Charles Ellicott Commentary Revelation 6

And I saw when the Lamb (the diminutive form of Lamb is still used) ... —The words “and see” are doubtful. They are found in some manuscripts and omitted in others; the authority for their omission and for their retention is about equally divided.

Under these circumstances we may fairly be guided by the context. To whom is the summons addressed? Who is commanded to come? If it was taken to be addressed to the seer, we can understand why some copyist would add the words “and see.” But are they addressed to the seer? It seems difficult to see the purpose of such a command. He was near already. He had seen the Lamb opening the seal. There was no purpose in his drawing near. Are the words, then, addressed, as Alford supposes, to Christ?

It is difficult to believe that the living creature would cry this way to the Lamb, who was opening the scroll. The simplest way of answering the question is to ask another: Who did come in obedience to the voice? There is only one answer—the horseman. The living beings cry “Come,” and their cry is responded to by the appearance of the several riders. What is the spiritual meaning of this? The living beings represent, as we have seen, animated nature—that nature and creation of God which groans and travails in pain, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.

These summon the emblems of war and pestilence to come on the scene, for these things must necessarily be, and through them lies the way for the final coming of God’s Christ, for whom creation longs. They bid the pains and troubles come, because they recognize them as the precursors of creation’s true King. Thus their voice has in it an undertone which sighs for the advent of the Prince of Peace, who is to come.

Conquering, and to conquer.—Better, conquering, and that he might conquer. One version has, “and he conquered.”

All commentators seem to agree that this rider represents victory. The emblems—the crown and white horse—are obviously those of victory. The crown (stephanos) is the crown of triumph. The horses used in Roman triumphs were white. On the white horse of triumph, the crowned rider goes forth conquering, and that he might conquer.

But who or what is here represented? Some take it to be a mere emblem of conquest, or victory, as the next rider represents war. There is then a harmony of interpretation: the horsemen reveal to the seer that the after-history will be marked by conquests, wars, famines, pestilences. The description, however, seems to demand something more: the expression, “that he might conquer,” carries our thoughts beyond a mere transient conqueror.

The vision, moreover, was surely designed to convey an assured happy feeling to the mind of the seer. No picture of mere Roman conquests or world-victory would have conveyed this. Is not the vision the reflex of the hopes of early Christian thought? It is the symbol of Christian victory. It was thus their hopes saw Christ: though ascended, He went forth in spiritual power conquering.

They were right in their faith, and wrong in their expectation. Right in their faith: He went forth conquering, and He would conquer. Wrong in their expectation: the visions of war, famine, death must intervene. It was through these that the conqueror would be proved more than conqueror. It is, perhaps, significant of this intervening period of trouble and suffering that the rider is armed with a bow. The arrows of His judgments (war, famine) would be sharp among those who refused the sword of His word. For those who will not turn, He has bent His bow and made it ready. His arrows are ordained against the persecutors.

And when he had opened... —Better, And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living being saying, Come. And there came forth another horse, red; and to him that sat on him was given to take peace from the earth, and that they (i.e., the inhabitants of the earth) shall kill one another, and there was given to him a great sword.

This seal is the distinct and unmistakable declaration to the Church that it must expect wars, even after the Prince of Peace has come. The advent of the highest good does not bring about peace, but only because the hindrance is in humanity. Humanity’s resistance to good turns the gospel of peace into an occasion for the sword. So our Lord declares, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” The reign of peace, the beating of swords into ploughshares, is not yet.

The vision may help to establish the Christian position on war. It is to be expected; it is an evil, but often an inevitable evil. Those who take part in war are not condemned: those who cause offenses are. It is as much a mistake to condemn soldiering as a profession as it is to deny that Christianity aims at the suppression of war. The Church acknowledges that a soldier can be a soldier of Christ, even while she keeps before her the ideal age when nations shall learn war no more. We expect wars, even while we believe that the day will come when war will be reckoned as absurd as dueling is now.

The vision says, “It must needs be that wars will come;” and war, even when roused by human passions, is a judgment of God, for God’s judgments are mostly formed from human vices. The seal puts in pictorial form the warning of Christ that wars and rumours of wars would be heard of. How true the warning subsequent history shows—wars in the empire, wars among nations, controversies, and often fratricidal wars in the Church of Christ.

When He had opened.—Better, When he opened. The words “and see” are to be omitted here, as in the other seals. And I saw, and behold a black horse, and he who sat on him had a balance in his hand. And I heard, as it were, a voice in the midst of the four living beings, saying, A choenix of wheat for a denarius (penny), and three choenixes of barley for a denarius (penny), and do not hurt the oil and the wine.

“Balance:” There is scarcely a doubt that a balance, or pair of scales, is intended (the Greek word also means a yoke); but the whole imagery of the seal harmonizes with the balance, and the passage from Ezekiel (Ezekiel 45:10), cited by Alford, in which there is a “righteous balance” (the LXX. using the same Greek word as here) seems conclusive. It is the emblem of scarcity: food is not weighed out thus in times of abundance. (Compare Ezekiel 4:16, Behold I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they shall eat bread by weight and with care.)

The choenix (“measure” in the English version) was the amount of food sufficient to support a man for a day. “A choenix is the daily maintenance” (Suidas, quoted by Alford). The denarius (“penny” of the English version, here and in Matthew 18:28, and Mark 12:37) amounted to between sixpence and sevenpence of our money, and was the usual daily pay of the laborer and of the soldier. (See especially Note on Matthew 20:2.) It is difficult to speak of this as other than terribly high prices for food. The whole of a man’s pay goes for food, and even the coarser bread is so expensive that it takes a whole day’s wages to supply food for three adults.

It has been thought that the voice calls to the rider to check his devastations, lest the growing famine should exterminate the whole human race. This may be, but the check is at a point that has already caused the greatest misery. The extent of the misery may be imagined by considering what wretchedness would be entailed if a man were obliged to pay three or four shillings for bread sufficient to keep him nourished for a day. Or we may measure it by the estimate of the disciples (Mark 6:37) that two hundred pennies' worth of bread would give a short meal to upwards of five thousand people. At the price in this seal, the cost of bread would have risen so much that two hundred pennies' worth of bread would not suffice to feed one thousand.

But what is meant by the words, do not hurt the oil and wine? They were not, like bread, necessary to life, but among its luxuries and superfluities. There is a kind of irony in times of scarcity, when necessities are barely obtainable, and luxuries remain comparatively low in price. The splendors and comforts of life are undervalued when hunger shows that life is more than choice food, and the body more than clothing. The seal then tells the seer that throughout the ages the Church of Christ must expect to see famines and distress in the world, and luxuries abounding in the midst of hardship.

Is it not true that the contrast, which is so ugly, between pampered opulence and indolent pauperism, is the result of the prevalence of worldly principles? Wealth, self-indulgent and heartless, and poverty, reckless and self-willed, are sure signs that the golden rule of Christ is not understood and obeyed. There is a similar experience in the history of the Church. The red horse of controversy is followed by the black horse of spiritual starvation. In the heat of polemical pride and passion for theological conquest, that love of barren dogmatics is developed which forgets the milk of the word and the bread of life, which are the needed food of souls.

The fourth seal.—And when He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living being, saying, Come. And I saw, and behold, a horse, pallid (or, livid), and he that sat upon him his name was Death, and Hades was following with him; and there was given to them power over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword, and with famine, and with death, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

The color pallid, or livid, is that deadly greenish hue, which is the unmistakable token of the approach of death. The rider is Death—not a particular form of death, but Death himself. Attending him, ready to gather up the slain, is Hades.

The fourth seal is the darkest and most terrible. Single forms of death (war and famine) were revealed in the earlier seals; now the great King of Terrors himself appears, and in his hand are gathered all forms of death—war, famine, pestilence (for the second time the word “death” is used: it must be taken in a subordinate sense, as a particular form of death, such as plague, or pestilence; we may compare the use of the word “death” thus applied to some special disease, in the case of The Death, or Black Death), and wild beasts.

These forms of death correspond with God’s four sore judgments—the sword, and famine, and pestilence, and the noisome beasts of Ezekiel 14:21. The seal, therefore, gathers up into one all the awfulness of the past seals. It is the central seal, and it is the darkest. It is the midnight of sorrows, where all seems given up to the sovereignty of death.

The middle things of life are often dark. Midway between the wicket-gate and golden city Bunyan placed his valley of the shadow of death, following the hint of the Psalmist, who placed it midway between the pasture and the house of the Lord (Psalms 23). Dante, perhaps working from the same hint, found his obscure wood and wanderings midway along the road of life:—

“In the midway of this our mortal life
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray.”

The darkest periods of the Church’s history were those we call the Middle Ages. By this, however, it is not meant that there is any chronological significance in the seal. The vision deepens in its central scene, like the horror of darkness in the dream of Abraham. The history of the Church has often presented a sort of parallel. The age which follows the ages of barren dogmatism and of spiritual starvation is often an age of sham spiritual life. The pale horse of death is the parody of the white horse of victory: the form of godliness remains, the power is gone.