Revelation 6:5

And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, Come. And I saw and behold a black horse; and he that sat thereon had a balance in his hand. And I heard as it were a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, A measure of wheat for a shilling, and three measures of barley for a shilling; and the oil and wine hurt thou not.

Practically all commentators find here a symbol of great "economic difficulty and inequality.[24] The specter of bread being sold by the ounce is enough to make this nearly certain.

The oil and wine hurt thou not ... There are two ways of construing these words. Some have seen in them an indication that while wheat and barley are priced almost out of the reach of the poor, the rich still have their oil and wine. As Hendriksen put it, "The rich enjoy their abundance, but the poor have hardly enough to hold body and soul together."[25] The other view, that of Beckwith, is that the words are "merely intended as a limitation on the severity of the famine."[26] It is believed that the latter interpretation is correct. (1) It corresponds with the limitation placed upon the pale horse. (2) It is hard to understand why an order from the living creatures should have promulgated an edict favoring the rich. (3) The identification of "oil and wine" as pertaining to the rich only is unsound. "Oil and wine were not luxuries, but part of the basic commodities of life."[27]

The black horseman of this seal still rides in the world today, the fact being that at perhaps no other time in human history were more people threatened by the specter of starvation than at this very moment. Is the present, therefore, in any exclusive way to be identified with the rider? No. The black horseman has been riding in all generations and will continue to do so until the end. As Lenski said:

Men attempt to abolish war without abolishing the sin, wickedness and injustice in their hearts; so they determine to abolish ... injustice and poverty ... without abolishing the moral cause back of them. The black horseman is ever riding in the whole world.[28]

[24] Michael Wilcock, I Saw Heaven Opened (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1975), p. 71.

[25] William Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 123.

[26] Isbon T. Beckwith, op. cit., p. 521.

[27] Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977), p. 521.

[28] R. C. H. Lenski, op. cit., p. 229.