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Revelation

About this book
Chapter 12

1 Then a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet, and on her head was a crown of twelve stars.⁠ 2 She was pregnant and was screaming in labor pains, struggling to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: a huge red dragon that had seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadem crowns.⁠ 4 Now the dragon’s tail swept away a third of the stars in heaven and hurled them to the earth.⁠ Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. 5 So the woman gave birth to a son, a male child, who is going to rule over all the nations with an iron rod.⁠ Her child was suddenly caught up to God and to his throne, 6 and she fled into the wilderness where a place had been prepared for her by God, so she could be taken care of for 1,260 days.⁠ 7 Then war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.⁠ 8 But the dragon was not strong enough to prevail, so there was no longer any place left in heaven for him and his angels. 9 So that huge dragon—the ancient serpent, the one called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world—was thrown down to the earth, and his angels along with him. 10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, “The salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the ruling authority of his Christ, have now come, because the accuser of our brothers and sisters, the one who accuses them day and night before our God, has been thrown down. 11 But they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.⁠ 12 Therefore you heavens rejoice, and all who reside in them! But woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has come down to you! He is filled with terrible anger, for he knows that he only has a little time!” 13 Now when the dragon realized that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 But the woman was given the two wings of a giant eagle so that she could fly out into the wilderness, to the place God prepared for her, where she is taken care of—away from the presence of the serpent—for a time, times, and half a time.⁠ 15 Then the serpent spouted water like a river out of his mouth after the woman in an attempt to sweep her away by a flood, 16 but the earth came to her rescue; the ground opened up and swallowed the river that the dragon had spewed from his mouth. 17 So the dragon became enraged at the woman and went away to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep God’s commandments and hold to the testimony about Jesus. (12:18) And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore.

Texts in conversation

Revelation's Dragon and Daniel's Ten-Horned Beast

Septuagint · New Testament

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Summary

Revelation’s vision of a dragon with seven heads and ten horns draws on Daniel, where a beast is described with ten horns. By combining this with the Leviathan tradition of multi-headed sea monsters, Revelation merges biblical and mythic symbols.

Passages

LXX Daniel 7:7

Septuagint
7 And after these things I watched in the vision of the night a fourth beast, fearful, and its fearfulness surpassing in strength, having great iron teeth, eating and crushing, trampling around with its feet, behaving differently from all the beasts before it; and it had ten horns. 8 And many counsels were in its horns, and look, another single horn grew up in the midst of them, small among its horns, and three of the first horns were dried up by it; and look, eyes like human eyes were in this horn, and a mouth speaking great things, and it made war against the saints. 9 I watched until thrones were set, and one Ancient of days sat, having a garment like snow, and the hair of his head like pure white wool; the throne was like a flame of fire.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Daniel

Revelation 12:3

New Testament
1 Then a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet, and on her head was a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was screaming in labor pains, struggling to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: a huge red dragon that had seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadem crowns. 4 Now the dragon’s tail swept away a third of the stars in heaven and hurled them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. 5 So the woman gave birth to a son, a male child, who is going to rule over all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was suddenly caught up to God and to his throne,
92–96 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Revelation

References

"... The term Leviathan occurs only six times in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 27:1; Psalm 74:14; 104:26; Job 3:8; 40:25. In all these instances the Septuagint renders it “dragon, sea-serpent,” with the exception of Job 3:8 where the translators have chosen “the great sea monster,” probably because they wanted to connect this text with Genesis 1:21 where the Septuagint has “the great sea monsters”. Also the great fish that swallowed Jonah becomes a great sea monster in the Septuagint (Jonah 2:1; compare 11). The author of the New Testament book of Revelation seems to have taken over this Greek reinterpretation of the Hebrew name of the monster (“a great dragon” in Revelation 12:3; see also verses 4, 7, 9, etc.). Remarkably enough this great dragon of Revelation 12:3 has seven heads and ten horns. The ten horns seem to have been derived from the description of a terrifying monster in Daniel 7:7. But where did the seven heads come from? True, Psalm 74:14 attributes “heads” (plural) to the Leviathan, but the number “seven” is lacking there. In Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 the great dragon is identified with “the ancient serpent, who is called Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.” It is generally assumed that this is a reference to Genesis 3, which would imply that the author of Revelation entertained a macrocosmic idea of the serpent in Eden ..."
Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor, “The Leviathan in the Ancient Near East,” in Playing with Leviathan: Interpretation and Reception of Monsters from the Biblical World, ed. K. van Bekkum (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 3–18.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Daniel 7:7 and Revelation 12:3

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