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§6 The Lamb Breaks Six Seals of God’s Scroll (Rev. 6:1–17)

The judgment of God against a fallen world is one yield of the death and exaltation of Christ. The breaking of the seals, which opens the scroll and declares God’s decree of salvation, occurs as an essential part of Christ’s entrance into the heavenly throneroom. The seal judgments, and the trumpet judgments that follow, do not depict a sequence of future historical events; rather, they symbolize together God’s response to—and are in that sense co-terminus with—chapter five’s exaltation of the risen Lamb. Our commentary of this passage will assume, then, that, in keeping with the overarching intentions of his entire composition, John is making a theological point rather than a historical prediction.

6:1 / There is a clear relationship between the visions of the exalted Lamb in chapter 5 and his opening of the scroll’s seals in chapter 6: God’s global judgment, which will result from the breaking of the first four seals, is predicated on Christ’s heavenly triumph. Thus, the four living creatures, who worshiped the Lamb when he took God’s scroll in the earlier vision (5:8), now respond to the Lamb’s opening of the first four seals by executing the scroll’s edict through four horsemen.

The identity of the four horsemen is linked to the identity of the four living creatures; thus, even as they represent all animate creation in heaven (4:7), so the four horsemen, who obey their demand to Come!, are their agents on earth. The four horsemen would indicate, then, that God’s judgment extends to all animate existence; even in their realm the effects of sin are noticed. In collective rebellion against a good creator, all creatures, human and non-human, have perverted God’s intentions for the world order, but have thereby prevented themselves from finding those things that can make it whole. In what follows, the world desires peace, but finds war; it works for prosperity, but it finds scarcity; it seeks life, but finds only death. The messianic event challenges this corrupted creation and promises a new earth on which the intentions of a good creator are realized (cf. 21:1–22:6a).

6:2–4 / The first two horsemen are sent out as champion warriors. They both bear weapons of warfare—the first rider held a bow and the second a large sword. The first, who also rides a white horse, wears the crown, the symbol of military conquest. The second, who rides a fiery red horse, is intent to engage the enemy in battle. God has given earth over to itself to engage in a global, civil war, preventing its inhabitants from attaining the very things that make for their peace and security (cf. Rom. 1:28–31). Together, the horsemen take peace from the earth; these symbols of military strife call attention not only to a fallen creation, which now exists under the curse of God, but also to earth’s need for God’s shalom.

6:5–8 / The third horseman, riding a black horse, is sent out by the third living creature holding a pair of scales in his hand. John here envisions a “siege economy.” Creation’s civil war results in a scarcity of the staples necessary to sustain human life and in the rapid inflation of prices, which makes it impossible for the poor to survive. “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages” is the slogan of the marketplace, which is characterized by inequity and injustice. These conditions surely lead to violence, since the actual availability of wheat … barley … oil and the wine exists only for those wealthy enough to afford them. The scales of the third horseman measure the economic structures of a fallen world, where poor persons are deprived of food, and where the earth’s poor have need for God’s bounty.

The fourth horseman, sent out on a pale horse when the Lamb opens the fourth seal, is named Death, and Hades was following close behind him, gathering the victims of sword, famine and plague, and … the wild beasts (perhaps those used in the Roman persecution of Christians) into its domain. According to Revelation, both Death and Hades (the place of the dead) are destined for the lake of fire as participants in the Evil One’s reign of terror (Rev. 20:14). According to this vision, however, Death and Hades are results of the horsemen’s activities, and are viewed, therefore, as agents of God’s salvation in accord with God’s decree. This does not mean that God ordains Death along with the evil powers and activities that sponsor it and Hades. Death results from creation’s rebellion against God (cf. Rom. 5:12–14). Rather Death and Hades occasion God’s salvation and are therefore a necessary element of God’s plan of redemption, contained in the scroll’s writing.

This is why John sees the triumphant Lamb open the seals that release these disasters on earth. In this sense, the four horsemen symbolize God’s redemptive grace that reverses humanity’s civil wars and poverty, death and disease. Caird correctly concludes that “The heavenly voice which says, ‘Come!’ is not calling disasters into existence … Rather the voice is declaring that nothing can now happen, not even the most fearsome evidence of man’s disobedience and its nemesis, which cannot be woven into the pattern of God’s gracious purpose” (Revelation, p. 83).

6:9–11 / The breaking of the fifth seal narrows the field of John’s vision to the community of martyred believers, who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained (cf. 1:2). He finds their souls (or bodies) under the altar of the heavenly temple, they having sacrificed their lives in worship of God while participating in the systemic breakdown of the world order.

John, whose imprisonment shares in the martyrs’ sacrifice (cf. 1:9), may well be tempted to cry out with them “How long … until you avenge our blood?” The martyrs’ plea, addressed to the Sovereign Lord, holy and true, in expectation of Christ’s imminent return (6:11), seeks God’s eschatological vindication of their faithfulness. Their petition is not for vengeance against their persecutors; they are more concerned about their status within God’s righteous reign than within an anti-Christian kingdom ruled by those secular elite who had convicted and executed them as “the enemy.” We will make note, however, that in the succeeding vision of the 144,000, John assumes that God will avenge our blood (cf. 7:4–8).

Further, the martyrs’ cry of vindication frames their concern for theodicy and the date of its resolution: when will a Sovereign Lord, whose powerful mercy is disclosed in the slain and risen Lamb, vindicate God’s reign publicly as holy and true? No doubt, some readers of Revelation are facing a situation similar to that described by 2 Peter 3:3–4 in which the delay of Christ’s parousia has prompted their opponents is (perhaps other believers?) to scoff and ridicule Christian hope in Christ’s return. Second Peter’s response is to reassert the patience of God, who “is not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). John envisions a God who is waiting for the number of martyrs … who are to be killed … to be completed as the condition for the day of vindication. Both locate the resolution of theodicy in the future; both explain this delay in terms of the future vindication of God’s justice; both find here incentive for the community’s confidence in God’s intentions for salvation’s history; both encourage a patience justified by a belief in God’s sovereign control over history.

The immediate context of Revelation suggests, however, that the tragic death of faithful believers indicates the nearness of God’s final triumph over their persecutors. In fact, the exaltation of the slain Lamb promises them that the last will indeed be first under God’s reign, and those who lose their life for the Lamb’s sake will be exalted with him. This point, so crucial in John’s own understanding of his vision, will be expanded in chapter seven’s scene of the eschatological remnant. That scene responds to the martyrs’ plea for vindication.

The certainty of the future day of vindication is indicated by the white robe given each martyr. By this interim act, God already condemns the pagan tribunal that has ordered the death of fellow servants and brothers. Since the Christian martyrs are executed unjustly, God’s indictment is viewed to be holy and true even according to pagan standards of truth and goodness.

6:12–17 / The opening of the sixth seal issues in a twofold response from the elite of the social order. Since Christ’s exaltation validates his teaching that the last (i.e., Christian martyrs) will become first, it also means that the first will be last. Thus, the natural disasters (6:12–14) announcing the beginnings of such a reversal (cf. Matt. 27:51; 28:2) cause even the kings of the earth to hide from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. The deliberate irony of the phrase the wrath of the Lamb catches the reader’s attention. Mistaken are those explanations of this catchphrase that interpret Christ’s death as an act of personal or historical judgment against those who rejected him. It is best to take the phrase quite literally as the response of God’s enemies, whose terrifying experience of God’s anger results in a distorted understanding of the cross as God’s punishment rather than God’s forgiving mercy (Caird, Revelation, pp. 92–93). The slain Lamb is not finally a symbol of wrath (although Beasley-Murray, Revelation, p. 124); he is rather the symbol of God’s grace that purchased a people from death for eternal life.

The kings … princes … generals … rich … mighty who experience God’s wrath ask a legitimate question: “Who can stand?” They are those who were “first” in the world system and who once held the keys to the powers and blessings of the secular kingdom. They now experience the same powerlessness of every slave; together they are “last” in God’s kingdom. Therefore, their lament recognizes a different problem than that contained in the earlier lament of the Christian martyrs (6:10). While the lament of martyrs expresses the concern of beleaguered believers, the plea of these outsiders, who have lost their positions of secular power, is to know how to belong to the community that somehow escapes the terror of God’s judgment. Would it be too farfetched to suggest that the kings … mighty represent those unbelievers who seek to hear the gospel in response to their personal experience of creatureliness telling them that things are not right? Especially during times of calamity, those most comfortable and secure among us, who lose the resources of their comforts and securities, come to realize more concretely that death and evil pervade human existence. They are often the most inclined to ask, perhaps on behalf of all those they rule over, Who can stand? In any case, neither question, asked by the martyr or by the pagan elite, is merely rhetorical; each is rooted in human experience. Together they prepare the reader of Revelation for the interlude in John’s vision of seals that follows in chapter seven.