“Then I saw a beast rising out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads; on the horns were ten diadems, and on each head was a blasphemous name” (Revelation 13:1). The Book of Revelation is full of alarming creatures that appeared to the author, John, in a vision during his exile on the Aegean island of Patmos. Particularly iconic is the seven-headed beast that aids Satan in his end-time bid for domination of the earth.
The beast, as depicted here in a 1393 fresco by the Florentine painter Giusto de Menabuoi, “resembled a leopard, but its feet were like a bear’s and its mouth like a lion’s” (Revelation 13:2). With its profusion of heads and horns, it resembles Satan himself—who appeared in the previous chapter as a seven-headed, ten-horned dragon menacing the infant Jesus and his mother. Yet despite their family resemblance, the beast from the sea is not the devil but the devil’s appointed earthly authority: “The whole world went after the beast in wondering admiration, and worshiped the dragon [Satan] because he had conferred his authority on the beast” (Revelation 13:3–4).
In Revelation 17, the whore of Babylon is seated on a similar (perhaps the same) beast with seven heads and ten diademed horns. An angel explains to John that the “seven heads are seven mountains … the ten horns are ten kings” (Revelation 17:9, 12). To John’s readers, the beast with seven heads likely represented Rome, the Babylon of its day, famously built on seven hills; the horns, its emperors. Domitian, whose persecutions may have been the cause of John’s exile on Patmos, was the tenth Roman emperor after Augustus.
“One of the heads seemed to have been given a death blow,” John wrote, “yet its mortal wound was healed” (Revelation 13:3). This detail, shown clearly in Giusto’s fresco, may refer to the emperor Nero, who committed suicide in 68 C.E. Few saw Nero’s corpse, and rumors abounded that he had either survived or would return from the dead to persecute Christians again.
“Then I saw a beast rising out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads; on the horns were ten diadems, and on each head was a blasphemous name” (Revelation 13:1). The Book of Revelation is full of alarming creatures that appeared to the author, John, in a vision during his exile on the Aegean island of Patmos. Particularly iconic is the seven-headed beast that aids Satan in his end-time bid for domination of the earth. The beast, as depicted here in a 1393 fresco by the Florentine painter Giusto de Menabuoi, “resembled a leopard, but its […]
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