Tool Alpha
Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 6:8, sword, famine, plague and wild beasts
The four ways the riders kill are Ezekiel's four dreadful judgments on Jerusalem, now let loose over a fourth of the earth.
Revelation 6:8, in every translation this tool compares.
A judge who reads out the old sentence word for word wants everyone to know which law applies. Ezekiel 14 lists four judgments God sends on an unfaithful city: sword, famine, wild beasts and plague. John ends the four horsemen with the same four. The list was a covenant warning, the kind of sentence God named for idolatry. John applies it to a fourth of the whole earth.
The same four judgments. The Greek of Ezekiel 14:21 has rhomphaia (sword), limos (famine), theria (beasts) and thanatos (death, meaning plague), and John uses the same four words. Both lists sum up the trials that come before them.
John changes the order, putting death third and beasts last. Ezekiel's evil beasts become beasts of the earth, a phrase Beale finds in Psalm 79:2. Ezekiel aims at Jerusalem. John aims at a fourth of the earth; Beale reads the part as standing for the whole world. Ezekiel 5:12 in the Greek also speaks of a fourth part.
Beale reads 6:8 as the summary of all four riders. In Ezekiel the judgments punish the idolatrous majority and test the faithful few. John keeps both purposes. The same trials purify Christians and punish those who persecute them or give in to idols.
Not a list made up for the occasion. The four come from a fixed set of covenant curses that the prophets repeat, as Keener and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible show.
Beale says Ezekiel 14:21 is explicitly quoted in 6:8b as a summary of the trials before it, and that Ezekiel 14:12-23 is formative for the section. Ezekiel 14:21 itself sums up four judgments listed in 14:13-19 and develops the curses of Leviticus 26:18-28 and Deuteronomy 32:23-25. In the vault's Septuagint, 14:21 reads rhomphaian kai limon kai theria ponera kai thanaton; John has en rhomphaia kai en limo kai en thanato kai hypo ton therion tes ges. Beale notes that thanatos renders the Hebrew deber, plague, more than thirty times, twice in Ezekiel 14. He finds the phrase beasts of the earth in the Greek of Psalm 79:2, a psalm John uses again in 6:10. Keener calls the list closest to Ezekiel 14:21; the ESV Study Bible ties it to the curses on Jerusalem in Ezekiel 14:12-21; the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cites Ezekiel 14:21 with Deuteronomy 32:24-26; the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible adds Ezekiel 5:17. Beale also wonders whether the four sevenfold curses of Leviticus 26 shaped the four series of seven in the book. The grade is drawn here from Beale's word quoted.
Heiser reads Beale's comment on 6:8 aloud: Ezekiel 14:21 is quoted there as a summary of the trials before it, adding beasts. He stresses Beale's point that the four plagues need not come one after another. A scroll sealed seven times cannot be read until every seal is broken, the fourth rider sums up the first three, and the Gospel parallels list the trials in different orders. So the judgments may run at once, which he notes cuts against end-time systems that depend on a strict sequence.
Beale argues the beasts may stand for the evil powers later called the beast, since every other use of the word in Revelation refers to them. Most study Bibles read the list as ordinary disasters of war: violence, hunger and disease. Beale himself grants that the four judgments may also follow one another logically, as war leads to famine and death. MacArthur reads the riders as forces that come in turn in a tribulation still to come: worldwide war, then famine from the ruined food supply, then death for a quarter of the world's people.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/revelation-6-1-8\/","n":"Revelation 6:1-8, four horsemen","s":"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.","r":"Revelation 6:1-8"}
- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 6:1-8, Old Testament Background, and on 6:7-8
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 6:7-8
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 6:8
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 6:7-8
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 6:8
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 6:8
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Ezekiel 5:17 and 14:15
- Septuagint, Ezekiel 14:21, Ezekiel 5:12 and Psalm 79:2, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 6:8
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 6: The Opening of the First Six Seals, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 6:4, 6:5 and 6:8
