Revelation 6 Bible study: One of the seven seals

In chapter 5 John saw a book "sealed shut with seven seals" (5:1). Now the seals are opened: "I saw that the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying, as with a voice of thunder, “Come and see!”" (6:1) (tap seals). "Then a white horse appeared, and he who sat on it had a bow. A crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer." (6:2). "When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come!”" (6:3) (tap seal). The heads-up for leaders names 6:4. Here it is as the WEB has it: "Another came out, a red horse. To him who sat on it was given power to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another. There was given to him a great sword." (6:4). These notes give these verses as John tells them, and say no more of the horses, their riders, the bow, the crown or the sword than the verses' own words. They identify no one and nothing in this chapter with any person, people, power, nation or event, give no time for anything in it, and apply none of it to anyone, then or now.

Isaiah 34:4→leads toRevelation 6:13-17

"All of the army of the sky will be dissolved. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree" (Isaiah 34:4). Revelation is "the Revelation of Jesus Christ" (Revelation 1:1). In it John sees "a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain" (Revelation 5:6), and "the Lamb opened one of the seven seals" (Revelation 6:1). At the sixth seal, "The stars of the sky fell to the earth, like a fig tree dropping its unripe figs when it is shaken by a great wind. The sky was removed like a scroll when it is rolled up" (Revelation 6:13-14). The kings of the earth and every slave and free person hid themselves, and said to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb" (Revelation 6:16), "for the great day of his wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" (Revelation 6:17). Revelation doesn't name Isaiah, and no link between the Hebrew and Greek words is claimed, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some hear in Revelation 6:13-14 the scroll and the fig tree of Isaiah 34:4, taken up for "the great day of his wrath" (Revelation 6:17). Others read Isaiah 34:4 of the LORD's day that the chapter goes on to speak of (Isaiah 34:5-8), with nothing said of Jesus, and read Revelation 6 on its own. Neither reading names a date or an event, and these notes pick neither.

σφραγίςsphragissay sfrag-EES

Strong's: "a signet (as fencing in or protecting from misappropriation); by implication, the stamp impressed". "I saw that the Lamb opened one of the seven seals" (6:1): behind seals is this noun, and behind seal as each seal is opened, "When he opened the second seal" (6:3), the third (6:5), the fourth (6:7) and the sixth (6:12). It is the word of the book "sealed shut with seven seals" (5:1), which Favor's Revelation 5 studies.