Apocalipsis 6

VBL · Chapter 6/22

1Y miré cuando el Cordero rompió el primero de los siete sellos. Escuché que una de las cuatro criaturas vivientes gritó con voz estruendosa: “¡Ven!”

2Entonces miré y vi un caballo blanco. El que lo cabalgaba sostenía un arco. A él se le dio una corona, y se fue cabalgando, conquistando y ganando victoria.

3Cuando abrió el segundo sello, escuché a la segunda criatura decir: “¡Ven!”

4Y salió otro caballo, que era rojo. Al que lo cabalgaba se le dio una espada grande, y el poder de quitar la paz de la tierra para que las personas se matasen unas a otras.

5Y cuando abrió el tercer sello, escuché a la tercera criatura viviente decir: “¡Ven!” Entonces miré y vi un caballo negro. El que lo cabalgaba sostenía una balanza en su mano.

6Y escuché lo que parecía una voz de entre las cuatro criaturas vivientes, que decía: “Dos libras de trigo cuestan el salario de un día, y tres libras de cebada cuestan lo mismo. Pero no dañen el aceite ni el vino”.

7Cuando abrió el cuarto sello, escuché a la cuarta criatura viviente decir: “¡Ven!”

8Entonces miré y vi un caballo amarillo. El que lo cabalgaba se llamaba Muerte, y lo seguía el Hades. Ellos recibieron autoridad sobre una cuarta parte de la tierra para matar gente a filo de espada, con hambre, plagas y por medio de bestias salvajes.

9Cuando abrió el quito sello, vi debajo del altar a los que habían sido llevadas a muerte por causa de su dedicación a la palabra de Dios y su fiel testimonio.

10Y clamaban, diciendo: “¿Hasta cuándo, Señor, que eres santo y verdadero, harás juicio y traerás justicia sobre aquellos en la tierra que derramaron nuestra sangre?”

11Y a cada uno de ellos se les dio una bata blanca, y se les dijo que esperaran un poco más hasta que el número estuviera completo, el de sus hermanos creyentes que habían muerto igual que ellos.

12Cuando abrió el sexto sello, hubo un gran terremoto. El sol se puso negro como tela de silicio y toda la luna se volvió roja como la sangre.

13Las estrellas del cielo caían sobre la tierra como higos verdes que caen del árbol cuando es sacudido por el viento.

14El cielo desapareció como cuando un pergamino se enrolla, y todas las montañas e islas fueron removidas de su sitio.

15Y los reyes de la tierra, los grandes líderes, los ricos, los poderosos, y todas las personas, esclavos o libres, se ocultaron en cuevas y entre las rocas de las montañas.

16Y gritaban a las montañas y a las rocas: “¡Caigan sobre nosotros! Escóndannos del rostro del que está sentado en el trono, y del juicio del Cordero.

17Porque el día terrible de su juicio ha venido, y ¿quién podrá resistirlo?”

📖 Chapter study

Summary

The Lamb begins to open the seven seals, releasing four symbolic horsemen — associated with conquest, war, famine, and death — followed by the souls of the martyrs crying out for justice, and finally great cosmic signs that terrify humanity.

Explanation

The so-called 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' (white, red, black, and pale/yellow) have become one of the most famous images in all of world literature, symbolizing destructive forces that run throughout human history: military conquest, civil war, economic scarcity, and widespread death. The fifth seal reveals something emotionally moving: the souls of those who died for their faith, still awaiting God's full justice, showing that the book openly acknowledges the real suffering of the persecuted without minimizing it. The cosmic signs of the sixth seal — the sun darkened, the moon like blood, stars falling — use traditional Old Testament apocalyptic language (as in Joel 2 and Isaiah 13) to convey that God's judgment is imminent and all-encompassing. Today's application is that the book does not ignore real human suffering, but places it within a larger story moving toward God's final justice.

Fun facts

  • The expression 'the four horsemen of the apocalypse' became so popular in Western culture that it is still used today in entirely secular contexts — politics, sports, economics — to describe any set of four destructive or threatening forces.

Verse-by-verse explanation

  1. Apocalipsis 6:1This begins the sequence of the seven seals: each time the Lamb opens one, one of the four living creatures summons the next scene with the same command, “Come and see.”
  2. Apocalipsis 6:2This rider opens a sequence of four, each tied to a type of disaster the readers of the time knew well: military conquest, war, famine, and death. It is not a fixed order predicting specific events; it is an ancient way of describing the great evils that always travel together with war.
  3. Apocalipsis 6:3This repeats the formula of the first seal, now with the second living creature calling forth the scene of the second rider.
  4. Apocalipsis 6:4The red horse and its rider represent war: the power to take peace from the earth and make people kill one another, a classic image of widespread armed conflict.
  5. Apocalipsis 6:5This repeats the formula for the third time; the black horse and the balances in the rider's hand are symbols of scarcity, setting up the explanation of famine that comes in the next verse.
  6. Apocalipsis 6:6A penny, or denarius, was the pay for a full day's work; spending that entire wage just to buy a day's ration of wheat shows a famine so severe that it consumes everything a person earns. Oil and wine, goods belonging to those with more possessions, remain untouched - the image of a crisis that weighs more heavily on the poor.
  7. Apocalipsis 6:7This repeats the formula for the fourth and final time before the scene of the fourth rider.
  8. Apocalipsis 6:8The fourth rider, named “Death,” with “Hell” (Hades, the realm of the dead) following behind, receives power over a fourth of the earth using sword, hunger, plague, and wild beasts - the four classic types of punishment already listed in prophecies such as Ezekiel 14.
  9. Apocalipsis 6:9In the ancient temple, the blood of a sacrifice was poured out at the base of the altar; here the lives of those who died for their faith are described with the same image, as an offering poured out that still cries out for justice, similar to the blood of Abel crying out from the ground in Genesis.
  10. Apocalipsis 6:10The cry “how long” is a common expression in psalms of lament, used here by martyrs asking God to bring justice for their spilled blood.
  11. Apocalipsis 6:11The answer to this cry is not immediate: each one receives a white robe (a symbol already seen in the letters to the churches) and the instruction to wait, because the full number of martyrs had not yet been completed.
  12. Apocalipsis 6:12A darkened sky, a red moon, and falling stars is language already found in Isaiah, Joel, and Ezekiel to describe all of creation being shaken - ancient readers recognized this as an image of a great upheaval, not as a literal description of astronomy.
  13. Apocalipsis 6:13The image of stars falling like unripe figs shaken by a strong wind is a comparison to something well known to readers of the time - the moment when a fig tree drops fruit that is not yet ripe during a storm.
  14. Apocalipsis 6:14The sky “rolled together as a scroll,” with mountains and islands moved out of place, echoes an image from Isaiah 34 about the total collapse of the natural order, used here to describe an upheaval of cosmic proportions.
  15. Apocalipsis 6:15The list of social groups - kings, the rich, military commanders, slaves, and free people - shows that this fear spares no one: neither status nor power offers protection against what is about to happen.
  16. Apocalipsis 6:16The scene of people begging for the mountains to fall on them echoes an image from the prophet Hosea. The effect here is one of reversal: the Lamb, a symbol of gentleness throughout the book, is precisely the One these groups are trying to hide from.
  17. Apocalipsis 6:17The question “who shall be able to stand?” is deliberately left unanswered until the next chapter, which reveals exactly who manages to remain standing before this day of judgment.

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