THE PALE HORSE - WHOLESALE DEATH (Revelation 6:7-8).
This represents all four of God's sore judgments as mentioned in Ezekiel 14. It sums up every form of death, which is why its rider's name was DEATH, with HADES (the shadowy world of the grave) following with him, to collect the victims. Its pale colour is intended to show the pallor of death.
Death and the Grave are seen as co-partners elsewhere in Revelation (Revelation 1:18; Revelation 20:14). Compare Hosea 13:14 where the promise is made that men will be redeemed from the power of ‘death and the grave'. Thus they were regularly seen as together. Here they ride out to claim their victims, but the reader has the assurance that Jesus Christ holds the keys of death and the grave (Revelation 1:18) and will one day destroy them (Revelation 20:14).
‘A fourth part of the earth'. This stresses that, while considerable licence is given, there are reins upon the pale horse. He cannot go beyond the boundaries set by God. Judgment it may be, but it is tempered with mercy.
The word for ‘death' is regularly used in the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) to translate the Hebrew word ‘deber' which means destruction, plague, pestilence (1 Kings 8:37; Jeremiah 14:12). So, just as in the past pestilence was called The Black Death, we have a similar situation here.
Here then we have sword, famine, pestilence and wild beasts as in Ezekiel 14. Throughout history the world, beginning in the first century, has experienced devastating examples of all four which have carried off vast numbers of people.
The ‘sword' mentioned here (rompheia - used in Revelation 1:16) is a different type from that in the second seal (macheira), possibly suggesting that there is an increase in warfare as different nations using different types of weapons enter the fray, but the words are used elsewhere interchangeably. The wild beasts would naturally arise in the areas depopulated by the earlier wars and famines, and they carry on the dreadful work. So the horsemen ride and the world suffers. But as God is here pointing out, they are precursors of the end, they are ‘the beginning of suffering' (Matthew 24:28).
The Significance of the Four Horsemen.
In the words of Jesus the four horsemen are ‘the beginning of birth pains' (Matthew 24:8). As the world sees religious fanaticism which results in men's destruction, international warfare, famine and widespread pestilence, they can recognise that ‘the end' is beginning. In the first century Christians men saw all four riding, and they have continued to ride to the present day, and they are riding today, and often they have raised questions as to whether God is aware of what is happening.
But this vision contains within it the encouragement that when these things happen it does not mean that the world is out of control, for they ride with God's permission. He has allowed them, firstly because they are the inevitable consequence of men's sinfulness, and secondly in order that through them men might be brought to consider eternal realities. Nothing makes men face more up to reality than prospective death and the grave.
It should be noted that these horsemen are riding at the same time. While one follows another, building up to the worst one of all, each continues to ride. The first century AD saw false Messiahs and prophets, war, famine and pestilence and earthquakes, continually side by side. They ride together through world history, a continual reminder of the end. The beginning of the third millennium has already demonstrated that they are riding as bloodthirstedly as ever, especially in the countries of the Bible.