Rev.6:6 - Was It An Idiomatic Expression?

I was telling my dad how Wesley's explanatory note on this verse says it must have been filled at a time when the Grecian measure and Roman penny were in use, and in a place where they were in use; to which dad replied, "Unless it was an idiomatic expression". It was good that dad pointed-out to me that I should go through that thought-process before arriving at a conclusion. Dad then mentioned the parable of the workers being paid a penny for a day's labour. I think dad's implication was that it mightn't therefore be idiomatic but might be real.

What do you think - was it an idiomatic expression? I think it probably wasn't - because there are actually two separate statements here, which are similar. It seems to me therefore that either they both had to be idiomatic sayings of the day, or neither of them were.

But even if it was an idiomatic expression, it still means the prophecy can only be fulfilled at a time and in a place where the idiomatic expression was in use. To my knowledge, the expression is not idiomatic in modernday Europe, or America or the Middle East.

"A measure of wheat for a penny"; and "three measures of barley for a penny" sound to me like literal measures, and literal pennies. And if so, then as Wesley explained, the literal interpretation necessitates that it was fulfilled somewhere in the Roman Empire soon after the time of writing.