In those days: that is, during those five months. The verse vividly portrays the suffering caused by the locusts: the pain will be so intense that the people who are stung will want to die. See similar expressions of despair in Job 3.21; Jer 8.3.

Will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will fly from them: for emphasis the same idea is expressed twice. This is a poetic way of saying that people would like to die but will live on. It is not necessary to try to represent literally the figure of death fleeing from people if it is a strange and unnatural expression in a given language.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Revelation to John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .