Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Revelation 6:1-8, four horsemen
As the Lamb opens the first four seals, four riders go out: a crowned archer on a white horse bent on conquest, a rider on a red horse who takes peace from the earth, a rider with scales on a black horse while wheat sells at famine prices, and Death on a pale horse with Hades following.
Revelation 6:1-8, in every translation this tool compares.
As the Lamb breaks the first four seals, four horsemen ride out one after another. They bring conquest, bloodshed, food prices so high that a day's pay buys only bread, and finally death on a massive scale through war, hunger, disease and wild animals. None of them rides out until the Lamb opens the seal. Who the first rider stands for is debated.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/seals-and-deposits\/","n":"Seals, down payments and deposits","s":"A seal pressed into wax showed who owned or witnessed a document or a jar of goods and proved that no one had opened it. A down payment was the first part of the price, paid as a pledge that the rest would follow. A deposit left in someone's keeping had to be guarded and returned.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/the-parthians\/","n":"The Parthians beyond the Euphrates","s":"The empire east of the Euphrates, Rome's most feared enemy, famous for mounted archers who could shoot backward as they rode. Its armies had destroyed a Roman army and once marched into Judea to put their own man on the throne.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/rome-in-charge\/","n":"Rome in charge","s":"Rome ruled through client princes, local elites and governors. It kept the power to execute, and its soldiers, coins and taxes were everywhere.","r":""}
The riders adapt the patrolling horsemen of Zechariah 1:8-11 and 6:1-8 (the cultural backgrounds notes; Keener; Wright), and Heiser, with Beale, reads them, like Zechariah's, as sent out from God's throne in the council scene of chapters 4 and 5. Keener reads each seal as a witness to the document, which could not be opened until every seal was broken. An archer on a white horse evoked the Parthians, Rome's most feared enemy (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes); "Romans admitted that they could not defeat the Parthians to the east" (the cultural backgrounds article Parthia). The first rider is read differently: conquest, with Parthia in view (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes); an evil, deceiving force (Beale); more likely conquering kings than the Messiah (Wright); and destructive conquest, wearing a victor's wreath, not diadems (the CSB Study Bible). Famine prices ran more than ten times normal (Keener) or five to fifteen times (the cultural backgrounds notes), and readers may have recalled Domitian's vineyard edict of AD 92 (Beale; Keener). Heiser, after Beale, hears in the fourth rider's list Ezekiel 14:21's four judgments on an unfaithful nation.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Revelation 6:1-8, and on 6:1, 6:2 and 6:5-6
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Revelation 6:1-8, 6:2 and 6:6, and article Parthia
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 6:2
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 6:1-8
- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, on Revelation 6:2 and 6:6
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 6: The Opening of the First Six Seals, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
