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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Revelation 12:3 - 12:3
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3. δράκων. The word in classical Greek means simply “serpent,” though perhaps it was always specially applied to the larger or more formidable kinds. But in St John’s time the conception seems to have been familiar of a half-mythical kind of serpent, to which the name was appropriated: it had not gone so far as the mediæval type of “dragon,” with legs and wings, but the dragon was supposed to “stand” (see the next verse), hardly perhaps “on his rear,” as Milton imagines the Serpent of Eden to have done, before the curse of Gen 3:14, but erect from the middle upwards; see Verg. Æn. II. 206–8. Whether this dragon bore visibly on him the primæval curse or no, there is an undoubted reference to the story of the Fall in this picture of the woman, the man, and the serpent. In Psa 74:13-14 (14, 15); Job 26:13; Isa 27:1; Isa 51:9, we seem to find references to a “war in heaven,” either past or future, like that which follows here.
κεφαλὰς ἑπτά. Probably the vision avails itself of the imagery furnished by popular mythology: very likely Syria and Palestine had tales of seven-headed serpents, like the hydra of Lerna, or the cobras of modern Indian stories.
καὶ κέρατα δέκα. The only illustration of this is, that the Beast of chaps. 13, 17. and of Daniel 7. has the like. Possibly, though the dragon is the archetype, not a copy, of the Beast, his appearance is known by that of the Beast: possibly the meaning here is more general: all unsanctified power is embodied in him (cf. St Luk 4:6), as all the power of holiness in the Lamb (chap. Rev 5:6).