Revelation 13:2

Revelation 13:2. The description of the ‘beast' is continued. The three animals, the leopard, the bear, and the lion, some of whose parts it possessed, are the first three ‘great beasts' of Daniel 7:4-6, although they are here introduced in a different order, and are combined into one. The qualities represented are the most offensive of their kind, the swift cruel spring of the leopard, the brutish relentlessness of the bear, and the devouring power of the lion.

And the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority. Three things are mentioned; first, the power itself; secondly, the position from which it is exercised; and thirdly, the right to use it. They are the things which Christ had been offered by the dragon, but which He had refused (Matthew 4:9). They are now accepted by the beast at the expense of becoming the dragon's slave and sharing its fate. It is probable that St. John has the Temptation in the wilderness as described by the earlier Evangelists in his eye.

The question as to the precise meaning of the first beast has perplexed inquirers, and very various opinions in regard to it have been entertained. There is indeed an almost general agreement that it is a symbol of worldly anti-christian power. But by some this power is supposed to be that of heathen Rome, in which case the seven heads become the seven hills upon which Rome was built, or seven of its emperors. Others add the idea of Papal to that of heathen Rome, in which case the seven heads become seven forms of Roman government Kings, Consuls, Decemvirs, Tribunes, Dictators, Emperors, Popes: while others again understand by the seven heads seven kingdoms which, either in the Bible or in Christian history, oppress and persecute the Church of God, the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, Roman, together with the Germanic-Sclavonic kingdoms by which the downfall of Rome was followed. The point is of great importance, especially for the interpretation of chap. 17; and the following remarks may be made:

1. The numbers seven and ten must, as elsewhere, be regarded as symbolical, as expressing the idea of fulness or completeness rather than the mere value belonging to them in the numerical scale. We are not, therefore, entitled to make an arbitrary selection from the worldly powers opposed to the Church of God, and to use it as simply illustrative of the nature of these powers in general. Our selection, if made at all, must be made in such a manner that it shall embody the idea of completeness. 2. The rule symbolized by the power of the beast must be a rule over the whole world. The dragon of chap. 12 rules it all, and not merely a part of it (chap. Revelation 12:9): his vicegerent the beast must do the same. We learn from Revelation 13:7 of this chapter, and from its fourfold division of ‘tribe and people and tongue and nation,' that he actually does so. It is to be remembered, too, that the description given us of the power of the beast is a mocking caricature of the power of Christ, and His rule is universal. 3. The objects represented by the heads of the beast must be kingdoms, not personal kings like the Emperors of Rome. Such is the sense in which the word ‘kings' is used both in the Book of Daniel and in the Apocalypse, where there is nothing in the context to compel us to think of personality (comp. Daniel 7:17; Daniel 7:23; Revelation 17:2; Revelation 18:3), and the seven heads are said in chap. Revelation 17:10 to be seven ‘kings,' Apart from this it may be observed that no seven Emperors of Rome can be a fitting representation of the whole world-power. They might represent the power of Rome, but that is not enough to meet the necessities of the case with which we deal. 4. It will hardly be denied that the seven heads must severally and individually bear a similar relation to the Church of God, for it is in relation to that Church that the beast is viewed; but no seven Emperors of Rome did so. They were not all persecutors: under some of them the Church enjoyed peace. 5. We may conclude from analogy that the objects, whatever they may be, lying at the bottom of the series of seven are taken either from what was before the Seer at the moment, or from his acquaintance with the past. 6. But, if so, chap. Revelation 17:10 at once affords us the point from which to start. There we are informed that five are fallen and ‘one is,' i.e ‘is' at the time when St. John lived and wrote. This can be no other than the Roman power; and, counting backwards from it, we have the Greek, the Medo-Persian, and the Chaldean for three of the five. The two earlier, still counting backwards, are the Assyrian and the Egyptian. These two last-mentioned powers are often named together in the Old Testament as enemies of God's people, ‘I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt, and gather them out of Assyria' (Zechariah 10:10); ‘and it shall come to pass in that day, that they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem' (Isaiah 27:13). We have thus six of the ‘heads,' Egypt, Assyria, Chaldaea, Persia, Greece, Rome, all of which had successively been opponents and persecutors of the Church of God. The seventh, resolvable into the ten horns, is no one definite kingdom. It had not yet arisen: but St. John saw that the wicked Roman Empire was tottering to its fall, and that it would be dissolved in other and final world-powers represented in their totality by the number ten. The ‘beast' before us is thus the symbol of the world-power in its absoluteness and universality. Yet it is not identical with the world-power in any one of its seven single and successive forms. It is rather the essence of that power as it appears to a certain extent in each form. In this respect it is really the ‘Little Horn' of Daniel 7:8, before which ‘there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots,' in order that it might take their place. This characteristic, however, is not yet brought out; it will meet us in chap. Revelation 17:11. Finally, we may remark that, in so far as the power of Rome enters into the description, it can only be that of Pagan, not Christian, Rome. Even in her darkest days Christian Rome could not have been fitly represented by one of the heads of the beast.