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,” on page 428, Vol. 1. The color indicates mourning, distress, intense depression of mind, from any kind of calamity that may befall. This appears from Job 30:26-31: “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.