Apollyon

AI summary: Apollyon matters because his single cross reference gives a personal name to the destructive power released from the abyss in Revelation. The naming intensifies the sense that judgment in the vision is not abstract chaos but ordered and terrifying underworld agency. Taken together, the material presents Apollyon as the named destroyer presiding over one of Revelation's most ominous scenes.¹

Destruction, the Hebrew name (equivalent to the Greek Apollyon, i.e., destroyer) of “the angel of the bottomless pit” (Rev. 9:11). It is rendered “destruction” in Job 28:22; 31:12; 26:6; Prov. 15:11; 27:20. In the last three of these passages the Revised Version retains the word “Abaddon.” We may regard this word as a personification of the idea of destruction, or as sheol, the realm of the dead. ³