By Water & Blood

Panarion 51, Chapter 34: The four angels at the Euphrates

And these same people again lift themselves up in mind, hunting words without experience, so that they may seem to cast out the books of the holy apostle—I mean of the same John, both the Gospel and the Apocalypse (and perhaps also the epistles; for these too agree with the Gospel and the Apocalypse)—and they say: ‘I saw, and he said to the angel:

Loose the four angels who are at the Euphrates. And I heard the number of the army: ten thousand times ten thousand and a thousand thousands; and they were clothed in breastplates of fire and of brimstone and of hyacinth.’

For such people thought somehow that the truth is something ridiculous. For if he speaks of the four angels who sit at the Euphrates, it is in order to show the differences of the nations settled there upon the Euphrates, who are Assyrians, Babylonians and Medes and Persians.

For these four kingdoms are reported in succession in Daniel, of whom first the Assyrians reigned and the Babylonians in his times; and the Medes succeeded, and after them the Persians, of whom Cyrus first became king.

For the nations are set under angels, as Moses the holy servant of God bears witness to me, interpreting the account in sequence and saying: ‘Ask your father and he will announce to you, your elders and they will tell you: When the Most High divided the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and the Lord’s portion became his people Jacob, the allotment of his inheritance Israel.’

If then the nations are set under angels, he rightly said: ‘Loose the four angels who are at the Euphrates,’ who clearly stand over and restrain the nations from being permitted to go to war, until the time of the Lord’s long-suffering, until he commands through them vengeance to take place for his saints.

For the angels who have been set over are held by the Spirit, not having a time of raid, because they do not yet loose the judgment for the remaining nations to be loosed on account of the outrage against the saints. But such are loosed and come upon the earth, as John prophesies and the other prophets;

and that he indicated breastplates of brimstone and of fire and of hyacinth, no one doubts. For those nations have their apparel from such coloring. For the brimstone-colored garments are a kind of apple-green so-called woolen dye; and the fiery, to mean the scarlet clothing; and the hyacinthine, to show the turquoise woolen dye.