Background: The Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70
Remember that John is writing about things that will ‘soon take place.’ He isn’t writing about things that are yet to happen in our own future. The main subject of Revelation is the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. This was a bloody and brutal affair, and the Bible teaches that it was orchestrated by God to judge the Jewish people for their rejection and killing of Jesus. The Bible portrays the destruction of Jerusalem as a vindication of Jesus; in other words, when Jerusalem was destroyed, it showed people everywhere that Jesus really was the Messiah. The destruction of Jerusalem is also portrayed as the official end of the Old Covenant Era and the symbolic beginning of Christ’s reign over the nations.
Jesus talked about the future destruction of Jerusalem several times throughout his ministry. Most of these occurrences take place during ‘Passion Week,’ when Jesus was preparing for his death. We will look at just a few of these passages and talk about how they connect with Jerusalem’s destruction. These passages are:
Matthew 23.29-36, in which the fate of the corrupt religious leaders parallels the fate of their forebears in 586 BC, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians.
Matthew 23.37-39, in which Jesus laments for Jerusalem and connects Jerusalem’s fate with his ‘coming’ in the name of Yahweh.
Mark 11.12-20, in which the cursed fig tree and the cleansing of the Temple are connected.
Luke 23.26-31, in which Jesus gives the women of Jerusalem a dire warning.
Luke 21.5-32, in which Jesus literally foretells the destruction of Jerusalem.
Emperor Nero ordered General Vespasian to crush the rebellion. Vespasian’s son Titus was appointed his second-in-command. Nero granted him four legions who would be supplemented by the forces of the ousted King Agrippa II. Vespasian invaded Galilee in 67 AD. Vespasian avoided getting close to the rebel-held and heavily-fortified Jerusalem, focusing his campaign on rooting out the more vulnerable rebel strongholds scattered throughout Galilee. Vespasian succeeded in clearing the rebels out of Galilee, and these rebels ran to Jerusalem to seek refuge under the banner of the rebel government. These Galilean zealots were viewed with disdain by the more moderate Saduceean Jerusalemites, and the two sides began to fight one another in the streets of Jerusalem. Idumeans – Jewish folk from Edom – entered the city to avoid Vespasian’s juggernaut armies, and they took the side of the Galilean zealots. They killed the former High Priest, and it looked like they would squash the Sadducees and take over the city; but the Sadducees enlisted the help of Simon bar Giora, who had the loyalty of fifteen thousand militia, and together they took over much of the city. The zealots weren’t eliminated, however, and the two sides continued fighting; splinter factions emerged who fought against both sides. Thus the refugees of Jerusalem tore at each other’s throats while Vespasian’s Roman armies pacified the countryside and prepared to launch against the city.
Back to Revelation: Of Seals, Trumpets, and Woes
The seven seals of Revelation are the seals that need to be opened to read the scroll that only Jesus can open. The scroll can be titled ‘The Reign of Jesus Christ.’ In Revelation 6-11, the seals are opened so that the scroll can be read. The seventh seal is broken down into seven trumpets and several woes. At the end of the seventh trumpet blast (and thus the end of the seventh seal), Jerusalem and the Temple are destroyed with its parallels being established in the heavenly Temple. The message is clear: in order for Christ’s reign to begin, the Jewish Temple and the system of sacrifices of the Old Covenant must be erased, and this happens in 70 AD with the destruction of Jerusalem under Roman boots.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
The first four seals are the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, perhaps one of the most famous images of Revelation. These horsemen were the horsemen of Victory, War, Famine, and Death.
“Are these horsemen celestial beings?” Though it’s often assumed that these horsemen are riding into action as soon as the curtain is drawn, in reality they are being ‘marshaled’ together. Their time has not yet come, but they will soon be unleashed on the rebellious Jews and Jerusalem. The first six seals are the ‘marshalling’ of God’s forces: these are images of Him preparing for the final showdown with Jerusalem, for the ‘Day of Yahweh’ in which Jerusalem will be laid low. These horsemen are biting at the bit to get started, but they can’t begin unleashing their fury until they get the A-OK from God.
It’s not necessary to see these horsemen as actual angelic beings. Some interpreters believe they are symbolic of the destruction that will come upon Jerusalem: victory for God (or the Roman armies), war, famine, and death for the rebels. Whether or not we take these horsemen to be literal celestial beings or symbolic representations of what God has in store for Jerusalem and its people, it’s undeniable that things are looking rather grim for the rebellious Jews. Each horseman is introduced by one of the four living creatures guarding Yahweh’s throne. Just as there are four living creatures, so there are four horsemen.
The first horseman is identified as one who goes forth conquering and to conquer. He has been identified in several different ways by interpreters of Revelation:
(A) Is he the Antichrist? Futurists love this interpretation.
(B) Is he a series of Roman emperors? Or is he Emperor Vespasian, who led the first campaigns in the First Jewish War and then oversaw Jerusalem’s destruction and the pacification of Judea under the leadership of his son Titus?
(C) Or is this an image of Christ, getting ready to conquer Jerusalem? Is this Jesus preparing to lead the conquest of Jerusalem in which He will vindicate His name, get vengeance on those who killed Him, and usher in His own reign?
The red horseman is the horseman of war, wielding a magnificent sword and colored the color of blood. His God-given mission is simple: he’s to ‘take peace from the earth’ and spread ‘war and slaughter’ everywhere. There’s no ambiguity regarding his mission, and with him representing an element of God’s judgment on Israel, we can easily see the role he plays. War and bloodshed are going to spread throughout Judea, culminating in Jerusalem’s destruction. The Romans will fight the Jewish rebels, and the Jewish rebels will fight among themselves. War and slaughter will be everywhere.
Some argue that this can’t refer to the violence of the First Jewish War because the rider is tasked with carrying war throughout the earth, not just through Judea. However, this is a matter of interpretation: the Greek word translated ‘earth’ here is ge, and it’s better translated as land. The red rider is tasked with carrying war and bloodshed through the land. What land? The land of Judea.
This horseman represents famine. While the white horseman carried a bow and the red horseman carried a sword, this horseman carries a pair of scales. The pronouncement given by the third living creature is about the cost of food. Bread will be eaten by weight and measure, which is indicative of a shortage of bread. The horseman’s color (black) is associated with famine; Lamentations 5.10 reads, ‘Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.’ (Ironically, Lamentations is about the first fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC).
We know that great famine struck Jerusalem during the Roman siege in 70 AD. Though a lot of food had been stored in Jerusalem, these stores were slowly wiped out as rival factions attacked their enemies’ stores. The historian Josephus, who witnessed the siege, writes, ‘Many there were indeed who sold what they had for one quart; it was of wheat, if they were of the richer sort, but of barley if they were poorer.’ Wheat was more valuable than barley, so those who had to feed their families purchased barley instead of wheat. Oil and wine weren’t affected by the famine, as the rival factions only attacked grain stores.
The famine became so great that some women boiled their infants for food. This also happened during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem five hundred years earlier, and in reference to this time Jesus had said, ‘Woe to those who are nursing babies in those days!’ (Luke 21.20-23; 23.28-39).
The historian Josephus remembers the famine that swept through Jerusalem after the Romans under General Titus laid siege:
‘So all hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying of famine; and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged. The seditious… as not enduring the stench of the dead bodies… had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath. However, when [General] Titus, in going his rounds along those valleys, saw them full of dead bodies, and the thick putrefaction running about them, he gave a groan… and such was the sad case of the city itself.’
As a side note, in Matthew 23 Jesus berates the hypocritical religious leaders for their wicked lifestyles. These religious leaders were the same who led factions against the Romans; it’s interesting that he warns them, ‘You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?’ The Greek word translated ‘hell’ here is Gehenna, which can also refer to the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem. During the Roman siege of Jerusalem, the bloated bodies of the dead were cast into the Valley of Hinnom; many of the religious leaders were themselves thrown into Gehenna as a result of their violent insurrection against Rome. This isn’t coincidental: Jesus’ words against the corrupt religious leaders in Matthew 23 culminates with him paralleling their fate with those of their forebears in 586 BC, and it is immediately followed in Matthew 24 by Jesus’ signs of what will take place leading up to Jerusalem’s destruction. Jesus knew where the religious leaders would end up.
Death rides the pale horseman, and Hades follows with him. Hades is often translated as ‘Hell’, but Hades and Hell are different. Hades (called ‘Sheol’ in the Old Testament) is the shadowy realm of the dead; Hell is the final judgment, the lake of fire, into which both Death and Hades will be thrown. Hades and Hell are different, because eventually Hades will be consumed by Hell (Rev 20.14).
Death rides this horse, slaying a fourth part of those who get in his way, and Hades follows after like a wagon meant to gather up the bodies. This horseman sows death by four methods: by the sword, by famine, by pestilence (disease), and by wild animals. That this refers to the fate of those in Judea and Jerusalem is clear by the fact that this passage parallels Ezekiel 14.21, which is about what awaited Jerusalem in 586 BC; in that passage, God sends four judgments against Jerusalem: the sword, famine, noisome beasts, and pestilence.
The Romans would bring to Jerusalem exactly what the Babylonians had brought. They marched on the city with the sword, besieged it with their army, shut them up to famine and disease within, and there were more than enough dead bodies for the ravaging dogs.
The first four seals unveiled the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Conquest, War, Famine, and Death – and they are marshalled together and ready to strike out at God’s command. That time, however, has not yet come. There is a delay. Just as the horsemen are anxious to get to work, so the Christian martyrs who have been killed at the hands of persecuting Jews are anxious for vengeance to take place. They must wait, however, until ‘the full number of their brothers and sisters—their fellow servants of Jesus who were to be martyred—had joined them.’ Once the tribulation of the early Jewish Christians reaches its peak, then and only then will the horsemen – and vengeance – be unleashed.
The martyrs and persecution spoken of here is that which the early church suffered prior to Jerusalem’s destruction. As we have seen, Jesus promised that there would be persecution and martyrdom prior to God’s judgment falling on Jerusalem (remember Luke 21).
Revelation 6.12-17: The Sixth Seal: Chaos Reigns. I watched as the Lamb broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun became as dark as black cloth, and the moon became as red as blood. Then the stars of the sky fell to the earth like green figs falling from a tree shaken by a strong wind. The sky was rolled up like a scroll, and all of the mountains and islands were moved from their places. Then everyone—the kings of the earth, the rulers, the generals, the wealthy, the powerful, and every slave and free person—all hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. And they cried to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to survive?”
The sixth seal undoubtedly deals with a dark apocalypse. It’d be easy for us to think this is the end of the world: the sun blackened, the moon glowing the color of blood, earthquakes of biblical proportions, stars falling from the sky, the sky being rolled up like a scroll. We must remember, however, that this is symbolic language, and it isn’t unique to Revelation. We have this kind of language all throughout the Bible, and understanding what it means in other places helps us decipher what it means here.
The symbolism in the sixth seal is ‘decreation language.’ It’s the opposite of creation; it’s destruction. The symbolism in this passage speaks of a cataclysmic event located within history; it needn’t refer to the end of the world.
Given that the sixth seal is jam-packed with symbolic imagery, we must resist the temptation to take it literally. Will the sun really turn black? Will the moon really turn red? Will the sky really roll up like a scroll? Symbolic language doesn’t imply that these things literally happen; they are signposts to a greater reality, in this case the judgment on Jerusalem, the end of the Jewish state, and God’s justice against the corrupt Jewish leaders who put Jesus to death and persecuted the early church.
The theologian David Clark writes: ‘It may doubtless he taken for granted that these convulsions of nature were seen in vision and are not to be looked upon as actual occurrences. As no one would assume that the four horses actually rode over the earth, but were symbolic representations of things that were to happen, so these convulsions of nature were probably to be understood in the same way… Striking and terrible things seen in the visions foretold striking and terrible judgments upon the wicked persecutors of the church.’
It’s noteworthy that in the sixth seal, seven aspects of the created order are mentioned: the earth, sun, moon, stars, sky, mountains, and islands. There are also seven different kinds of people mentioned: kings, great men, rich men, chief captains, mighty men, slaves, and free men. Remember that in biblical symbolism, the number seven represents completeness; the idea here is that the calamity that is about to befall Judah and Jerusalem is complete and total.
A Great Earthquake – throughout scripture, great earthquakes symbolize divine visitation. We see this in Exodus 19.18, Isaiah 2.19, and Hosea 2.6. The point is that what follows in the sixth seal is to be seen as a divine visitation: it is Yahweh ‘visiting’ His wrath upon those who deserve it.
Collapsing Cosmology – the images of a collapsing solar system (darkened sun, blood-red moon, stars falling from the sky, etc.) is common in scripture, and it always refers to the destruction of a nation or city. Isaiah uses this kind of language to pronounce doom on Babylon (Isaiah 13.1-10) and on Edom (Isaiah 34.4). Ezekiel uses this language against Egypt (Ezekiel 32.7-8), and Joel uses it against Israel (Joel 2.28-32). Amos does the same thing for northern Israel (Amos 8.9). Unsurprisingly, Jesus uses this very same language in Matthew 24.29 and 34 to speak of Jerusalem’s impending fate. Thus we can determine that Yahweh’s visitation (the earthquake) is upon the land of Judah and Jerusalem, and that the land and its capitol will be destroyed (collapsing cosmology).
John says that those suffering this calamity sought shelter in caves and in the mountains; their torment was so bad that they cried out for death. Jesus predicted that this would happen in the lead-up to Jerusalem’s destruction (Luke 23.28-31). The historian Josephus reports that people did this very thing: ‘So now the last hope which supported the tyrants and that crew of robbers who were with them, was in the caves and caverns underground; whither, if they could once fly, they did not expect to be searched for; but endeavored, that after the whole city should be destroyed, and the Romans gone away, they might come out again, and escape from them. This was no better than a dream of theirs; for they were not able to lie hid either from God or from the Romans.’
A common question is, “Why does John use cosmic imagery to depict an isolated event?” The answer is two-fold:
(A) Cosmic imagery underscores the gravity of the situation. While this judgment would be fixated on Judah and Jerusalem, its horrors are no less for it.
(B) Cosmic imagery underscores the fact that the destruction of Jerusalem is a cosmic event, even though it’s isolated in time and space. Remember that Jerusalem is where God chose for His Name to dwell. The Jews were His chosen people, Jerusalem His chosen city, and the mountain on which it was built was His chosen mountain. The judgment befalling Jerusalem is greater for these facts. Furthermore, remember that the destruction of Jerusalem is an end of an aeon; it’s the symbolic end of the Old Covenant era. The destruction of Jerusalem opens the door to the era of the New Covenant. It’s appropriate that the dismantling of the Old Era be described in such graphic terms because it’s such a cosmic event.
Biblical scholar J. Stuart Russell writes, ‘Prophecy is poetry, and Oriental poetry also, in which gorgeous symbolical imagery is the vesture of thought. Besides, the objection [that the fall of Jerusalem was not as catastrophic as the language suggests] is based upon an inadequate estimate of the real significance and importance of the destruction of Jerusalem. That event is not simply a tragical historical incident; it is not to be looked at as in the same category with the siege of Troy or of Carthage. It was a grand providential epoch; the close of an aeon; the winding up of a great period in the divine government of the world.’
A Look Back.
As we wrap up the first six seals (and begin the seventh seal next week), let’s rehash what we’ve learned:
The first four seals are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. These horsemen aren’t immediately unleashed; the first four seals are the horses getting ready to ride into battle. They’re chomping at the bit to get started but have to wait for the Green Light from Yahweh.
The fifth seal gives us a picture of first century Christian martyrs crying out for God to unleash the horsemen and execute vengeance on their persecutors. We learn that God is waiting for the right time to unleash His judgment; that right time is when all the martyrs destined to die for their faith have been gathered in heaven.
The sixth seal can be seen as the Green Light: it’s where the horsemen kick their spurs and ride forward to execute judgment on Judah and Jerusalem. Think of the sixth seal as the gunshot opening the festivities; the party’s just getting started.
Next week we will look at the seventh seal, which is the execution of God’s vengeance upon Judah and Jerusalem, and which culminates in the destruction of the land and of Jerusalem. The seventh seal is divided into seven trumpets: the first four trumpets are the lead-up to Jerusalem’s downfall, and the last three trumpets are focused on the destruction of Jerusalem itself (for this reason the last three trumpets are also identified as ‘three woes’ upon the rebellious Jewish people: it’s the final act in their judgment).
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