10/1/23
We’re reading through Revelation along with NT Wright’s Revelation for Everyone. These notes include discussions of topics of additional interest and attempt connections with more Old Testament material. Quotations on this page are from the NET Bible.
The Levitical Calendar / Liturgical Time
Just as the earthly Tabernacle and Temple correspond to God’s heavenly throne room, the Levitical calendar of feasts may correspond with a heavenly calendar that includes events of Jesus’ earthly life and of Revelation. As we work our way through Revelation, we can look for evidence of this correlation.
Revelation 6, The Horsemen
Now we have reached the meat of the book. It is a passage of fear and awe, inspiring centuries of art and music. To understand it, it’s important to recognize that the seals are not the contents of the document, breaking them is necessary to open it. We will not have access to the document’s contents until after the seventh seal has been broken.
The first four seals are the actions of horses and riders. Similar horses and riders appear in Zechariah 1:8-15:
I was attentive that night and saw a man seated on a red horse that stood among some myrtle trees in the ravine. Behind him were red, sorrel, and white horses. Then I asked one nearby, “What are these, sir?” The angelic messenger who replied to me said, “I will show you what these are.” Then the man standing among the myrtle trees spoke up and said, “These are the ones whom the Lord has sent to walk about on the earth.” The riders then agreed with the angel of the Lord, who was standing among the myrtle trees, “We have been walking about on the earth, and now everything is at rest and quiet.” The angel of the Lord then asked, “O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, how long before you have compassion on Jerusalem and the other cities of Judah that you have been so angry with for these 70 years?” The Lord then addressed good, comforting words to the angelic messenger who was speaking to me. Turning to me, the messenger then said, “Cry out that the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says, ‘I am very much moved for Jerusalem and for Zion. But I am greatly displeased with the nations that take my grace for granted. I was a little displeased with them, but they have only made things worse for themselves.
and Zechariah 6:1-8:
Once more I looked, and this time I saw four chariots emerging from between two mountains of bronze. Harnessed to the first chariot were red horses, to the second black horses, to the third white horses, and to the fourth spotted horses, all of them strong. Then I asked the angelic messenger who was speaking with me, “What are these, sir?” The messenger replied, “These are the four spirits of heaven going out after presenting themselves before the Lord of all the earth. The chariot with the black horses is going to the north country, and the white ones are going after them, but the spotted ones are going to the south country. All these strong ones are scattering; they have sought permission to go and walk about over the earth.” The Lord had said, “Go! Walk about over the earth!” So they are doing so. Then he cried out to me, “Look! The ones going to the northland have brought me peace about the northland.”
In each passage, it appears the role of the four horseman is military in nature - to patrol and possibly to wage war. Revelation 6’s horsemen are also each associated with war:
…here came a white horse! The one who rode it had a bow, and he was given a crown, and as a conqueror he rode out to conquer.
…another horse, fiery red, came out, and the one who rode it was granted permission to take peace from the earth so that people would butcher one another, and he was given a huge sword.
…here came a black horse! The one who rode it had a balance scale in his hand. Then I heard something like a voice from among the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat will cost a day’s pay, and three quarts of barley will cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil and the wine!”
…here came a pale green horse! The name of the one who rode it was Death, and Hades followed right behind. They were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill its population with the sword, famine, and disease, and by the wild animals of the earth.
At a surface-level reading, the black horse may be the hardest for us to understand because of our unfamiliarity with the money of the time and what a quantity of food would mean. Commentators, including NT Wright, are in broad agreement that the denarius, or common day’s wage for a laborer, buying this relatively small quantity of wheat or barley indicates a famine, and some further suggest that preserving the oil and wine represents the famine harming the poor more than the rich. In his Revelation commentary, Gordon Fee identifies a possible historical event that may correlate with the passage[1]:
Among the many options that interpreters have offered for this unusual moment, the most likely would seem to be a historical reflection on the furor created by the emperor Domitian in 92 CE when he ordered half the vineyards in the province of Asia (of which Ephesus was the capital) to be cut down so that he could increase the wheat supply for the Empire. Fortunately the good sense of others prevailed, so that the vines were spared.
Fee also proposes that the white horse here is a demonic parody of Jesus (who will, himself, appear on a white horse later in Revelation). If so, perhaps all four horsemen are demonic counterparts to Zechariah’s, which are apparent servants of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
The sequence of events the horsemen’s qualities suggest is common in world history. As a conqueror begins his work, armies kill each other; famine results from displacement, theft, and destruction of existing supplies; disease spreads with traveling armies; and eventually wild animals take over abandoned, ruined land as humans are no longer able to fulfill their Genesis 1 role as caretakers of the land and its animals. This is an early glimpse of a phenomenon that will recur in Revelation and is evident in many judgment narratives of the Old Testament – judgment as de-creation. The Genesis 1 and 2 created order reverses, elements of creation displace from their normal bounds, and the fruitful land reverts to wilderness or sea.
[1] Fee, Gordon D.. Revelation (New Covenant Commentary Series Book 3) (p. 94). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.