Revelation 6:7,8

Revelation 6:7. The fourth horse is pale in colour, that is, with the livid paleness of a corpse. He comes forth in circumstances precisely similar to those already met by us, and he is to be looked at in the same way. As in them, so also in him and in his rider Jesus comes to judgment,

The name of the rider is given, Death, which is to be understood in its natural signification. For the mode of expression comp. John 3:1. He is represented as accompanied by Hades, who does not follow after him, but ‘with him;' or, in other words, is his inseparable companion. We are to understand Hades here in the same sense as that in which we met it in chap. Revelation 1:18 (see note). Neither Hades nor death touches the people of God. The judgment is on the world.

Authority is given unto them to kill, etc. May these words not be an echo of the words, ‘they sought to kill Him,' so often said of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel? His enemies sought to ‘kill' Him: He, in His judgments, ‘kills' them (comp. on Revelation 6:4). That there are four things by which death and Hades kill we learn from Ezekiel 14:21, to which passage there is here an obvious reference. It is true that we have a change of preposition when we come to the last of the four; but this change may be dependent upon the fact that the same preposition which had been used with the first three could not also be used with the last.

The authority to kill spoken of is given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, that is, over a fourth part of the ungodly, not of all who dwell upon the surface of the earth. Over the elect, who are preserved unhurt, they have no power. Thus again there is a climax when we pass from the third to the fourth seal. In the third seal provision for the saints was to be left unhurt: in the fourth, while death and Hades accomplish their dread work around them, they are untouched. It is not easy to say why the ‘fourth' part of the earth should be selected as the prey of this last and greatest judgment. The suggestion that it is designed to bring out a correspondence with the ‘fourth' rider is unsatisfactory, and finds no analogy in chap. 8, where a ‘third' part is spoken of. The object may be only to give scope for the climax which we shall hereafter find in comparing the Trumpets and Bowls with the Seals. At this point of the Apocalypse the judgments of God appear in their earliest and most limited range. Were they to extend over the whole earth, there would be no room for the extension of judgment that is to follow. The Seer therefore beheld them exercising their sway only over a part of the earth; and that he chose the fourth, as hereafter the third, part may arise from nothing more than this, that the numbers four and three were so often in his mind, and that a fourth part was smaller than a third.

Such then are the first four seals which, to be understood, must be viewed ideally. They refer to no specific war or famine or pestilence, nor do they even necessarily follow one another in chronological succession. They express the great principle borne witness to by the whole course of human history, that the world, refusing the yoke and kingdom of the Son of God, draws down upon itself His righteous judgments. These judgments again are confined to no particular period. War, famine, and pestilence, or the troubles and sufferings which they symbolize, darken the whole history of man, and all of them are but ominous forerunners of the more terrible judgment to come, when the Lord shall finally and for ever vindicate His own cause, put all His enemies beneath His feet, and establish His reign of perfect peace and righteousness (Matthew 24:8). During the calamities produced by them, too, the Lord preserves His own. They suffer, but judgments such as these are not directed against them. On the contrary, in sorrow they rejoice, in famine they ‘live' by other things than bread, and they are unaffected by the pestilence that walketh in darkness. Even in death itself they do not die, and the spirit in which they are enabled to meet their outward trials is to them ‘a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, to the end that they may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which they also suffer' (2 Thessalonians 1:5).