Revelation 13:9

The vision follows straight on from Revelation 12. There the great red dragon is thrown down to the earth and, in his fury, goes after the woman and her children. He is named plainly as “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). Unable to destroy God’s people, he raises up an agent on earth, and this beast becomes his chief instrument of persecution and deception. A second beast rises from the earth in Revelation 13:11–18, and its work is to make the world worship the first, so that Revelation 13 as a whole sets the dragon’s two servants before us.

“I stood upon the sand of the sea” puts John on the shore, between the dry land and the sea, watching something come up out of the water. Some manuscripts read “he stood”, and on that reading the dragon himself takes his place on the shore to call up his servant. Either way, a new stage of the war has begun.

The word for beast, thēríon, means a wild beast or animal, and it can be used of animals in general. In Revelation it becomes the name of this creature and of the beast that follows it, a savage and predatory power set against God and his people. The sea, thálassa, is the ordinary word for the sea, used even of an inland lake such as the Sea of Galilee. In prophecy the sea often pictures the restless mass of the nations, so a beast that rises from it is a power that grows out of the world of men in its rebellion against God.

The picture comes from Daniel. In Daniel 7:3–8 Daniel sees four great beasts come up out of the sea, each standing for an empire, and the fourth has ten horns and a little horn with a mouth speaking great things. John’s beast carries the features of all four. His first readers, the churches of Asia Minor, were most likely living under the emperor Domitian late in the first century, when Rome demanded worship for its emperors and punished those who refused. They would have seen Rome in this beast at once, with its vast dominion and its rulers who claimed divine honours.

The beast’s body brings Daniel’s beasts together in one. Its likeness to a leopard recalls the third beast, which stood for Greece under Alexander, swift and cunning in conquest (Daniel 7:6). Its bear’s feet recall the second beast, Media-Persia, heavy and strong enough to crush its enemies (Daniel 7:5). Its lion’s mouth recalls the first beast, Babylon, fierce and devouring (Daniel 7:4). Daniel’s fourth beast, which stood for Rome, was dreadful and terrible and had ten horns, and John’s beast has its horns too. So this beast carries in one body the swiftness, the strength and the ferocity of every empire that has set itself against God. John is describing a power in picture language, as Daniel did, and the picture tells us what that power is.

The second half of verse 2 tells us where the beast’s strength comes from. The dragon, drákōn, a word for a fabulous kind of serpent, is Satan himself, as Revelation 12:9 says. He gives the beast three things. “His power” is dýnamis, strength. “His seat” is thrónos, a throne, the place from which a king rules. “Great authority” is exousía, a word that covers both the right to act and plain power or ability. The KJV translates exousía as “authority” here and as “power” in verses 4, 5 and 7, so wherever this chapter says power was given to the beast, it is the same word. The beast rules as Satan’s earthly deputy, with the devil’s own backing.

When Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, he offered him their power and glory in return for worship (Luke 4:5–7). John writes elsewhere that the whole world lies under the evil one (1 John 5:19). Here the dragon hands that kind of power to a beast that will take it. Scripture teaches that the powers that be are ordained of God for good (Romans 13:1), and this beast is rule turned to the devil’s ends. That is why Paul says that we wrestle against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12).

John sees one of the beast’s heads “as it were wounded to death”. The verb is spházō, to slaughter, to butcher an animal for food or in sacrifice, or to maim violently, and the phrase is literally “as slain unto death”. Thánatos is death, and “his deadly wound” is literally “the wound of death”. The head was struck a blow that killed it, and yet the wound was healed. Verse 8 uses the same verb, spházō, for “the Lamb slain”, so the beast bears a likeness of the Lamb’s death, and its healing is a likeness of his resurrection. This is the dragon’s counterfeit of Christ. The real Christ says, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore” (Revelation 1:18), and he is the resurrection and the life for all who believe in him (John 11:25–26).

Believers differ on what the wound stands for. It may be an empire that collapsed and rose again, as Rome recovered from times of turmoil, or a ruler or system that suffers a crushing blow and recovers. Some see an echo of the story told in John’s day that Nero, who had persecuted Christians, would come back from the dead. Later in Revelation the beast is described as one that “was, and is not, and yet is”, and the world marvels at it again (Revelation 17:7–14). The second beast of this chapter points the world to the first beast “whose deadly wound was healed” (Revelation 13:11–18).

“All the world wondered after the beast.” The verb thaumázō means to wonder or marvel, and by implication to admire. John’s phrase is that they “wondered after” it, which is wonder that goes on to follow. The whole earth is caught up in admiration and walks behind the beast. Paul warns of a lawless one who comes with all power and signs and lying wonders, deceiving those who perish (2 Thessalonians 2:9–10), and Jesus warned that false christs would show great signs and wonders to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect (Matthew 24:24). That is why John tells believers elsewhere to try the spirits (1 John 4:1). A display of power tells us nothing about whether it comes from God.

The world worships the dragon because he gave the beast its power, and then worships the beast. The verb proskynéō means to bow down or prostrate oneself in homage, the posture of worship given to a god. So the worship goes to Satan himself through his visible agent.

The world’s two questions borrow the praise that belongs to God. When Israel crossed the Red Sea, Moses sang, “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods?” (Exodus 15:11), and the psalmist asks, “O LORD God of hosts, who is a strong LORD like unto thee?” (Psalm 89:8). Now the same kind of praise is sung to a beast. “Who is able to make war with him?” says that nothing can stand against it, and the world bows partly out of fear and partly out of a false sense of safety in siding with the strongest power on earth. Roman imperial propaganda spoke of the emperor’s might in just this way. The questions are bitterly ironic, for the beast is a creature with an end appointed for it, and it will be thrown alive into the lake of fire (Revelation 19:20).

“There was given unto him” comes twice in verse 5 and twice more in verse 7. The verb dídōmi means to give. Everything the beast has, it receives: its mouth, its authority, its time, even its war on the saints. The dragon gave it power in verse 2, and the passive “was given” leaves the giver unnamed. The measured months show that God himself sets the bounds, so even this gift to the beast is held within his rule.

The mouth, stóma, is the beast’s public voice: its pronouncements, decrees and propaganda. It speaks “great things”, proud boasts and claims to divine rights, “and blasphemies”, open insults against God. This is Daniel’s little horn again, which speaks great words against the Most High and wears out the saints (Daniel 7:25).

“He opened his mouth” uses anoígō, to open, and the phrase marks a deliberate, public act. The beast speaks its hatred aloud. Its blasphēmía is aimed first at God himself, and then at three things that belong to him.

It blasphemes “his name”, and in Scripture a name stands for the person, so this is an attack on all that God is. It blasphemes “his tabernacle”, skēnḗ, a tent or dwelling. In Revelation this is God’s dwelling in heaven, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony (Revelation 15:5), the place of his presence and of true worship. And it blasphemes “them that dwell in heaven”, the angels and the glorified saints, the general assembly and church of the firstborn (Hebrews 12:22–23). The blasphemy widens from God to everything near him, and it leads straight into the beast’s war on God’s people on earth in the next verse.

Heaven answers in the opposite spirit. Around the throne the living creatures and the elders worship the one who sits on it day and night (Revelation 4). Under Israel’s law blasphemy against God was punished by death, and in Rome disrespect to an emperor who was worshipped as divine was a crime, so John’s readers knew how grave this was. The psalmist asked how long the enemy would blaspheme God’s name (Psalm 74:10), and this chapter answers that he has forty-two months.

“It was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them.” The words come from Daniel: “I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them” (Daniel 7:21). The war is open hostility, ending in persecution, prison and death for believers. The verb for overcome, nikáō, means to conquer or prevail, and it is a key word of Revelation. Christ promises his gifts “to him that overcometh” (Revelation 2:7), and the saints overcome the dragon himself: “they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death” (Revelation 12:11). So the beast overcomes the saints in body, and the saints overcome the beast by faithfulness to death. Later John sees those who have gotten the victory over the beast standing by the sea of glass (Revelation 15:2), and those who were killed for the witness of Jesus living and reigning with Christ (Revelation 20:4). What the world counts as defeat is their triumph.

“All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him.” The word for earth, gē, means earth, land or ground, the surface of the world beneath the heavens. Those who “dwell upon the earth” are set against “them that dwell in heaven” in verse 6, and in this verse they are the people whose allegiance belongs to this world. The worship of the beast is near universal, and the verse names the one boundary it stops at: “whose names are not written in the book of life”.

The book of life is God’s own register of those who belong to him. Moses prayed to be blotted out of God’s book for his people’s sake (Exodus 32:32), David asked that the wicked be blotted out of the book of the living (Psalm 69:28), and Paul speaks of his fellow workers “whose names are in the book of life” (Philippians 4:3). The verb gráphō is the ordinary word “to write”. The book belongs to the Lamb, and his death is its ground. God chose his people in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), and he gave them grace in Christ before the world began (2 Timothy 1:9). So the safety of the saints in the beast’s day rests on God’s purpose and the Lamb’s blood, and their own strength is no part of it.

“Slain” is spházō again, the word used of the beast’s head in verse 3, and here it is a perfect participle: the Lamb was slain, and his death stands with lasting effect. It names the violent, sacrificial death of Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), whose blood was shed for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:28).

In the middle of the vision John breaks off with the call Jesus used so often: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15, Matthew 13:9). The same call closes each of the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2–3. Here it stops the reader after the beast’s power and worldwide worship and before the word of verse 10.

Eí tis, “if any”, is a plain conditional, the same “if any man” that opens both invitations and warnings, and it reaches each person who reads. Échō is to have or hold. Oûs is the ear, which in Scripture often stands for the power to understand. Akoúō is to hear, and in a call like this it means to listen, take in and heed. Jesus explained that some hear with their ears and yet fail to understand (Matthew 13:13–15), and Moses told Israel that the LORD had withheld ears to hear from them until that day (Deuteronomy 29:4). The hearing ear is God’s gift. Christ’s sheep hear his voice and follow him, and none can pluck them out of his hand (John 10:27–28). The Holy Spirit he sends teaches them all things (John 14:26), and he himself is the truth (John 14:6).

The call belongs to all of God’s word, prophecy and law and promise alike. Placed here, it means that the beast’s deceit is seen through by those who listen to God.

“He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.” The word for captivity, aichmalōsía, comes from the language of war and means prisoners taken by the spear. The sword is máchaira, a short sword or dagger, the weapon of combat and of the executioner. “Must” is deî, “it is necessary”, the word for what has to take place. Those who seize and kill the saints will receive the same at God’s hand. This is the old principle of “eye for eye” (Exodus 21:24) applied by God himself, and Paul gives its general form: whatever a man sows, he reaps (Galatians 6:7). John’s readers knew Rome’s chains and swords, its exiles and its executions, and this verse told them that their oppressors would answer to God.

“Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” “Here is” points the saints to what they need in the face of the beast. Patience is hypomonḗ, a cheerful, hopeful endurance that stays firm under suffering and keeps its hope. Faith is pístis, trust and loyalty, resting on God’s truth, his promises and his coming victory. The saints are told that they have need of patience, so that after they have done the will of God they may receive the promise (Hebrews 10:36), and they wait as the farmer waits, for the coming of the Lord draws near (James 5:7–8).

Every part of this passage throws Christ into relief. The beast rises from the sea of rebellious nations, and the Son comes from the Father as the Word made flesh (John 1:14), now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, the brightness of God’s glory (Hebrews 1:3). The beast wears names of blasphemy, and Christ is the image of the invisible God, by whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:15–17). The beast’s mouth speaks great things, and Christ is the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1), whose words are spirit and life (John 6:63), and who bore witness to the truth before Pilate (John 18:37). The beast blasphemes God’s name, and Jesus glorified his Father on earth and finished the work he was given (John 17:4).

The dragon gives the beast a throne for a short time, and Jesus says, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). The beast’s seat stands against the throne of God and of the Lamb, from which the river of life flows (Revelation 22:1). The beast grasps at worship, and Christ, being in the form of God, humbled himself to the death of the cross, so that God has highly exalted him: “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth” (Philippians 2:6–11). The beast’s head is healed from a wound, and the Lamb stands as though it had been slain, worthy to take the book (Revelation 5:6). At the cross Christ spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15).

The saints share his sufferings as they face the beast (Philippians 3:10), and they share his victory as well. The ten kings make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb overcomes them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings (Revelation 17:7–14). He comes with the name written on his vesture, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:16). The beast and the false prophet are cast alive into the lake of fire (Revelation 19:20), and the devil who gave the beast its power follows them there (Revelation 20:10). The whole story is told in Revelation 19–20, and it ends with the one on the throne saying, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

This passage tells the truth about the powers of the world. Behind every empire that demands what belongs to God stands the dragon, and his beast can be terrifying, admired, worshipped by nearly everyone and strong enough to kill the saints. God shows us all of that plainly, so that his people are ready for it.

He also shows us that he holds the beast’s whole career in his hand. Every power it has is given, its time is counted in months, and its blasphemies fall short of the heaven they insult. The people written in the Lamb’s book were his before the world was made, and his justice will repay every chain and every sword used against them. So the saints meet the beast with the same patience and faith that carried their Lord through the cross to the throne, and they wait for the Lamb who has already won.