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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Revelation 12:3 - 12:3
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Another sign (allo sēmeion). “A second tableau following close upon the first and inseparable from it” (Swete).
And behold (kai idou). As often (Rev 4:1; Rev 6:2, Rev 6:5, Rev 6:8, etc.).
A great red dragon (drakōn megas purros). Homer uses this old word (probably from derkomai, to see clearly) for a great monster with three heads coiled like a serpent that ate poisonous herbs. The word occurs also in Hesiod, Pindar, Eschylus. The Babylonians feared a seven-headed hydra and Typhon was the Egyptian dragon who persecuted Osiris. One wonders if these and the Chinese dragons are not race memories of conflicts with the diplodocus and like monsters before their disappearance. Charles notes in the O.T. this monster as the chief enemy of God under such title as Rahab (Isa 51:9.; Job 26:12.), Behemoth (Job 40:15-24), Leviathan (Isa 27:1), the Serpent (Amo 9:2.). In Psa 74:13 we read of “the heads of the dragons.” On purros (red) see Rev 6:4. Here (Rev 12:9) and in Rev 20:2 the great dragon is identified with Satan. See Dan 7 for many of the items here, like the ten horns (Dan 7:7) and hurling the stars (Dan 8:10). The word occurs in the Apocalypse alone in the N.T.
Seven diadems (hepta diadēmata). Old word from diadeō (to bind around), the blue band marked with white with which Persian kings used to bind on the tiara, so a royal crown in contrast with stephanos (chaplet or wreath like the Latin corona as in Rev 2:10), in N.T. only here, Rev 13:1; Rev 19:12. If Christ as Conqueror has “many diadems,” it is not strange that Satan should wear seven (ten in Rev 13:1).