Vision One - The Seven Seals
Revelation Chapter 6

The four horsemen (6:1 - 6:8)

The four horses have an obvious and significant parallel in Zechariah 1:7-17 and 6:1-8. In these passages, Zechariah is given a message of hope and restoration to the people of Judah who are in captivity in Babylon under King Darius. Other parts in the first two chapters of Zechariah that will show up again in Revelation are horns, measuring of the temple, and mighty winds.

The opening of the seals, and the four horsemen that follow with their plagues on the earth, are presented as how God's final plan for earth begins. We are bothered when we think that God would cause war, famine, and death to work out his plan, so we need to look carefully at these images to understand the message. Each of the four horsemen are announced by one of the four living creatures, who themselves represent all of creation. By this device, we can interpret that the horsemen are part of the earth, not part of heaven, so their plagues are the outcome of what the world is doing to itself. God is specifically enabling the horsemen, giving them crowns and authorities, but this is better seen as God removing his restraining protection at this specific time, allowing human nature to take its course - in one more attempt to encourage non-believers to follow God!

Part of our confusion is that our perspective is of the earth, rather than of heaven. We would rather explain away the part of God that uses human suffering to further his plan, just as we talk around God's commands to Joshua to destroy the inhabitants and the herds of the Canaanites to establish the nation of Israel. We see distress and death on earth, but we don't see -- yet -- what this brings about in heaven. We cannot deny that God is also a God of war, because we cannot separate peace from war any more than we can separate love from hate of that which would destroy what is loved. We must consider that God's perspective is not on our human life, but on our eternal life. We have to acknowledge that sin and evil are powerful forces of destruction that require God's force to excise. We must remember that God sent His own Son to earth to die, and so He understands death far better than we do, and has conquered death for us.

1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

The King James translators made it sound like the beast was talking to John, but modern translators disagree. Best studies now tell us the original Greek directs the call to "come" to the horse rider, and it could just as correctly be translated as "Go!"

2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

The horse was a common symbol of war. The word for "bow" is an old word for a "great bow," also found in Zechariah 9:13ff, as God uses the nation of Israel as a weapon to destroy the enemies of Israel. This bow was also the weapon of choice for the Parthian army, from the region that today is Iran and Afghanistan, who had defeated the Roman army on several occasions. The crown is a stephanos, a victor's garland, rather than a crown of royalty. The phrase translated as "conquering" indicates there is no doubt that the conquerer would be victorious. After this scene, the white horse and rider are gone from the scene.

Some writers, like Dawn, want to equate this white horse to the white horse on which the triumphant Christ rides in chapter 19. She makes the point that only the first horse is announced with a beast with a thundering voice. However, the crown on this rider is a victor's garland rather than a ruler's diadem and this image closely parallels the other three horses.

Van Kampen sees the opposite -- that the rider on a white horse represents false prophets. He bases this interpretation on a parallel of the four horsemen with Jesus's references to the end times in Luke 21:7-11 of false prophets, wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, and plagues. In doing so, Van Kampen forces this list to fit into the first three horsemen and really has to struggle to fit in the fourth. It's much more straightforward to see this first horse in the context of wars, the parallels in Zechariah, and the context of the Parthians.

3 And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. [Go!]
4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

The word "peace" used here in Revelation is the Greek word eirene, also meaning "quiet and rest." This is the same Greek word attributed to the angels speaking to the shepherds at Jesus' birth, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace..." The Hebrew allowed an important distinction between shalom, meaning "health, prosperity, and peace" and shaqat, meaning "to be at repose, rest, or quiet." In Zechariah 1:11-13, when the four horsemen report that the world is at "peace", it is the word shaqat that is used, showing the emptiness that comes with a human-imposed peace.

Peace is not always a good thing! In Zechariah, "peace" is imposed by the dominance of the Babylonians and the Medes and Persians, just as the Pax Romana ruled over the word under the domination of Rome, and the angel prayed for deliverance from this peace. God does not value peace over justice!

Notice also that all the second horseman does is to remove the barriers to insurrection, and sinful human nature results in slaughter. Our natural state without God is anarchy.

5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. [Go!] And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the [olive] oil and the wine.

The color black symbolized mourning and famine. The "pair of scales" is literally the word for "yoke," the same word used to describe slavery, teaching, and weights and measures elsewhere in the New Testament. The voice in the midst of the four creatures is nature's way of abhorring the famine caused by war. The amount of wheat referenced was just enough to feed one man for a day, and the barley just enough for a small family, and these prices were roughly ten times the normal price for this amount of grain. The four staple foods in Palestine are represented this passage, but the famine, while a great hardship, is not a total devastation, because only some of the foods are affected.

There are parallels to weighing of grains. In Leviticus 26:26, God warns the Israelites that if they do not follow his commandments, He will punish them such by famines such that they will "dole out your bread by weight." In Ezekiel 4:16, God speaks of this punishment coming to cause his people to return to him: "I am going to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem; they shall eat bread by weight and with fearfulness, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay." The purpose of this action is to bring them back to God.

Note what the famine affected and what it did not. It was common in a drought for grain to be affected, because those plants had shallow roots, but olives and grapes with deep roots would fare well. This created a troubling social situation, as the basic foods were scarce, but the luxuries of oil and wine were still plentiful. Exactly this situation had occurred in the reigns of Nero and Domitian, and both rulers mishandled the situation. Nero refused to change the planting patterns during the drought in his time, and his troops had to settle a particularly famous riot when a ship from Egypt arrived in Rome, not with desperately needed corn, but with white sand to use in a gladiator stadium. Domitian botched his handling of the drought, about the time of John's writing, when he first ordered some vineyards to be cut down to plant more grain, but after objections from the rich, he reversed his ruling and ordered that anyone destroying a vineyard should be punished.

Myke Holt, in the Sunday School class originally doing this study, pointed out a parallel between the drought that is implied by this famine and the parable of the sower found in Matthew 13:3-9. In that parable, Jesus cautions us to have deep roots and healthy environments, not to be like the seed scattered on packed soil, on rocky ground, or on ground infested with thorns. It is only when we have a deep faith in God that God can show us how to rejoice in difficulties and tribulations.

8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death [pestilence], and with the beasts of the earth.

The color of the horse, chloeros, was a color also used to describe the face of one who was frightened, which we might say was "ashen." The authority given to Death was greater than that of the first three riders. This passage echoes of Leviticus 26:21-26 in God's warning to his people not to wander from his teaching. "Sword, hunger, pestilence, and wild animals" are the same four "deadly acts of judgement" listed in Ezekiel 14:21-23, brought by the Lord to purge Jerusalem of evil. Both the Leviticus and Ezekiel passages in this context encourage repentance, but warn that no person or nation can escape the judgement of God for rejecting His will.

These first four seals represent the Great Tribulation of evil brought upon the world, to Christians to refine and prove their faithfulness, and to non-Christians to shake them from their self-sufficiency and lead them to faith in Jesus. The source of these evil calamities is humanity's rebellion against God -- by failing to follow His plan, we mess up our political, military, and economic systems, and threaten our own survival. Wall adds the observation, "human sinfulness is more than rebellion against the creator; human sin is also the irrational rejection of those things that the creator intended for our good."

In this passage, remember that 1st-century Hades is not the same as 20th-century Hell (which is usually seen as the lake of fire and sulphur referenced later in Revelation). In saying Death and Hades, John is repeating the meaning to give it more emphasis. Some choose to see the fourth horseman giving people a choice during the tribulation to follow God and die now, or follow the Antichrist and suffer eternal death. Nice thought, but that isn't how early Christians would have understood it.

The souls slain (6:9 - 6:11)

9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain [slaughtered] for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

This specific altar referenced here was used for sacrifice, and the blood of the sacrifices was poured out at the bottom of, or "under," the altar. The image is not of those hiding under a table, but of those that have followed the lead of the Lamb completely in death. These saints are waiting for the new heaven, in that state of existence after death elsewhere called Hades.

10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

The KJV does a clumsy job of translating the cry of the martyrs. The meaning is roughly, "When will you bring judgement?"

A similar cry for reassurance of what we don't know is found in Psalm 79:5-10, "How long, O Lord?" This same pattern is found in Psalm 22:1, quoted by Jesus on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?" These psalms always carry the rejoicing of the certain rescue that God would provide, as in Psalm 22:24, "For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him." God never objects to our questions when we do so with openness, drawing closer to Him to hear His answer.

Wall writes that the cries of the martyred for vengeance are not for revenge as we would think of it, but are for making creation right and eliminating evil. God in his mercy and his concern that everyone accept his saving grace has delayed justice for each of us, but there will be a time when justice must come so that evil can be conquered.

11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

In the mark of victory symbolized by the white robes, God turns around earthly perceptions of the martyrs. In the command to wait is the confidence that even with the impending death of more saints, God is in control of all things, allowing the continuance of evil until it is His purpose to bring it to an end.

This is not the answer that we want to hear! We want justice, we want assurance that "everything will be fine," and we want it now. These saints were told instead that things would get worse, that more of their brothers and sisters would be killed for their beliefs. This isn't because God is not able to stop the Tribulation, or that He did not want the suffering to end, but because He has a greater purpose that must be made complete. God doesn't need us to be his advisors, he needs us to be his faithful followers, relying on Him to do what is best.

The sun darkened (6:12 - 6:17)

12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair [cloth made from a black goat's hair], and the moon became as blood;
13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

This earthquake is widespread, different from the local ones common to Asia Minor. Earthquakes were common in scripture related to the coming judgement, as in Ezekiel 38:19-20 and Joel 2:10.

The image of the full moon turning as red as blood is the same imagery as in Ezekiel 32:7-8, Isaiah 13:9-10, and Joel 2:31, speaking of God's judgement on the earth. Peter quotes this passage in Joel in Acts 2:20 in his sermon at Pentecost. Of urgent importance to our interpretation of imagery is that Peter says in Acts 2:22-36 says that Joel's prophesy was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. We must understand in Peter's un-literal interpretation of Joel how we must avoid getting trapped in literal interpretations of prophetic imagery.

The falling of the stars and the rolling up of the sky, as in Isaiah 34:4, was particularly frightening in Jewish thought, because the constancy of the heavens represented for them the constancy of God's care for them, so the falling of the stars would represent God abandoning the world to its own chaos. Jesus, in Mark 13:28, uses the changes seen on a fig tree at the end of winter as being a sign of the spring to come, reminding his twelve disciples and all his followers that in the end, God will give to us a permanent "spring."

In Jeremiah 4:23-28, we read a similar devastation, with the earth shaking and the sky empty, caused by the Lord in response to evil, but with a limit that He "will not make a full end" to the earth. This is one of several cases where the imagery in Revelation would be particularly meaningful for John in exile - he knows that God would rip the island prison of Patmos out of the sea to save His people!

15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men [specifically, the persecuting proconsuls], and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

Scriptural parallels to this passage include people hiding in caves in fear of God in Isaiah 2 and God's might like a refiner's fire in Malachi 3:1-5. The parallel is important between the martyrs in the fifth seal exalted by God in heaven and the powerful and the persecutors in the sixth seal being humbled on earth by the wrath of the Lamb.

That image, of an "wrathful lamb," is a shocking combination of opposites. God, who is Love, shows incredible patience with humanity through the centuries, but we cannot be deceived that this love is passive and weak, like a lamb. God will put an end to evil, and his wrath, in all its power will, will bring about that end.

When God shows His power, believers rejoice in the promise of God's faithfulness even when "the mountains may depart and the hills are removed" in Isaiah 54:10, but sinners hide, just like Adam and Eve did in Genesis 3:8. This is the Day of the Lord, rescuing the faithful, punishing the wicked, and giving all people the opportunity to acknowledge His sovereignty.