Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 6:2

White = royal and victorious colour, cf. the white horse of the Persian kings (Philostr. Vit. Ap. i.). The triumphant figure of the mounted bowman is by no means to be identified with that of the Christian messiah or of the gospel. It would be extremely harsh and confusing to represent the messiah as at once the Lamb opening the seal and a figure independently at work. The initial period of the gospel was not one of irresistible triumph, and matters have become too acute for John to share the belief voiced in Mark 13:10. Besides, the messiah could hardly be described as preceding the signs of his own advent, nor would he be on the same plane as the following figures. The vision is a tacit antithesis, not an anticipation, of Revelation 19:11 f.; the triumph of the world which opens the drama is rounded off by an infinitely grander triumph won by Christ. νικῶν κ. κ. τ. λ. John was too open-eyed to ignore the fact that other forces, besides the Christian gospel, had a success of their own on earth. What is this force? Not the Roman Empire, as if the four steeds represented the first four emperors (so, variously, Renan, Spitta, Weizsäcker), but a raid of the Parthians (so most edd. from Vitringa to Erbes, Völter, Holtzm., Bousset, Bruston, Ramsay, Scott), which represented war in its most dreaded form for inhabitants of the Eastern provinces. There is no need to find any definite reference to the raid of Vonones (Wetstein) or of Vologesus who invaded Syria in 61 63 A.D. The simple point of the vision is that the Parthians would be commissioned to make a successful foray, carrying all before them. The bow was the famous and dreaded weapon of these oriental cavalry; Νικήτωρ was a title of Seleucus, and νικητής of the Persian satrap. One plausible hypothesis (developed by Erbes) refers the basis of the seal-visions to (a) the triumphs of Augustus and Tiberius, (b) the bloody feuds in Palestine under Caligula, (c) the famine in Syria under Claudius (Acts 11), (d) the subsequent pestilence, (e) the Neronic martyrs, and (f) the agitations of the empire under Galba, etc. (for portents cf. Plin. Ep. vi. 16, 20; Tacit. Hist. i. 4). But a similar collocation of portents is found in the reign of Titus; and apart from the misinterpretation of the first seal, it is arbitrary and jejune to suppose that this prophet's splendid, free reading of providence was laboriously spelt out from details of more or less recent history.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 6:2

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