And I looked, and behold a pale horse
An emblem either of the state of the church, pale not with
persecution, as some think, for through that it was red; but with
the hypocrisy and superstition of many of its members, who were
paving the way for the man of sin, and on account of whom the
church was grown sickly and dying; or rather this is an emblem of
the sickly and dying state of the Pagan Roman empire, through a
complication of judgments upon it, hereafter mentioned, as war,
famine, pestilence, and wild beasts:
and his name that sat on him was Death;
not Satan, who has the power of death, but death itself; who is
represented as a person, as he elsewhere is, sometimes as a king,
( Romans
5:14 ) ; and as an enemy, ( 1
Corinthians 15:25 ) ; see ( Isaiah 28:15
) ; and this was a very ancient way of speaking of death among
the Heathens; in the theology of the Phoenicians, according to
Sanchoniathon F11, who wrote before the Trojan wars,
a son of Saturn by Rhea was called Muth, whom the Phoenicians
sometimes called Death, and sometimes Pluto; which is manifestly
the same with the Hebrew word (twm) , "death"; the name of the rider of this horse
may well be called Death, both with respect to the various kinds
of death under this seal, and with respect to the short lives of
the emperors; for in less than fifty years' time, which is the
period of this seal, namely, from Maximinus, A. D. 235, or 237,
to Dioclesian, A. D. 284, or 286, there were more than twenty
emperors, and who most of them were cut off by violent deaths;
besides the thirty tyrants who sprung up under one of them, as so
many mushrooms, and were soon destroyed. This is the only rider
that has a name given him; and from hence we may learn what to
call the rest, as the rider of the white horse "Truth", or
Christ, who is truth itself; the rider of the red horse "War";
and the rider of the black horse "Famine": and because both the
last, with other judgments, meet together under this seal, the
rider of this horse is emphatically called "Death":
and hell followed with him:
that is, the grave, which attended on death, or followed after
him, and was a sort of an undertaker, to bury the dead killed by
death; so these two are put together, ( Revelation
1:18 ) ( Revelation
20:13 Revelation
20:14 ) ;
and power was given unto them;
to death and hell, or the grave, or rather to death only, for the
Vulgate Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, read, "to
him": and the power that was given him reached
over the fourth part of the earth;
not of the church, which is never called the earth in this book,
but is distinguished from it, ( Revelation
12:16 ) ; nor the land of Judea, but the Roman empire; some
understand it of Europe, the fourth part of the world:
to kill with the sword;
Maximinus, with whom this seal begins, was of a very barbarous
disposition, and a more cruel creature, it is said, was not upon
earth; and besides his persecution of the Christians, he acted a
most inhuman part to the Pagan Romans themselves, so that the
senate dreaded him; and the women and children at Rome, having
heard of his barbarities, deprecated his ever seeing that city;
and he was called by the names of the worst of tyrants; more than
four thousand men he killed without any charge or judicial
process against them, and yet his blood thirsty mind was not
satisfied F12: Gallienus, another emperor after
him, emptied many cities entirely of men, and killed three or
four thousand a day of his own soldiers, whom he understood had
thoughts of a new emperor F13; under him thirty tyrants
sprung up together in the empire, who made great havoc before
they were cut off; and in his time the Alemanni (a people in
Germany) having wasted France, broke into Italy; Dacia, which
beyond the Danube was added by Trajan (to the Roman empire) was
lost; Greece, Macedonia, Pontus, and Asia, were destroyed by the
Goths; Pannonia was depopulated by (the people called) Sarmatae
and Quadi; the Germans penetrated into Spain, and took the famous
city of Tarracon; the Parthians having seized Mesopotamia, began
to claim Syria to themselves; so that, as the Roman historian
observes F14, things were now desperate, and the
Roman empire was almost destroyed: not to take notice of the
multitudes that were killed in after wars and persecutions, under
other emperors, during this seal:
and with hunger;
or famine; there was a grievous famine in the times of Gallus and
Volusianus, which Dionysius bishop of Alexandria makes mention of
F15; and Cyprian, who lived under this
seal, also speaks of famine, and indeed of all these three, war,
famine, and pestilence, as then imputed to the Christians, and to
their irreligion, which charge he removes F16:
and with death;
that is, with the pestilence, which, by the Targumist F17, and
other Jewish writers F18, is commonly called (antwm) , "death", because it sweeps
away and carries off such large numbers with it: now in the reign
of the last mentioned emperors was a very noisome pestilence,
which raged most cruelly; the Roman historian says F19, that
their reign is only known, or was famous, for the pestilence,
diseases, and sicknesses; Hostilianus, who was created emperor by
the senate, died of it F20; Dionysius of Alexandria has given
a most shocking account of it, who lived at the same time
F21; it began in Ethiopia, and went
through the east, and through all parts of the Roman empire, and
lasted fifteen years; to which perhaps, for its large extent and
long duration, there never was the like:
and with the beasts of the earth;
by which many of the Christians were destroyed in the
persecutions of those times; and is also one of God's four
judgments, and which goes about with the sword, famine, and
pestilence, ( Ezekiel
14:21 ) , and may be literally understood of destruction by
wild beasts, as Arnobius, who lived at this time, observes
F23; or allegorically, of men
comparable to wild beasts, as Herod is called a fox, and Nero a
lion; and such savage creatures were most of the Roman emperors,
and particularly the thirty tyrants under Gallienus: so the
Targum on ( Jeremiah
3:12 ) ; interprets "the beasts of the field", (aymme yklm) , "the kings of the
nations". The Alexandrian copy reads, "and upon the fourth part
of the beasts", as if the power of death reached to them as well
as to men. Under this seal all the judgments of God on Rome Pagan
meet together; and it is observable that Maximinus, a Roman
emperor, and one of the last of the Pagans, boasted, that for
worshipping of the gods, and persecuting Of the Christians,
neither pestilence, famine, nor war, were in his times, when on a
sudden all these three came together at once F24; to
which may be added the following observation, that though the
several steps and methods which God took to punish, weaken, and
destroy the Roman Pagan empire, were remarkably seen in the
distinct periods to which these first four seals belong, yet they
must not be entirely restrained and limited to these periods, as
if they were not made use of in others; so though the Gospel
proceeded with remarkable success under the first seal, in the
times of the apostles, to the subduing of multitudes in the Roman
empire, it was also preached with great success under the
following seals; and though there were most grievous wars under
the second seal, in the times of Trajan and Adrian, so there were
also in after times; that was not the only period of war, though
it was remarkably so; likewise there was a famine in the times of
Claudius, under the first seal, ( Acts 11:28 ) ; and in
the time of Trajan, under the second seal F25, and
of Commodus F26 as well as under the third; and
there were pestilences also in those times, as well as under the
fourth seal; and because God did by each of these weaken, break,
and at last bring to ruin that empire, they are showed to John
one after another.