorini, hic.[here])
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Cyprian Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews, Testimony LIX
In the Wisdom of Solomon: “All the idols of the nations they counted gods, which neither have the use of their eyes for seeing, nor their nostrils to receive breath, nor their ears for hearing, nor the fingers on their hands for handling; but their feet also are slow to walk. For man made them; and he who has borrowed his breath, he fashioned them. But no man will be able to fashion a god like to himself. For since he is mortal, he fashioneth a dead thing with wicked hands. …