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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 17:9-10, seven heads are seven mountains and seven kings
The beast's seven heads come from the beasts of Daniel 7, whose heads add up to seven, and are explained as mountains and kings, as Daniel explains beasts as kings.
Revelation 17:9-10, in every translation this tool compares.
A riddle with two answers can point to a city and to a whole history at once. In Daniel 7 the four beasts have seven heads among them, and the angel explains that the beasts are kings. John's angel explains the seven heads as seven mountains and also seven kings. Rome was famous as the city on seven hills. Mountains in the prophets also stand for kingdoms, as when Jeremiah calls Babylon a destroying mountain.
Heads that stand for kings, and a mountain that stands for a kingdom. Daniel 7:6 gives the third beast four heads, making seven among the four beasts, as Beale counts. Daniel 7:17 explains the beasts as kings (in the vault's Greek, kingdoms). Revelation 17:10 says the heads are seven kings. Jeremiah 51:25 calls Babylon a destroying mountain.
Daniel spreads the heads across four beasts; John puts all seven on one beast. Daniel explains beasts as kings; John explains heads as both mountains and kings, a double meaning Daniel does not have. Many readers hear Rome's seven hills, a city Daniel never names. John adds a count: five have fallen, one is, one is still to come.
Beale reads the seven as a number of completeness: the oppressive power of world empires across history, with Rome its form in John's day. Keener and Heiser stress the plain reference to Rome's seven hills. Either way the beast's kingdoms are numbered and their end is near.
Not a list to be matched to emperors with certainty. Beale, Keener and the ESV Study Bible show that attempts to count the kings give conflicting results.
Beale says the seven heads are identified first as seven mountains, which can mean Rome's hills, but in Revelation mountain always means mountain and figures strength. Mountains symbolize kingdoms in the Old Testament (Isaiah 2:2; Jeremiah 51:25; Ezekiel 35:3; Daniel 2:35, 45; Zechariah 4:7). The kingdoms are confirmed by Daniel 7:4-7, where the four beasts have seven heads among them, the source of the heads in 13:1, and by Daniel 7:17, 23, where beasts are kings and kingdoms. He allows Rome's seven hills as a secondary reference (Virgil, Cicero, the Sibylline Oracles). Keener says every reader would know the seven hills meant Rome. The ESV Study Bible cites Jeremiah 51:24-25 and Daniel 2:35, 44-45 for mountains as seats of power. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible note the seven hills. The grade is drawn here: the pattern is traceable to Daniel 7, the mountains to the prophets' picture of kingdoms.
Heiser treats the seven hills as the clincher against reading Babylon as Jerusalem: Jerusalem does not have seven hills, nor did Babylon, but Rome does, as coins and other sources of the period show. He reads the beast itself from Daniel 7: the fourth beast persecutes the faithful, matches the fourth kingdom of Daniel 2, and is Rome, in whose time God's kingdom arrives.
Keener, Heiser and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible stress the seven hills of Rome. Beale treats the hills as secondary and the seven kings as a figure for oppressive rule throughout history. The CSB Study Bible lists Roman emperors or seven world empires. Keener thinks Nero's expected return is in view; Beale doubts any count of emperors works. MacArthur takes the seven mountains as the seven kingdoms of 17:10 and lists them: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome and the Antichrist's empire still to come. He allows that the final false religion includes Rome without being limited to it.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 17:9b and 17:10
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 17:9 and 17:10-11
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 17:9-11
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 17:9-10
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 17:9
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 17:9
- Septuagint, Daniel 7:6, 7:17 and Jeremiah 51:25, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 17:9-10
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 17-18: The Fall of Babylon the Great, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 17:9 and 17:10
