Verse 3
The second beast - That which had the face of an ox.
Verse 4
Another horse - red - The emblem of war; perhaps also of severe persecution, and the martyrdom of the saints.
Him that sat thereon - Same say, Christ; others, Vespasian; others, the Roman armies; others, Artabanus, king of the Parthians, etc., etc.
Take peace from the earth - To deprive Judea of all tranquillity.
They should kill one another - This was literally the case with the Jews, while besieged by the Romans.
A great sword - Great influence and success, producing terrible carnage.
Verse 5
The third beast - That which had the face of a man.
A black horse - The emblem of famine. Some think that which took place under Claudius. See [Mat 24:7]; the same which was predicted by Agabus, [Act 11:28].
A pair of balances - To show that the scarcity would be such, that every person must be put under an allowance.
Verse 6
A measure of wheat for a penny - The chaenix here mentioned was a measure of dry things; and although the capacity is not exactly known, yet it is generally agreed that it contained as much as one man could consume in a day; and a penny, the Roman denarius, was the ordinary pay of a laborer. So it appears that in this scarcity each might be able to obtain a bare subsistence by his daily labor; but a man could not, in such cases, provide for a family.
Three measures of barley - This seems to have been the proportion of value between the wheat and the barley. Barley was allowed to afford a poor aliment, and was given to the Roman soldiers instead of wheat, by way of punishment.
Hurt not the oil and the wine - Be sparing of these: use them not as delicacies, but for necessity; because neither the vines nor the olives will be productive.
Verse 7
The fourth beast - That which had the face of an eagle.
Verse 8
A pale horse - The symbol of death. Pallida mors, pale death, was a very usual poetic epithet; of this symbol there can be no doubt, because it is immediately said, His name that sat on him was Death.
And hell followed with him - The grave, or state of the dead, received the slain. This is a very elegant prosopopaeia, or personification.
Over the fourth part of the earth - One fourth of mankind was to feel the desolating effects of this seal.
To kill with sword - War; with hunger - Famine; with death - Pestilence; and with the beasts of the earth - lions, tigers, hyenas, etc., which would multiply in consequence of the devastations occasioned by war, famine, and pestilence.
Verse 9
The fifth seal - There is no animal nor any other being to introduce this seal, nor does there appear to be any new event predicted; but the whole is intended to comfort the followers of God under their persecutions, and to encourage them to bear up under their distresses.
I saw under the altar - A symbolical vision was exhibited, in which he saw an altar; and under it the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God - martyred for their attachment to Christianity, are represented as being newly slain as victims to idolatry and superstition. The altar is upon earth, not in heaven.
Verse 10
And they cried with a loud voice - That is, their blood, like that of Abel, cried for vengeance; for we are not to suppose that there was any thing like a vindictive spirit in those happy and holy souls who had shed their blood for the testimony of Jesus. We sometimes say Blood cries for blood; that is, in the order of Divine justice, every murderer, and every murdering persecutor, shall be punished.
O Lord - Ὁ Δεσποτης· Sovereign Lord, supreme Ruler; one having and exercising unlimited and uncontrolled authority.
Holy - In thy own nature, hating iniquity;
And true - In all thy promises and threatenings;
Dost thou not judge - The persecutors;
And avenge our blood - Inflict signal punishment;
On them that dwell on the earth? - Probably meaning the persecuting Jews; they dwelt επι της γης, upon that land, a form of speech by which Judea is often signified in the New Testament.
Verse 11
White robes - The emblems of purity, innocence, and triumph.
They should rest yet for a little season - This is a declaration that, when the cup of the iniquity of the Jews should be full, they should then be punished in a mass. They were determined to proceed farther, and God permits them so to do; reserving the fullness of their punishment till they had filled up the measure of their iniquity. If this book was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, as is most likely, then this destruction is that which was to fall upon the Jews; and the little time or season was that which elapsed between their martyrdom, or the date of this book, and the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, under Vespasian and his son Titus, about a.d. 70. What follows may refer to the destruction of the heathen Roman empire.
Verse 12
The sixth seal - This seal also is opened and introduced by Jesus Christ alone.
A great earthquake - A most stupendous change in the civil and religious constitution of the world. If it refer to Constantine the Great, the change that was made by his conversion to Christianity might be very properly represented under the emblem of an earthquake, and the other symbols mentioned in this and the following verses.
The sun - the ancient pagan government of the Roman empire, was totally darkened; and, like a black hair sackcloth, was degraded and humbled to the dust.
The moon - the ecclesiastical state of the same empire, became as blood - was totally ruined, their sacred rites abrogated, their priests and religious institutions desecrated, their altars cast down, their temples destroyed, or turned into places for Christian worship.
Verse 13
The stars of heaven - The gods and goddesses, demi-gods, and deified heroes, of their poetical and mythological heaven, were prostrated indiscriminately, and lay as useless as the figs or fruit of a tree shaken down before ripe by a tempestuous wind.