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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Revelation 6:6 - 6:6
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6. φωνήν. One of the many voices heard throughout this book without anyone being defined as the speaker.
χοῖνιξ σίτου. The object of the voice is rather to define the extent of the scarcity than, as some say, to mitigate it. It is noticeable that here as in 2Ki 7:18 there is a simple ratio between the price of wheat and that of barley, which is probably due to the fact that they were constantly bartered for each other without the intervention of money. The proportion varied in different famines. Joshua the Stylite says that in a famine at Edessa 500 A.D. 4 modii of wheat were sold for a dinar, and six modii of barley for the same. So too Barhebraeus says that in a famine in Bagdad A.H. 373 ( ± 983 A.D.) wheat was exactly double the price of barley (as in Samaria), a cor of wheat sold for 4080 zuzas and a cor of barley for 2040 zuzas. A quart (or somewhat less) of corn is to be bought for a silver penny (about 8½d.): the former was the estimated ration for an able-bodied man’s daily fare, the latter the daily pay of a soldier, apparently a liberal daily pay (see Mat 20:2) for a labourer. So there is not such a famine that the poor must starve, and the rich “give their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul”: the working man can, if he pleases, earn the ordinary necessaries of life for himself: he may even procure a bare comfortless subsistence (for barley, an ordinary article of human food down to the time of the kings of Israel, was now considered as fodder for cattle) for a family, if not too numerous. Meanwhile, nothing is said about the fish and vegetables, which the plain-living man of the Mediterranean ate with his bread, as the plain-living Englishman eats bacon or cheese: but the comparatively superfluous luxuries of wine and oil are carefully protected. In short, we have a picture of “bad times,” when no one need be absolutely without bare necessaries, and those who can afford it need not go without luxuries, All that we know of the age of the decline of the Roman Empire points to this prophecy having been eminently fulfilled then; but we need not go so far for fulfilments of it any more than of the two former: indeed this is much nearer to us than the Grand Army and the barricades, or Waterloo and Peterloo.