Chapter 16:12
4. The Great Hail"
"And Great Hail as of a talent-weight descended out of the heaven and upon the men; and the men blasphemed the Deity, because of the plague of the hail; for the plague of it is exceedingly great"
It is the Deity in the heaven from whom the hail-plague proceeds. In the heaven into which He introduced Himself, when He opened a door therein, and set up His throne. From the political heaven, into which the Seventh Vial is poured, and in which the throne of David is One among many, upon all of which it makes war, the great hail descends upon the men, who worship the Beast and his Image. Hail from a Political heaven would not be literally frozen waters; but rather something injurious set in motion against the enemies of the hailing power.
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When a government sends forth its armies to lay waste its adversaries and their countries with fire and sword, its troops are a storm, or plague, of hail; and every individual trooper is a hailstone of a certain weight.
Speaking of the Power that should destroy the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, Isaiah says, "Behold, Yahweh hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand" (ch. 28:2). And again, speaking of the time when "Yahweh Tz'vaoth shall come down and fight for Mount Zion," he says, "And Yahweh shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall show the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones". The hailstones are an element of the lighting down of the arm of Deity. In Ezek. 13:11, we read, "there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, 0 great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend the wall, daubed with untempered mortar". Sirach(*), commenting upon this, says, "Ezekiel made mention of the enemies under the figure of the rain". A hail-shower is the enemy of the men upon whom it descends. When the Saints, in the execution of their Third Angel mission (ch. 14:9-11), descend like a tempest upon the men who worship the Beast and his Image, they become an exceedingly great hail, whose average weight is respectively, according to tables in Calmet,(t) "a talent" of one hundred and twenty-five pounds troy. It is evident from Matt. 25:24, that a talent and an individual are relative things; and that the one is as fitly represented by the other, as a passenger by rail is by the ticket he bears. After the hail of talent-weights ceases the wrath of the Seventh Vial burns no more. The Beast and the False Prophet are destroyed, the Dragon is bound and shut down in the abyss, the Ten Horns are conquered, and nothing remains but the NEW JERUSALEM GOVERNMENT ruling in righteousness a world of regenerated nations, blessed in Abraham and his Seed for a thousand years.
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(*) Sirach was the father of the author of Ecciesiasticus, a book of the apocrypha which is also referred to by the name "Sirach". The author is said to have been Jesus, son of Sirach of Jerusalem, who flourished about two hundred years before Christ. He originally wrote in Hebrew and the work was translated into Greek by his grandson. The passages to which reference is made is contained in Ch. 49:10,11, which reads: "It was Ezekiel that saw the glorious vision, which was shewn him upon the chariot of cherubims. For he made mention of the enemies under the figure of rain, and of doing good to them that shewed right ways". In citing this book the Author of Eureka does not acknowledge its inspiration as if it has right to a place in Holy Scripture, but as being representative of the accepted opinion of a scholar during that early period of history. In fact, there is no claim made within the book to Divine inspiration. Aprologue written by the grandson states, "My grand-father, Jesus, after he had much given himself to a diligent reading of the law, and the prophets, and other books, that were delivered to us from our fathers, had a mind also to write something himself, pertaining to doctrine and wisdom; that such as are desirous to learn, and are made knowing in these things, may be more and more attentive in mind, and be strengthened to live according to the Law" - Publishers.
(t) Augustine Calmet was a French scholar and Biblical commentator who lived from 1672 to 1757.
He wrote a Dictionary of the Bible which was translated into English and was very well-known. -Publishers.
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