And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when it strikes a man.
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Bede
AD 735
kill: Although heretics are supported by the secular power, and are permitted for a time to assail the good, yet, as the Lord saith, "they are not able to kill the soul." For by the five months he signifies the time of the age, because of the division into five of the sense which we use in this life. But in that another translation has "six months," it agrees with this interpretation, because of the six periods of the age.
scorpion: As the scorpion diffuses poison from its hinder parts, so the ungodliness of the wicked injures from their hinder parts, when by threats or blandishments it causes the temporal things which are behind to be preferred to the eternal good things which are before. In opposition to the parable of the Gospel, the generation of vipers gives this scorpion to its own offspring. <a
