“balances,” literally rendered, signifies a yoke,—­pair,—­couple.—­In popular use, it came to signify an instrument for weighing commodities, from the counterpoising (double) scales.  This symbol indicated famine,—­that people should “eat bread by weight and with care;” (Ezek. iv. 16;) and this is confirmed by the “voice in the midst of the four animals:”—­“A measure of wheat for a penny,” etc.  The quantity of food, and the price, as here announced, would seem to the English reader to express plenty and cheapness.  But when it is understood that the “measure of wheat” was the ordinary allowance for a laboring man, and “a penny” the usual wages for one day; a little more than a quart, for about fifteen cents:  it may be asked, How could the laboring man procure food and clothing for himself, his wife and children?  It is said that three times the quantity of “barley” could be had for the same money; but being a coarser and less nutritious grain, it would reach but little farther in sustaining a family.  Famine usually falls heaviest on the middle and lower classes of society.  Even in such times the “rich fare sumptuously every day.”  Accordingly, “the oil and the wine,”—­some of the staple productions of Canaan,—­are exempted from the providential blight sent upon the necessaries of life. (Gen. xliii. 11.)

According to history, from the year 138, till near the end of the second century, a general scarcity of provisions was felt, notwithstanding all the care and foresight of emperors and their ministers to anticipate the scourge.  The Pharaohs on the throne had no Joseph to lay up in store in the “years of plenty.”  But when our New Testament Joseph would thus fight against the persecutors of his saints by the judgment of famine; he gave previous intimation here to his disciples of the approaching calamity, as his manner is to his own. (Luke xxi. 20-22.)

7.  And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

8.  And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him:  and power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

Vs. 7, 8.—­“It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting,” according to the judgment of the wisest of mere men; (Eccl. vii. 2,) and so we are invited here by a spiritually-minded ministry,—­“like a flying eagle.”  A scene of lamentation, mourning and woe, is disclosed at the opening of the “fourth seal.”—­All the symbols betoken augmented severity in the judgments.  There is “pestilence” added to the sword and famine.  “The pale horse,” or livid green, is the emblem of pestilence.  The Mediator conducts the destroying angel to fulfil the will of God.  “Before Him went the pestilence;” and by a combination of awful symbols, the king of terrors,—­“death,” is represented as slaying his victims, and “hell followed with him,” satiated with his prey.  “Sword, hunger, death and beasts of the earth,” were commissioned to lay waste the fourth part of the then known world.