The five horsemen.

Revelation 6.1-8.

Someone asked me about the four horsemen of Revelation 6, and I had to correct her: “Five horsemen.”

She’d always heard there were four. There are, from the looks of it, four horses, which appear when the Lamb of God opens four different seals on his book of the End. But if you’re counting men—more accurately, man-shaped figures which represent various things—there are five. Check out the text:

Revelation 6.1-8 KWL

1I see when the Lamb opens one of the seven seals.

I hear one of the four Living Beings saying,

like the sound of thunder, “Come {and see}.”

2I see. And look: A white horse,

its rider having a bow.

He’s given a leafy crown,

and the victor comes forth so he might win.

3When the Lamb opens the second seal,

I hear the second Living Being saying, “Come {and see}.”

4Another horse, a red one, comes forth.

As for the rider upon it:

It’s given to him the charge

to take peace from the land,

so they will slaughter one another.

A great machete is given to him.

5When the Lamb opens the third seal,

I hear the third Living Being saying, “Come {and see}.”

I see. And look: A black horse,

its rider having scales in his hand.

6I hear something like a voice

in the middle of the four Living Beings, saying,

“A liter of wheat is a denarius.

Three liters of barley is a denarius.

You ought not be unfair with the oil and wine.”

7When the Lamb opens the fourth seal,

I hear the fourth Living Being saying, “Come {and see}.”

8I see. And look: A gray horse.

The name of the rider upon it is Death.

Afterlife is following behind him.

Power was given to them over a quarter of the land,

to destroy with sword, famine, death,

and by the wild animals of the land.

So the five horsemen are personifications of victory, war, inflation, death, and the afterlife (Greek ᾅδης/ádis, “Hades”).

Okay, but what do they mean?

As you know, Christians have interpreted these five horsemen every which way. When I was a little kid, we had a full set of Arthur S. Maxwell’s The Bible Story, his collection of bible stories for children. “Uncle Arthur” Maxwell was a Seventh-Day Adventist, and editor of Signs of the Times magazine. So of course his spin on the End Times was the Adventist view.

When Jesus began to open the seals and unroll the scroll, it was just as if He had switched on a television set. One picture after another passed before John’s eyes, each one a symbol of some event to happen in the future.

First he saw “a white horse, and its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.”

He recognized the rider. It was Jesus Himself. And the horse was His church, gloriously white in its first love and purity, as it went galloping with the gospel through all the Roman Empire. Bible Story 10:184

A few years later—still a little kid, folks—I read the comic-book version of Hal Lindsey’s There’s a New World Coming, and in it the rider of the white horse was—in big red letters—“THE ANTI-CHRIST! He’ll charm the whole world into worshipping him!!! But he’ll turn out to be BAD NEWS for everybody!!!” New World Coming 9

Um… okay, is the first rider Christ or Antichrist? That’s kind of a massive difference, y’know.

Well, I found adults were no help, ’cause they didn’t know either. Some said Christ, some said Antichrist, some said neither—it represented the ancient church or the first Christians, or the first apostles as they victoriously spread the gospel all over the Roman Empire, or the Christian Era as a whole… until the End Times, and then the other horsemen pick things up from there.

Fact is, your interpretation largely depends on your End Times worldview. If you buy Lindsey’s schtick, the horsemen represent things that’ll make the world miserable during the great tribulation. If you buy Uncle Arthur’s, these represent different phases of the Christian Era—the original victorious church, then as the church loses its first love, times of war, recession, and death. And many an amillennialist insists these are trends or forces we’re always gonna see throughout history, over and over again, in no particular order—times of victory, times of war, times of recession and famine, times of plague and death. To everything there is a season, Ec 3.1 KJV turn turn turn. Christians shouldn’t be surprised by them, nor think they’re signs of the times; it’s just life.

I’m an historian, so I take the preterist view: Other than the visions of the second coming and New Earth, most of Revelation consists of things Christians of the day needed to know, ’cause they were gonna happen in the near future. Less than 15 years after Revelation was written. The Christians in Israel in particular—some of these things were gonna happen right in front of them. The more you know about the Roman-Jewish War, the more obvious it becomes Revelation was fulfilled by it.

THE WHITE HORSE. White horses were prize horses back then. The rider on it is frequently interpreted as a conqueror, though more accurately he’s a winner—he’s got the Olympic-style garland on his head, and he’s off to go accumulate more victories.

This rider represents the undefeated Roman army. Up to this point in history, they’d never lost a war, and they weren’t about to lose this next one. And in the year 67, they were on their way to Israel.

THE RED HORSE. After Cæsar Augustus won the Roman civil war in 30BC, the Roman Empire had undergone an unprecedented era of peace. True, Romans kept the peace by crucifying everyone who might disrupt it, but they hadn’t had to send an army to put down any rebellions… until now.

The red horse represented the end of that peace. The Israeli insurgency had provoked Rome to send in their army. The Israelis were likewise fighting one another. Some wanted a full-on war against Rome, convinced they’d win and Messiah would destroy Rome. Some weren’t so sure about the Messiah stuff, but did wanna try fighting Rome for a bit. Others, who knew what Rome might do to them, wanted to surrender and go back to the status quo as much as they could.

THE BLACK HORSE. War always brings famine and scarcity with it.

The voice in the midst of the Living Beings (and since the Lamb sits on the throne in the midst of the Living Beings, I put the quotation in red letters) said you ought not be unfair (μὴ ἀδικήσῃς/mi adikísis, “you ought not be unrighteous,” KJV “[see] thou hurt not”) with the oil and wine. Famine and scarcity were typically triggered, on purpose, by invaders destroying your resources. They’d burn your fields so you’d have no grain, and starve you out.

Harsher invaders wouldn’t just destroy your resources temporarily, but permanently. They didn’t intend for you to recover after the war was over and they defeated you; they intended you to stay in scarcity and poverty, as punishment. They’d destroy things that’d take years to bring back—like your trees and your vineyards. No more fruit, no more olives… no more oil, no more grapes. Only the most savage enemies would destroy that, and the Romans were just that savage. (Although the story they salted the earth after they defeated Carthage in 146BC is just myth… but King Abimelech of Shechem did do just that. Jg 9.45)

Now the voice said the black horse’s rider ought not affect the oil and wine, yet the Romans did so. This doesn’t mean this prophecy therefore can’t be about the Romans; this instead means the Romans went too far. God allowed the Romans to smite Judea because they rejected him and his Messiah… but God did not want his people annihilated and their land laid waste. The Romans went too far. Romans will do that, y’know.

THE GRAY HORSE. (Or pale horse, or green horse; χλωρός/khlorós properly means a pale yellowish green, but Greek-speakers also used that word to describe gray or light-brown horses.) War of course brings death, and when you die you go to the afterlife.

And there was a lot of death in this war. The Romans killed a quarter of the Jews on earth at the time. So when John says “Power was given to them over a quarter of the land, to destroy…” likely that’s what the Holy Spirit had in mind when he inspired John to write those words.

So that’s how I interpret ’em. And yeah, people are gonna tell me I’m absolutely wrong, ’cause they only know the way their favorite “prophecy scholars” have spun Revelation, and are convinced they’re right.

I know; I know; I grew up reading those guys too. I didn’t switch to preterism for no good reason, though. Read Josephus’s The Jewish War for yourself.