1. Revelation 9:1 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

What is the bottomless pit?

Revelation 9:1 (ESV)

1 And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.

The term used here in the Greek is the “abyss” (a term that comes from two words that literally translate as “without bottom”). This “abyss” is the natural home of the demons (see Luke 8:31). Peter wrote that when the angels rebelled in the beginning, God “committed them to chains of gloomy darkness” (2 Peter 2:4; see also Jude 1:6)—a description of this abyss. See also Isaiah 24:21–22.