What are the seven seals of Revelation?
The book of Revelation reaches a hinge when a scroll in God's right hand, sealed with seven seals, is opened one seal at a time by the Lamb. Each seal releases something onto the earth — conquest, war, famine, death, martyrdom, cosmic terror, and finally silence — and the question every reader asks is what these pictures describe and when they happen.
The Sealed Book
Before any seal is broken, the scroll itself must be understood. Commentators tie its seven seals to the completeness of its secrecy:
Edward DennettIts being sealed with seven seals means that it was perfectly sealed, its contents unknown, because shut up by divine power. It is undoubtedly the book of God's counsels concerning the earth — not His eternal counsels, but His purposes, not yet unfolded or made good, concerning the world.
Only one figure is able to break them, and the same title that fits Him at the cross fits Him here.
Hamilton SmithAs He had redeemed His saints by blood, so now He redeems the inheritance by power. It is the Lamb that opens the seals and immediately judgment takes its course.
The First Four Riders
The first four seals belong together — four horses, four riders, four blows in sequence:
William KellyThe first seal is conquest, and comparatively bloodless conquest, as the second pictures a later scene of carnage and civil war; then the third is scarcity in what is most necessary to life on earth; and the fourth is plague and other scourges of human life; and all these follow each other one after another.
The riders are human agents, yet none of them moves on his own initiative:
Walter ScottThe various coloured horses in the first four Seals represent in symbol the human agencies employed in carrying out these judgments on earth… So the living creatures, the executive of the throne, call one by one on the human instruments of vengeance to carry out their divinely-appointed task. They cannot move in judgment till summoned by the throne to do so. What a strength to the heart in days of evil!
The fourth seal gathers the previous blows into one and marks out how far they reach:
A. J. PollockThe Fourth Seal presents to us the pale horse. The name of the rider is given — death — and hades follows him. They had power to kill with the sword, with hunger, with death, and with the beasts of the earth — the four sore judgments of Ezekiel 14:21… Note, we are distinctly told here that one-fourth part of the earth is affected.
The Fifth Seal: Souls Under the Altar
At the fifth seal the scene changes completely — from horses to people who have already died:
William KellyWhen the Lamb opened the fifth Seal, the prophet saw, not another horse and its rider, but the souls of martyrs for God's word and their testimony "underneath the altar," that is, as if offered in sacrifice for the truth; approved of God now, but awaiting, for the time of public vindication, the completion of a further group of brothers who should be killed as they were.
What they ask for marks them out as belonging to a different company than the church:
H. H. SnellTheir cry is not for mercy on their enemies, but for vengeance… The Church of God is taught to love her enemies, and, like Jesus, to cry, "Father, forgive them."
The Sixth Seal: Terror, but Not the End
The sixth seal answers the cry of the fifth — though the terrified world misreads what is happening:
J. N. DarbyIn Revelation 6, at the opening of the fifth seal, we find the souls of martyrs under the altar. They cry for judgment, not rest. Then as the answer to their prayer we have a mighty shaking at the opening of the sixth seal, so that the kings, the great men, and the rest think in their terror that the end is come (but they are mistaken).
The Seventh Seal
The seventh seal is held back by a whole chapter, and it brings no judgment of its own:
Walter ScottSix of the seals were broken in chapter 6, and now, in the first verse of our chapter, He opens the final one, with the result that the book of God's counsels regarding the earth lies open before us… But why is the seventh Seal separated from the preceding six?… a whole chapter (Revelation 7) comes in between the sixth and seventh Seals, a parenthesis breaking the orderly sequence of events.
Its function is to release what follows:
Samuel RidoutThe seventh seal, which, as you notice, is not described at all, seems to be connected with all that follows. It seems, as it were, to break the last clasp that held the book together, so that now it is unrolled, and in these seven trumpets and what follows you have more particularly the actual judgments written in the book itself. How solemn the thought that the seals, terrible as they are, are simply preliminary judgments.
Summary
- The Lamb opens. The scroll is God's sealed purpose for the earth, and the One who redeemed people by blood is the One who now claims the inheritance by power.
- The Lamb summons. The four horsemen — conquest, slaughter, famine, death — are human agents who cannot move until the throne calls them.
- The Lamb limits. The fourth seal's reach is stated: a fourth part of the earth, not the whole.
- The Lamb hears. The fifth seal shows martyrs asking for vengeance, told to wait until their number is complete; the sixth shakes the world in answer, though the terrified assume wrongly that the end has arrived.
- The Lamb continues. The seventh brings silence, not a blow — it unrolls the book and hands the story on to the trumpets, proving the seals were only the beginning.