The second seal opened : A swordsman representing (red = martial colour) war and bloodshed, “is permitted to make men slay one another”. The allusion to the merciless weapon (Plut. de Iside, 11) of the sword as Rome's national arm thus places the Parthian and Roman empires side by side (τῆς γῆς generally, not Judaea in particular), but the vision of war is also connected directly with the two following visions of famine (Revelation 6:5-6) and mortality (from pestilence, 7, 8). The seven punishments drawn up by rabbinic theology (Pirke Aboth, Revelation 6:11 f.) were: three kinds of famine, pestilence, noisome beasts, and captivity or exile.

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Old Testament