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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
REVELATION CHAPTER 7
Rev_7:1 John seeth four angels holding the four winds,
Rev_7:2,3 and another angel coming to seal the servants of God
in their foreheads.
Rev_7:4-8 The number of them that were sealed out of each of the
tribes of Israel.
Rev_7:9,10 An innumerable multitude out of all other nations
stand before the throne in white robes, with palms in
their hands, praising God and the Lamb.
Rev_7:11,12 The angels, elders, and beasts, worship and glorify God.
Rev_7:13-17 One of the elders showeth John who they are that are clad
in white robes, and what is their blessedness for ever.
The first sufferings of the church under the Roman emperors that were pagans, was foretold under the first six seals, as hath been showed; but they had yet more, if not greater, things to suffer, which are discovered to John, as we shall see when we come to the opening of the seventh and last seal in the next chapter; only it pleaseth God by a vision, in this chapter, to comfort his church: so as though this vision relateth to the sixth seal, and was before the opening of the seventh, yet it hath a relation to that, to show the care that God would take of his church under those great evils that should happen upon the opening of the seventh seal, or when the things foretold upon the opening of it should come to be accomplished.
I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth; four good angels; God is called their God, Rev_7:3.
Holding the four winds of the earth; that is, to whom God had given it in charge that they should inflict his judgments upon all the parts of the earth; for God often useth, by his prophets, the metaphor of winds, to express stormy, troublesome dispensations, as Jer_18:17 49:36 51:1.
That the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree: this phrase is interpreted variously, God making use of the winds:
1. In a way of judgment, to throw down buildings and trees.
2. In a way of mercy, to purify the air, and by their gentle breathings to cherish things. Some interpret this command to the angels, into a command to these angels to forbear awhile those storms of judgment which were coming, till the servants of God should be sealed.
Others interpret them into a command to bring judgments, either corporal or spiritual, which they think is signified by the winds not blowing. The last seemeth to be favoured by the next verse, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea; which seemeth to me to interpret the blowing mentioned in this verse of a hurtful blowing.
The earth, the sea, and the trees, seem to signify all the sublunary world, especially the church.