Revelation 16:4–7

Revelation 16:4 — The Third Bowl Poured into Rivers and Springs The progression of the bowl plagues follows an intensifying logic: the second bowl struck the sea (16:3), and now the third reaches the fresh-water sources — rivers and springs — which become blood. Where the second plague affected salt water (associated with the Gentile nations and the chaotic deep), the third penetrates the very veins of the earth, the fresh water that sustains interior life and agriculture. This is the Exodus plague of blood (Exod 7:14–25) universalized and radicalized: what afflicted a single river in Egypt now spreads to every tributary. The Greek word for "springs" (πηγάς, pēgas) evokes life-giving sources; their corruption signals that the most fundamental conditions of earthly life have been desecrated by those who desecrate human life. John draws on the prophetic tradition of Ezekiel (Ezek 32:6) and Isaiah (Isa 15:9), where rivers of blood are signs of divine judgment upon oppressor nations.

Revelation 16:5 — The Angel of the Waters Speaks What is extraordinary is John's immediate pivot from horror to liturgy. An "angel of the waters" — a figure unique to this verse in the New Testament, though attested in Jewish apocalyptic tradition (cf. 1 Enoch 66:1–2; Jubilees 2:2) — breaks into a hymn. Jewish cosmology assigned angelic guardians to the elements of creation; this angel, whose own domain has been transformed into an instrument of judgment, does not protest but praises. His doxology has a precise structure: (1) an address — "You are righteous, who are and who were, O Holy One" — and (2) a rationale — "because you have judged these things." The divine title "who are and who were" is a truncated form of the fuller title used in 1:4 and 4:8 ("who is and who was and who is to come"); crucially, the future element is dropped here, signaling that the moment of final judgment has arrived — the "coming" has now become the present act. "O Holy One" (ὁ ὅσιος, ho hosios) is a rare title in Revelation, carrying the sense of moral purity inviolable and incapable of injustice. The angel's hymn is thus a direct refutation of any charge of divine caprice: the one who judges is constitutively holy.

Revelation 16:6 — The Lex Talionis of Blood The angel supplies the juridical basis for the judgment: "they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink." The "they" refers to the beast's empire — the persecuting power whose identity has been developed throughout the preceding chapters (13:7, 15; 17:6). The pairing "saints and prophets" is a Revelation formula (cf. 11:18; 18:24) that deliberately recalls the long tradition of Israel's martyred prophets (Matt 23:29–37) while extending it to include the Church's own witnesses. The punishment is precisely calibrated: those who shed blood are given blood to drink. This is not sadism but the ancient biblical principle of lex talionis operating on a cosmic scale (Num 35:33: "blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it"). The phrase "They deserve this" (ἄξιοί εἰσιν, axioi eisin) is the same root used in Revelation's worship language for the Lamb who is "worthy" (ἄξιος, 5:9, 12) — a pointed reversal: the martyrs were declared unworthy by the beast, but God declares the persecutors worthy of their punishment.

Revelation 16:7 — The Altar Speaks Most remarkably, "the altar" itself responds with a confirming antiphon: "Yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments." The altar here is almost certainly the golden altar of incense mentioned in 8:3–5, beneath which the souls of the martyrs cried out "How long?" (6:9–10). That earlier cry has now received its answer. The altar's voice is the voice of the martyrs' prayer answered — their intercession has been heard and God's righteousness publicly vindicated. The form is a strict liturgical responsory: the angel's solo hymn receives the altar's choral "Amen." "True and righteous are your judgments" will recur almost verbatim in 19:2, forming a liturgical bracket around the entire sequence of judgment. The divine title "Lord God, the Almighty" (Kyrios ho Theos ho Pantokrator) is the Septuagintal translation of the Hebrew YHWH Elohim Sabaoth — the God of the heavenly armies — asserting that the one judging is not a tribal deity but the sovereign of all reality.

Catholic tradition reads this passage through several interlocking lenses that enrich its meaning considerably.

Theodicy and Divine Justice: The Catechism of the Catholic Church insists that God's justice is not opposed to his mercy but is its necessary complement: "God's justice and his mercy... are one and the same divine perfection" (cf. CCC 210–211, on God's holiness and justice). The doxologies in verses 5–7 function as the Bible's own theodicy — the creation itself, through its angelic stewards, declares that God's judgments are just. St. Augustine wrestled extensively with this in The City of God (Books XIX–XX), arguing that what appears as disorder in history will be shown, at the Last Judgment, to have been superintended by a perfectly just Providence.

The Blood of Martyrs: The phrase "blood of saints and prophets" carries immense weight in Catholic martyrology. Tertullian's axiom — sanguis martyrum semen Christianorum ("the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians," Apology 50) — reflects the Church's conviction that martyrdom is not waste but fruitfulness. The bowl judgment here is, in a profound sense, the vindication of every martyr from Abel forward, reaching its apex in the proto-martyr Christ himself. The lex talionis of verse 6 is not primitive retribution but cosmic justice restoring the moral order that persecution has violated.

Liturgical Antiphon: The structure of verses 5–7 as hymn-and-response mirrors the Church's own liturgical tradition of responsorial prayer. Origen (Commentary on John VI) and Primasius of Hadrumetum (Commentary on the Apocalypse) both noted that heavenly worship in Revelation models earthly liturgy. The altar "speaking" unites the heavenly and earthly Church in a single act of praise — a truth enshrined in the Roman Rite's Eucharistic Prayer prefaces, where the Church joins "the choirs of angels" in adoration. The Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium (§8) explicitly teaches that the earthly liturgy participates in the heavenly liturgy described in the Apocalypse.

For a contemporary Catholic, this passage confronts a cultural allergy to the idea of divine judgment, which is often dismissed as incompatible with a God of love. Yet the hymns of verses 5–7 insist that refusing to judge evil is itself a moral failure. When Catholics witness persecution of Christians in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, or North Korea — where the "blood of saints and prophets" is literally being poured out — this passage provides not a counsel of passive resignation but a framework of hope: God sees, God counts, and God is not neutral. The martyrs beneath the altar have not been forgotten.

Practically, the passage invites Catholics to examine their own conscience regarding indifference to injustice. The altar that speaks is the altar of prayer — the martyrs' intercession rising as incense. Catholics are called to make that same prayer their own: to bring before God the names of those who suffer for the faith, to press the Church's tradition of supporting persecuted Christians (cf. Pope Francis, Ecclesia in Medio Oriente), and to trust that their prayers, like incense rising from the altar, are heard by the God who is "true and righteous" in all his judgments.