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Rev_6:2. John saw “a white horse, and he that sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer.” The entire form is that of a warrior, and that, too, of one victorious, and triumphing in the certainty of victory. All the individual features of the image harmoniously express this. The horses of the Roman triumphers were white.[2017] On white horses, therefore,[2018] appear not only Christ himself, but also his hosts triumphing with him.
That the weapon of the horseman is a bow, not a sword, has scarcely a symbolical significance. The symbol would be distorted if Wetst. were correct in saying that by the bow, with which work is done at a distance, the intention is to indicate that the reference is properly to a victory, occurring at a distance from Judaea, of the Parthian king Artabanus II.,[2019] who made war upon the Jews in Babylon; but if this were the meaning, the entire form of the horseman, which, in the manner proposed, is to represent that king, must have appeared at a greater distance. Arbitrary is also the explanation of Vitr.: “A bow, not a sword, in order to withdraw our thought from Roman emperors to Christ.” If, as by Vitr., importance be laid upon the fact that the bow is pre-eminently peculiar to Parthian and Asiatic warriors in general, and not to the Roman, we dare not find in the bow an emblem of Christ; in order, then, to explain not so much the bow mentioned as rather the supplied darts of the numerous apostles and evangelists through whose forcible preaching Christ won his victory.[2020] Instead of the bow, in Psa_45:6, the darts are mentioned, and that, too, beside the sword (Rev_6:4), in a description which may have floated before John.[2021] In this passage, what is ascribed to the bow can indicate nothing further than that the warrior equipped therewith may meet his foes also at a distance.
ἐδύθη αὐτῷ στέφανος . The crown—whose meaning, in connection with what immediately follows, is indubitable[2022]—is given the warrior, because it is to be marked in the beginning directly, by this going forth, that he already goes forth as a νικῶν , and, therefore, that the goal of his going forth καὶ ἵνα νικήσῃ is undoubtedly reached. à has even the interpretation: καὶ ἐνίκησεν .
The true meaning of this passage is suggested by the statement: κ . ἐξῆλθεν νικῶν καὶ ἳνα νικήσῃ , especially in connection with the succeeding forms of horsemen, but also still further in connection with the fundamental idea of the entire Apoc., particularly the parallel passages Rev_19:11 sqq., where, in perfect correspondence with the harmonious plan of the book, the form of a horseman comes forth still more gloriously, and at the same time is expressly explained. If we regard only the forms of horsemen proceeding from the three following seals, which, according to the unambiguous hints in the text, are the very personifications of the shedding of blood (Rev_6:4), famine (Rev_6:6), and death (Rev_6:8), nothing is nearer than the opinion that even the first horseman is a personification, yet not of Christianity,[2023]—to which not a single feature of the picture leads, even apart from the fact that, except in the person of Christ, a personification of Christianity is scarcely conceivable,—but of victory, or of war on the side of victory;[2024] with which it would well agree, that, in Rev_6:3 sqq., war should be represented in its other sides and consequences. So, already, Bengel,[2025] Herder, Eichh., Ew. ii., of whom the latter, like Wetst., limits the idea of the horseman to Judaea. According to this conception, De Wette[2026] judges, with entire consistency, that the similar image of a horseman, referring to Christ,[2027] is intended to be antithetical in its relation to the present; there at the end, Christ with his “spiritual victory,” in opposition to the “vain boast of victory” of the warrior here at the beginning. But in the text there is no trace whatever of such contrast; that the victor here represented had, and wished to win, only a vain worldly victory, has as little foundation as it is unsatisfactory for Christ’s victory to be called only a “spiritual” one, as even the external ruin of Babylon belongs essentially thereto. With correctness, most expositors[2028] regard the horseman of the first, identical with that of Rev_19:11 sqq. The characteristic attributes are essentially synonymous. Yet in the one case we stand, of course, at the glorious end of the entire development of the kingdom of Christ, while here the Lord first goes forth to bring about that end; but just because only he can go forth to conquer, who is already a victor ( νικῶν ),[2029] even here the form of the Lord is essentially the same as at the end. Since the very appearance of Christ reveals all the visions which proceed from the unsealed book of fate, it is indicated that he guides and determines the course and end of all the events portrayed in the succeeding visions; in the prophetic figures, also, which John beholds, as well as in the things portrayed, the Lord is the beginning and end, the First and Last, who will triumph over all enemies ( ἵνα νικήσῃ ), as he is already properly victor ( νικῶν ) over them. To any special victory of Christ, as possibly the results of the preaching at Pentecost,[2030] the νικῶν , even because of the present form, cannot refer; in the sense of the Apoc., as also of the whole N. T., Christ is absolute victor over all that is hostile, just because he is Christ, i.e., the Son of God, who has suffered in the flesh, and arisen and ascended into heaven, or because he is the Lamb of God who possesses God’s throne. The νικῶν presupposing the ἐνίκησα , Rev_3:21 (Rev_5:5), and including in itself already the ἳνα νικήσῃ , designates also the true ground upon which believers in Christ are “to conquer,” and can conquer, and have to expect from the Lord a victor’s reward.[2031] Thus the triumphing image of Christ at the beginning of all the visions, proceeding from the book of fate, is in harmony with the fundamental idea and paracletic tendency of the entire Apoc.
[2017] Cf. in general Virg., Aen. iii. 537 sqq.: “Quattuor hic, primum omen, equos in gramine vidi—candore nivali” (“Here, as the first omen, I saw four horses on the grass—of snowy brightness”). Beside this, Servius: “This pertains to the omen of victory.” More of the same kind in Wetst.
[2018] Rev_19:11 sqq.
[2019] Joseph., Ant. xviii. 2, 9.
[2020] Against Vitr.; also against Victorin., Beda, N. de Lyra, Calov., etc.
[2021] Inapplicable is the comparison usual with the expositors, of the horsemen of Rev_6:2-8, with the horsemen and horses of Zec_1:8 sqq., and the chariots, Zec_6:1 sqq., where neither the forms beheld, in themselves, nor the attached signification, agrees with the vision in our passage. Even the colors of the horses are not the same, much less their meaning (cf. Zec_6:6).
[2022] Cf. 1Co_9:25. Incorrectly Züll., Hengstenb.: “regal crowns.”
[2023] Stern.
[2024] De Wette.
[2025] Whose opinion, as a rule inaccurate, here is given, that he regards the first horseman as the Emperor Trajan. Beng. says expressly: “But Trajan is far too small to be such an horseman.” Yet Beng. finds, even in Trajan, one and that too the first of the “conquerors,” whose dominion and victory are represented by the first horseman: “By the horseman himself is represented a certain kind of worldly career, as throughout all time in government and the state, it is constantly attended by (1) a flourishing condition; (2), the shedding of blood.”
[2026] Cf., already, Beng.
[2027] Rev_19:11 sqq.
[2028] Victorin., Beda, N. de Lyra, Zeger, Grot., Vitr., Calov., Hengstenb., Ebrard, Böhmer, Klief., etc.
[2029] Cf. Rev_5:5, Rev_3:21.
[2030] Grot., etc.
[2031] Rev_2:7; Rev_2:11, etc.; cf. Rev_21:7.
As little as the emblem of the bow, does the horse in itself or its white color have any special significance; any exposition that in such matters seeks any thing more than such emblems whereby the entire form of the horseman is characterized as that of a victorious warrior, and which proceeds to a special interpretation of the individual characteristic features, instead of regarding the unity of significance in the entire image, must result in what is arbitrary and frivolous. This is contrary to all the expositors, who understand by the white horse the Church,[2032] and that, too, the apostolic primitive Church, in its purity and peaceful condition prior to persecutions, which are found in the second seal,[2033] as Beda, Andr., Areth., N. de Lyra, C. a Lap., Calov., etc. [See Note XLVIII., p. 234.]
[2032] “Over the church, made white by his grace beyond snow, the Lord presides” (Beda).
[2033] Cf., e.g., Vitr.: “The white color designates that by his providence God will take care, that, at the time indicated by this seal, the Church shall have peace.”
XLVIII. Rev_6:2. ἰππος λευκός
XLIX. Rev_6:2-8