Translation
And from the smoke
locusts
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onto the earth.
They were given
power like that of the scorpions
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of the earth.
Go to footnote numberParaphrase
And from the proof that destruction had happened the very agents of destruction themselves came out, going to the dwelling place of men. They were given power to inflict intense pain on people, comparable to the most intense pain humans are aware of from an outside source.
Footnotes
1
“Locusts” often destroyed entire crops, so they naturally became a symbol for destruction in general. They are often described as a cloud because that is what they looked like from a distance.
2: “scorpions”
One could argue about what source of pain is greater, and one might find something worse than a scorpion bite, but this is symbolism, don’t analyze it, just follow what was most likely the meaning for the original audience. In this case the meaning was an intense pain that many of them knew from experience.
3
The fact that earth is mentioned twice in this sentence places emphasis upon it; here “earth” refers to the place where men live and the realm that men know.