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Eureka
AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)
Chapter 6
Section 3 Subsection 2
The Black Horse
While it is true, that black is used in scripture in connection
with scarcity and famine; I am satisfied that in this third
seal famine is not indicated by the color of the horse. The
reader will therefore be so good as to run his pen through
the word "famine" in line 16 of our "Chronological
Tableau of the Apostasy," (Vol. I, ch. iii, sec. iv).
The color indicates mourning, distress, intense depression
of mind, from any kind of calamity that may befall. This appears
from Job xxx. 26-31: "When I looked for good then evil
came; and when I waited for light, there came darkness. My
bowels boiled, and rested not; the days of affliction anticipated
me. Mourning (kodair, darkening) I went without the sun. ...
My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.
My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the
voice of them that weep." We need not multiply examples.
This from Job shows, that the outside blackness is caused
by the inner heat of burning, or intense, affliction. So also
in the case before us, the severe oppression to which the
community represented by the horse, is subjected by them who
ride, or rule it, gives it hieroglyphically, a black skin.
It is therefore to be viewed as under the operation of great
evil in days of affliction, producing lamentation, mourning,
and great distress. The horse represents the same community
as the white of the first seal, and the fiery red one of the
second -- the peoples subject to pagan Rome; the different
colors signifying their different condition in different periods.