The Third Seal of Revelation
Revelation 6:5-6
5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
The third seal provides more detail than the two preceding it, as there are three principal clues to the event it represents. First, the horseman was seen with a pair of balances in hand. The second clue is the quantities of food that could be purchased for a penny: one measure of wheat or three measures of barley. The King James Version’s choice of “penny” was the translators’ effort to simplify the term to make it easier for seventeenth-century English readers to comprehend. The original Koine Greek word used was δηναρίου, which means denarius—a standard Roman coin equivalent to one day’s wage. The last clue comes from a voice John heard in the vision, which instructs, “See thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”
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The initial interpretation most readers take from these verses is that of a famine. However, as Edward Bishop Elliott explored in Horae Apocalypticae, the prices defined in Revelation 6:6 were not high enough to indicate famine.[i] Citing Pliny the Elder’s The Natural History, he wrote, “Judging by what the elder Pliny reports of prices not very long before, we shall find that though the price of wheat here named might be a scarcity-price, it could hardly be called one of famine.”[ii] So, what factors could have caused scarcity prices if not a famine?
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The first clue we identified for the fulfillment of the third horseman was the “pair of balances in his hand.” Elliott noted that even in John’s time, the simplest and most common interpretation of balances was as a symbol of law and justice.[iii] By the reign of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus—better known as Caracalla—the civil wars were beginning to take a toll on the Roman treasury. Furthermore, the empire’s financial situation worsened due to a pay increase Caracalla decreed for Rome’s soldiers.[iv] As the emperor proclaimed, “Nobody should have any money but I, so that I may bestow it upon the soldiers.”[v] Caracalla needed to quickly identify new revenue sources to fund Rome’s military defenses.
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In 212 AD, Caracalla introduced an inventive solution to address Rome’s dwindling treasury called the Constitutio Antoniniana. This eponymous decree granted Roman citizenship to all free men living within the boundaries of the empire. The third-century Roman jurist Ulpian explained, “By an enactment of the Emperor Antoninus, all those living in the Roman world were made Roman citizens.”[vi] This assimilation of barbarians and other foreigners into the citizenry of the Roman Empire is the fulfillment of the “iron mixed with clay” in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2:41-43.
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According to the writings of the contemporary Roman historian Cassius Dio, Caracalla’s rationale for this proclamation was to increase the Roman tax-paying population. The new citizens were now accountable for taxes on their inheritances and vicesima libertatis taxes for the emancipation of slaves. Constitutio Antoniniana also raised inheritance taxes from five to ten percent and abolished tax exemptions. Cassius Dio rationalized, “This was the reason why he made all the people in his empire Roman citizens; nominally he was honouring them, but his real purpose was to increase his revenues by this means, inasmuch as aliens did not have to pay most of these taxes.”[vii]
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While the prices for wheat and barley were high, they did not indicate a famine. This price inflation was not caused by a drought, war, crop failure, or natural disaster but by the higher tax burden charged to Roman citizens, which abruptly became oppressive. Caracalla and his successors robbed the working class to pay significantly higher wages to Rome’s soldiers and finance the extravagance of the imperial court.
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In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, English historian Edward Gibbon explains how the third-century Roman agricultural industry suffered economically under the weight of these taxes. “The animating health and vigour were fled,” he wrote. “The industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted by a long series of oppression.”[viii] The higher tax burden was demoralizing the farmers, leading to a production shortage and a depression, as many farmers grew less food, and others stopped growing altogether. The decreased harvest caused a rapid price increase to the point that the Roman government fixed the prices for wheat and barley and even issued special coins to purchase these grains.[ix]
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This production shortage would explain the trivial amount of food that could be purchased for a full day’s wage in Revelation 6:6 and the command, “See thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” The voice John heard that issued these directives came from “the midst of the four beasts.” The verse makes clear that the third horseman did not utter these instructions. If the directions were instead a command to the horseman, there should be an indication in the passage that he intended to commit the destruction of oil and wine before he was stopped, but there is no suggestion of this. If the voice is not directed at the horseman, who is its order intended for?
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Oil and wine were not luxury items in the ancient world—they were daily essentials. These products were important exports and significant sources of revenue for the empire. It would have been critical to the Roman economy to guarantee that all olive growers and viticulturists continued to produce the necessary quantities of oil and wine.[x]
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A close examination of the economic environment of Caracalla’s Rome and the three clues we initially identified in verses five and six clarifies the interpretation of this passage. If the voice that made the proclamation on wheat and barley prices was the Roman government, wouldn’t the simplest explanation of the command to “hurt not the oil and wine” be that it also represents the government?
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Caracalla’s Constitutio Antoniniana levied oppressive taxes on the Roman people. The balances in the hand of the horseman in the context of the verse indicate a strict application of the law. The impulse of many Roman subjects was to damage the production of goods to reduce their tax burden, so much so that the voice fixing prices for wheat and barley also commanded olive and grape growers not to hurt Rome’s exports by damaging their trees and vines. Our voice in verse six is aimed at Roman farmers, demanding they not destroy their olive trees and grapevines to avoid paying higher taxes.
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The restraints placed by the government limiting the damage to wheat and barley while sparing oil and wine do not suggest a differentiation between wants and needs, as oil and wine were almost necessities in ancient Rome. It does not indicate a class distinction between the continued prosperity of the rich and the simultaneous suffering of the poor, as some suggest. It also does not indicate a drought or famine, as the grains used to make bread would suffer the same fate as the olive trees and grape vines used to produce oil and wine under such conditions. Instead, the indication is that the olive growers and winemakers were equally concerned about the weight of the taxes as the Roman farmers, but were commanded not to reduce production by the same government entity that fixed prices for the primary ingredients of bread.[xi] This high-tax environment introduced under Caracalla in 212 AD lingered until the reign of Emperor Diocletian at the end of the third century.[xii]
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[i] Pliny the Elder. 1856. “Winter Wheat.” In The Natural History of Pliny, Vol. IV, by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 32-35. London: Henry G. Bohn.
[ii] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Third Seal.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. I, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 169-190. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.
[iii] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Third Seal.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. I, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 169-190. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.
[iv] Hekster, Olivier, and Nicholas Zair. 2008. “Law and Citizenship.” In Debates and Documents in Ancient History: Rome and its Empire, by Olivier Hekster and Nicholas Zair, 47-48. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
[v] Desjardins, Jeff. 2016. Currency and the Collapse of the Roman Empire. February 19. Accessed August 15, 2023. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/currency-and-the-collapse-of-the-roman-empire/.
[vi] Justinian I. 1904. “On Status.” In The Digest of Justinian, Vol. I, by Charles Henry Monro, 27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[vii] Dio, Cassius. 1927. “Epitome of Book LXXVIII.” In Dio’s Roman History, Vol. IX, by Earnest Cary, 295-305. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann, Ltd.
[viii] Gibbon, Edward. 1789. “Chapter VII.” In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I, 204-236. London: Strahan & Cadell.
[ix] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Third Seal.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. I, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 169-190. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.
[x] Barnes, Albert. 1860. “Chapter VI.” In Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Book of Revelation, by Albert Barnes, 158-196. New York: Harper & Brothers.
[xi] Barnes, Albert. 1860. “Chapter VI.” In Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Book of Revelation, by Albert Barnes, 177-180. New York: Harper & Brothers.
[xii] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Third Seal.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. I, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 169-190. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.