John refers to the Rider by the phrase "him who sits upon him." This equestrian is a symbolical personage, not representative of an individual man, but of a class of agents blindly executing retribution upon those obnoxious to the Lamb’s displeasure. He evidently represents a class of agents endued with the power of the sword, and who could wield it in the cause of peace or war. "It was given to him," says John, "to take away the peace from the earth." This shows, first, that the white period of the first seal was a period in which peace ruled the situation; and, secondly, that it was given to him to destroy public tranquility -- to abolish "the peace," and to substitute tumult and confusion where it had previously reigned. But this state of public disorder might obtain without bloodshedding. John was therefore informed that the reason why it was given to him to take away the peace, was that "they," the agents symbolized by the rider, "might slay one another." This was an intimation to the apostle that, when the second seal should be in manifestation, a period of civil commotion and bloodshed would have superseded "the most prosperous and happy era" of the first seal. A sanguinary revolutionary condition of things, in the presence of that generation of "the people of the mighty and the holy ones," symbolized by the second or Ox-headed Living One "full of eyes," was the signification or "mystery" of Roman society dyed fiery red and ridden by this "dreadful and terrible" equestrian.

In the English Version it reads, "Power was given to him to take peace from the earth." This is very indefinite unless it is distinctly understood what is "signified" by "the earth." In the original the phrase is, labein ten eirenen apo tes ges, to take THE peace from the earth. The relation of the first two seals shows that the definite article, ten, ought not to be omitted, whether it be so in some manuscripts or not. Public tranquility had obtained within the limits of the Dragon empire from the fall of Domitian to the alleged sending of a sword to Commodus by the Roman Senate, a period of eighty-seven years. This was peace notably definite in the history of the imperial diademed head of the Dragon, and the taking of it away was very properly foretold in the definite form of the original. I have, therefore, not omitted it in my rendering of the text, but, after "the form of words" before me, instead of "take peace from," have given it "take the peace from the earth."