<p>6:6 <i>And I heard as it were a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying: A measure of wheat for a denarius and three measures of barley for a denarius- </i>Comparing the prices here with those mentioned for food during the siege of Samaria in 2 Kings 7, these prices are very high but not as great as when &ldquo;an ass's head was sold for 80 shekels, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five&rdquo; (2 Kings 6.25). The figures are not such as we would expect if real famine, and particularly the famine conditions of a siege, were in view. A man could buy three times as much barley as he needed for a day's wage. This isn&rsquo;t talking about actual death by famine, but rather food being sold at grossly inflated prices compared to income- that&rsquo;s surely the impression being created. This would fit my suggestion that the dominators of Israel are pictured as selling food at grossly inflated prices to those under their control, in a manner reminiscent of the Jewish ghettos of central Europe under Nazi domination.</p><p><i>And do not damage the oil and the wine</i>- The GNB appears to be closest to interpreting this: &quot;Do not damage the olive trees and the vineyards&quot;. The Greek translated &quot;hurt&quot; occurs several times later in Revelation, also in the sense of hurting or damaging. The Angel of Rev. 7:2,3 is told not to &quot;hurt&quot; the physical land until God's servants have been sealed. And likewise in Rev. 9:4, there is the proviso that men must be hurt, but not the plants of the land. The word is used about the hurting of the people on the earth (Rev. 9:10,19), and the faithful are initially not &quot;hurt&quot;- until they are killed after they have completed their witness (Rev. 11:5). The voice that states &quot;hurt not the olive trees and the vineyards&quot; comes from between the four beasts- it is an Angelic limitation placed upon the damagers of the land / people in the land promised to Abraham. The sense may be that initially, the physical land is not to be damaged; the people of God, and then the entire dwellers in the land, are to be 'hurt', and not the physical land. Therefore the lack of food created by the rider on the black horse would not be because of famine, but rather as I suggested- because of selling food at high prices as a form of destruction of those who refuse to convert to the Islamic State.</p><p>Another consideration is that the phrase could be rendered &quot;Hands off our oil and wine&quot;. Oil and wine occur together in pictures of abundance and luxurious&nbsp; living (Num. 18:12; Dt. 7:13; 8:8; 28:51; 2 Chron. 11:11; 32:28; Prov. 21:17; Jer. 40:40; Joel 2.24); and note especially that these are part of the luxury of the Babylon-beast system in Rev. 18:13. The implication could be that the desolators of Israel enjoy a brief period of opulence, having grabbed the wealth of Israel and the Jews, and submitting those they have conquered to heavy <i>jizya</i> tax and exorbitant prices for food.</p>