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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 12:3, a great red dragon
The dragon takes the Old Testament's sea monster, the many-headed beast God crushed and the great dragon Pharaoh, and names it as the devil.
Revelation 12:3; Revelation 12:9, in every translation this tool compares.
A cartoonist who draws a country as a bear lets readers see a nation as one animal. The Old Testament did this with a sea monster. Egypt's Pharaoh is called the great dragon in Ezekiel. Psalm 74 praises God for smashing the sea monsters' heads, and Isaiah 27 promises to kill the dragon on the last day. John's red dragon has seven heads. In verse 9 John says outright that it is the devil.
The word dragon, drakon, is the Greek Old Testament's word for this monster. Great dragon in 12:3 and 12:9 matches the Greek of Ezekiel 29:3, ton drakonta ton megan, said of Pharaoh. Psalm 74 gives the monster more than one head.
In the Old Testament the dragon is a nation, mostly Egypt, or a chaos beast God beats. John says who stands behind them: the devil himself. He gives the beast exactly seven heads, seven crowns and ten horns, and colors it red. None of the Old Testament texts give these numbers. Beale ties the red to bloodshed, as with the red horse in 6:4.
The persecutors of God's people have one master behind them. John tells churches facing Rome that their trouble is the latest round of an old fight. God beat the dragon at the exodus, and Beale reads chapter 12 as an exodus replayed, with Rome now in Pharaoh's place.
Not a dinosaur or a literal reptile. The sources agree the dragon is a symbol, and John names what it stands for in verse 9.
Beale calls the description a mosaic of Old Testament images of evil kingdoms. He lists God defeating Pharaoh as a sea dragon (Psalm 74:13-14; 89:10; Isaiah 30:7; 51:9; Ezekiel 29:3; 32:2-3), and Babylon as the monster in Jeremiah 51:34. He stresses that great dragon is a title found only in Ezekiel 29:3 among the sea monster texts. Isaiah 27:1 promises the end-time defeat of the dragon, and the Targum compares that dragon to Pharaoh. In the vault's Greek Psalter, Psalm 74:13 breaks the heads of the dragons on the water. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cite the same Leviathan texts. The grade is drawn here: the word and the title are shared, but John combines several texts and adds his own numbers.
Heiser, quoting Beale and McDonough, reads the dragon as the Old Testament sea monster, the Leviathan picture of chaos. It stands for evil kingdoms, Egypt above all, which God beat at the exodus. He stresses the Egypt link because the woman then escapes on eagles' wings, as Israel did. He keeps the devil in view, since verse 9 says who the dragon is.
Some read the dragon as borrowed mainly from Near Eastern myth. Keener and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible note the seven-headed Leviathan, or Lotan, of Canaanite myth, and the red dragon Typhon of Egypt. Walton's commentary cites the Ugaritic serpent with seven heads behind Isaiah 27:1. Beale grants that John may echo such myths for former pagans but rejects them as his main source, since the Daniel 7 sea beasts and other Old Testament texts are plainly there. MacArthur reads the dragon as Satan, and the heads and horns as figures for his rule over seven kingdoms of the past and ten still to come.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 12:3 and 12:9
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 12:3
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 12:3
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 12:3
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Isaiah 27:1 and Psalm 74:14
- Septuagint, Ezekiel 29:3, Psalm 74:13-14 and Isaiah 27:1, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 12:3 and 12:9
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 12: The Woman, the Child, and the Dragon, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 12:3
