And I heard a loud sound from the fane saying to the seven messengers: Depart, and pour forth the seven cups of God's spiritedness upon the land.
And the first went off and poured forth his cup upon the land and there began to be a fester, bad and miserable, on the human beings having the stamp of the beast and those prostrating before its image.
And the second poured forth his cup upon the sea, and there began to be blood like a corpse's, and every living spirit that was in the sea died.
And the third poured forth his cup upon the rivers and the fountains of water, and there began to be blood.
And I heard the messenger of the waters saying, Just you are, Is-Being and Was-Being, Godly, for you have decided these things, for the blood of the consecrated and the prophets they have poured forth, and you have given them blood to drink; they are deserving.
And I heard the altar saying, Certainly, Lord God All-Ruler, your judgments [are] truthful and just.
And the fourth poured forth his cup upon the sun, and there was given it the burning of human beings with fire. And the human beings were burned with a great glow, and they blasphemed the Name of God, the One having authority over these afflictions, and they did not repent to give him glory.
And the fifth poured forth his cup upon the seat of the beast, and its empire began to be blinded, and they were chewing their tongues from the toil, and they blasphemed the God of heaven from their toils and from their festers, and they did not repent from their deeds.
And the sixth poured forth his cup upon the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried, so that the way might be prepared for the emperors of the dawning sun.
And I saw from the wyrm's mouth, and from the beast's mouth, and from the pseudo-prophet's mouth, three unclean spirits, like frogs, for they are daimonic spirits making signs, which go forth to the emperors of the whole world, to gather them for the war of the great day of God All-Ruler.
[Revelation 16:1-14, my rough translation. Some old versions do not have the "from the fane/temple/shrine/sanctuary" in the first verse. In verse five, not all sources have the "Lord". In verse twelve, "of the dawning sun" is often translated as a poetic expression for "from the east".
The word I've translated 'cup' is phiale (hence the KJV transliteration, "vial"), which is often translated as "bowl". The latter is perhaps technically the stricter translation, but either works; a phiale would have been a broad, shallow bowl used for libation-prayers (which were common in the household piety of the Roman empire), but the term is also often used for any cup or bowl that is used in sacrifices, especially for catching blood. It's this sacrificial character that is behind the word here. The bowls/cups are called the cups/bowls of God's thymos. This is often translated as 'wrath', and it could mean something like that, but it's not the usual word for 'wrath'. It's a much broader word in fact: a spirited horse has a lot of thymos, not because it is wrathful but because it is hard to break; if you have high spirits, you have a lot of thymos; your thymos is the part of you that seeks not ease and pleasure but challenge and victory. My guess is that it is here standing for something like what in Medieval Hebrew is called hod, glory/splendor/majesty, or netzach, perpetuity/durability/victoriousness: that is, the bowls are the bowls of the unconquerability of God.
The address to God by the angel of the waters is interesting: Being (ho on) and Having-Been (ho en) have been previously used (Rv. 11:17) with Coming (ho erchomenos); here, however, they are joined with ho hosios, which means 'godly, pious, righteous, holy'.
I have translated with the word 'daimonic' rather than 'demonic', because I think the older meaning of daimonion may partly be in view -- a daemon is an intermediary between gods and men. The dragon, beast, and false prophet are setting themselves up against God, as if they were divine, and the unclean spirits are their 'daemons'.
Each of the plagues seems to involve a form of poetic justice; those who receive the stamp (charagma, related to the word character) of the beast receive a wound; those who pour out the blood of the saints receive blood to drink, the lordship of the beast is afflicted with toil in darkness/blindness. The sea is afflicted because the beast comes from the sea.]
