The seven seals: the Lamb opens the scroll and the age is unveiled

Chapter 6 begins the opening of the scroll that the Lamb took in chapter 5. The first four seals release four horsemen, the fifth shows martyrs under the altar, and the sixth brings upheaval in the sky and earth. The seventh does not come until 8:1. First-century Christians in Asia knew war, famine, plague and death. They knew that the Roman peace was secured by armies and that it brought arrogance, economic inequality and persecution. They also knew Jesus' own sayings about wars, famines and earthquakes as 'the beginning of birth pains' (Matthew 24:6-8) and his warning that his followers would be hated and killed (Matthew 24:9). The seals describe this world, seen from heaven.

The Old Testament offered the chapter's pictures. Zechariah saw horses of different colours patrolling the earth for the LORD (Zechariah 1:8-11) and four chariots with coloured horses going out to the four winds of heaven (Zechariah 6:1-8). Ezekiel announced four severe judgments, sword, famine, wild beasts and plague (Ezekiel 14:21). Isaiah, Joel, Haggai and others described the shaking of heaven and earth on the day of the LORD. John draws on all of these.

The seals are apocalyptic imagery built from the prophets, and the first rule is to ask what each image meant in its source before asking what it names now. A second rule is to compare the chapter with the Olivet Discourse, where Jesus spoke of wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution and cosmic signs in a similar order, and said that these are not yet the end (Matthew 24:6). All the main readings accept this parallel and use it, though they draw different conclusions. A third rule is to notice the repeated passive 'was given' (6:2, 4, 8), which marks every power as acting under God's permission.

The four approaches place the seals differently. Preterists, such as Kenneth Gentry, read them against the first century, in the wars and famines around the Jewish revolt and the fall of Jerusalem. Their strongest argument is the Olivet parallel, since Jesus said that 'this generation' would see these things (Matthew 24:34). Historicists, such as Edward Bishop Elliott, read the seals as stages in the history of the Roman Empire and then of the church, and many historicists take the sixth seal as the fall of pagan Rome. Their strongest argument is that the sequence runs in a plain order and that later events seemed to match it. Idealists, such as William Hendriksen and G. K. Beale, read the seals as the typical conditions of the whole age between the ascension and the return, and the sixth seal as the end of that age seen in advance. Their strongest argument is the Olivet parallel again, together with the fact that these troubles have marked every century. Futurists, whether dispensational, such as John Walvoord, or historic premillennial, such as George Eldon Ladd, read the seals as the opening judgments of a future tribulation, though they differ on whether the church is present for them. Their strongest argument is that the sixth seal reaches the day of God's wrath in terms that seem final, and that the seals then give way to the trumpets and bowls in sequence.

The millennial views bear on the seals less than on later chapters, since they come before the millennium of chapter 20. They shape the way the sixth seal is read. Amillennialists and postmillennialists generally take the sixth seal as a view of the final judgment, because the same imagery of the sun darkened and the sky rolled up is used for it. Premillennialists read the sixth seal as the approach of the day of the LORD before Christ's coming and before the millennial kingdom. Our understanding is that the text itself marks a movement from the ordinary violence of the age to the vindication of the martyrs and then to the end, and that the identity of the white rider and the exact scope of the sixth seal are matters on which the text can be pressed from more than one side.

Verses 1 and 2

The Lamb opens the first seal, and one of the living creatures calls 'Come!' in a voice like thunder. The call is addressed to the horse and rider, not to John. The white horse's rider carries a bow and is given a crown (stephanos, a victor's wreath) 'to overcome and conquer'. His identity is among the most disputed in the book. Some, including a number of early Christian writers and modern commentators such as Hendriksen, take the rider as Christ or the gospel advancing, because white and victory belong elsewhere to Christ (19:11) and because Jesus said the gospel would be preached to all nations before the end (Matthew 24:14). Against this, the Lamb is the one opening the seals, the other three horsemen are plainly disasters, and the rider here wears a stephanos, not the royal diadems of 19:12. Most modern scholars therefore take the rider as conquest or military aggression, and some see a counterfeit of Christ. The bow suggests the Parthian archers, Rome's feared eastern enemy, though the point may simply be armed conquest.

Verses 3 and 4

The red horse is bloodshed. Its rider is 'granted permission' to take peace from the earth and to make men slay one another. The great sword is the large knife of the soldier or executioner.

Verses 5 and 6

The black horse carries scales. A voice announces: a quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius. A denarius was roughly a day's wage, so a day's work buys only the daily grain for one person, many times the normal price. Wheat and barley are scarce, but 'oil and wine', the luxury goods of the wealthy, are not to be harmed. The scene pictures famine in which the poor go hungry while the rich keep their luxuries. Some commentators connect the oil and wine to an edict of Domitian about vineyards, but the connection is uncertain.

Verses 7 and 8

The fourth horse is 'pale green' (chloros), the colour of a corpse or of sickness. Its rider is Death, with Hades following. They have authority over 'a fourth of the earth', so the judgment is partial, and the four agents of Ezekiel 14:21 appear: sword, famine, plague and wild beasts. These are effects of living under the curse of sin and not yet the final day.

Verses 9 to 11. The scene shifts to heaven. Under the altar are 'the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony they had upheld'. In the sacrificial system the blood of offerings was poured out at the base of the altar (Leviticus 4:7), and the martyrs' lives are pictured as sacrifices (compare Philippians 2:17; 2 Timothy 4:6). They cry 'How long, O Lord, holy and true?', the question of the psalms of lament (Psalm 79:5, 10; 94:3) and of Zechariah 1:12. It is a plea for justice, not for personal revenge. They are given white robes and told to 'rest a little while longer' until the full number of martyrs is complete. God's justice is delayed but not abandoned, and the number is fixed.

Verses 12 to 17. The sixth seal brings an earthquake, a black sun, a blood-red moon, falling stars and a sky rolled up like a scroll. These images come from Joel 2:10 and 31, Isaiah 13:10 and 34:4, and Hosea 10:8 (cited by Jesus in Luke 23:30). In the prophets such language describes the fall of cities and nations (Isaiah 13 describes Babylon's fall) as well as the final day, and in Mark 13:24-25 Jesus uses it of the coming of the Son of Man. The people who hide are listed in seven groups from kings to slaves, an all-inclusive list. They flee 'the wrath of the Lamb'. The phrase joins the gentlest and the most terrible images in the book. The final question, 'who is able to withstand it?', echoes Malachi 3:2 and Nahum 1:6 and is answered in chapter 7.

All the main readings agree on what the seals teach. The Lamb who was slain governs the history in which his people suffer. War, famine, disease and death are real, are limited by God's permission ('was given'), and do not rule the world. The martyrs are not forgotten. Their lives are pictured as offerings under the altar, they are given white robes, and their cry for justice is heard. God's delay is not indifference, and the number of those who will be killed is known to him. The final day brings the wrath of the Lamb, from which no earthly rank can hide. Preterist, historicist, idealist and futurist writers all say these things, and so do amillennial, postmillennial and premillennial ones.

The chapter also states a biblical pattern that shapes the doctrine of the end. Jesus said that wars, famines and earthquakes are 'the beginning of birth pains' and are not yet the end (Matthew 24:6-8). The seals follow that pattern: ordinary troubles, then persecution, then the end. The age between the first and second comings is therefore not a calm that later breaks into trouble. It is already marked by the powers of conquest, bloodshed, scarcity and death, under the hand of Christ, until he comes. This is the 'already and not yet' in a darker colour. The victory of the cross is real, and its public completion is still awaited. The martyrs' question 'How long?' is the church's question until then, and Scripture does not rebuke it.

What is debated is the timing and scope. Is the fourth seal's 'fourth of the earth' a figure for the limits of judgment in any age, or a literal portion of a future population? Do the seals lie wholly in the past, in the continuing age, or in a final period? Does the sixth seal describe the end itself or the approach of it? These divide the readers who agree on the Lamb's rule, and each reading can cite parts of the chapter and of the Olivet Discourse.

In this chapter Christ is the one who opens. Each seal is broken by the Lamb. This puts him at the centre of the history that the seals describe. The Lamb who was slain is also the one who governs the age in which his people are killed. There is no suggestion that he stands apart from the sufferings of the faithful. He was killed first, and he is called 'the faithful witness' (1:5). The martyrs are 'slain for the word of God', with the same verb used of the Lamb in 5:6, 9 and 12.

The chapter also shows Christ as judge. 'The wrath of the Lamb' is a phrase without parallel in the Old Testament, though the Psalms speak of the wrath of the Messiah-king (Psalm 2:12). Jesus himself said the Father had given all judgment to the Son (John 5:22, 27). The wrath of the Lamb is not different from his love, since it is the wrath of the one who died for the guilty and who calls them to take refuge in him (compare Psalm 2:12). There are also echoes of the Olivet discourse. The sequence of wars, famines, persecutions and cosmic signs in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 matches the sequence of the seals, and Jesus' own words are the best commentary on this chapter.