Revelation 6:5

The spectral figure of Hunger holds a balance or pair of scales (ζ. literally = the beam, see reff.) for measuring bread by weight, to personify (Revelation 6:6) bad times, when provisions became cruelly expensive. One χοῖνιξ of wheat, the usual rations of a working man for a day, is to cost twelve times its normal price, while the labourer's daily pay will not command more than an eighth of the ordinary twenty-four measures of the coarser barley. Grain is not to disappear entirely from the earth, otherwise there would be no famine. But food-stuffs are to be extremely scanty and therefore dear (cf. Leviticus 26:26; Ezekiel 4:16). These hard times are aggravated (καὶ adversative) by the immunity of oil and wine, which are, comparatively speaking, luxuries. One exasperating feature of the age would be the sight of wine and oil flowing, while grain trickled slowly into the grasp of the famishing. The best explanation of this realistic exception is to regard it as a water-mark of the Domitianic date (for details see the present writer's study in Expos. Oct. 1908, 359 369). In 92 A.D. Domitian had made a futile attempt to injure the cultivation of the vine in the provinces, which led to widespread agitation throughout Ionia. His edict had soon to be withdrawn, but not till it had roused fear and anger. Hence the words hurt not the wine have the force of a local allusion to what was fresh in his readers' minds. The point of the saying lies in the recent events which had stirred Smyrna and the surrounding townships, and which provided the seer with a bit of colour for his palette as he painted the final terrors. It is as if he grimly said: “Have no fears for your vines! There will be no Domitian to hurt them. Comfort yourselves with that. Only, it will be small comfort to have your liquid luxuries spared and your grain reduced almost to starvation point.” Or, the prophet's meaning might be that the exemption of the vine would only pander to drunkenness and its attendant ills. The addition of τὸ ἔλαιον is probably an artistic embodiment, introduced in order to fill out the sketch. The cultivation of the olive accompanied that of the vine, and the olive meant smooth times. It is no era of peace; far from that, the prophet implies. But the olive, “the darling of Peace” (as Vergil calls it), flourishes unchecked, so mocking and awry are the latter days. For ἀδικεῖν = “injure” (a country), see reff., Revelation 7:2, and Dittenberger's Sylloge Inscr. Graec. 557. This Domitianic reference of Revelation 6:6 was first worked out by S. Reinach (Revue Archéolog. 1901, 350 f.) and has been accepted by Harnack, Heinrici, Bousset, J. Weiss, Abbott, Holtzmann, Baljon, and others. There is no allusion to Jos. Bell. Revelation 6:13; Revelation 6:6, or to the sparing of gardens during the siege of Jerusalem (S. Krauss, in Preuschen's Zeitschrift, 1909, 81 89).