Revelation 12:3

3. Dragon Name and shape allude to the Edenic serpent. With this primitive serpent the present dragon is very expressly identified in Revelation 12:9, and again re-identified in Revelation 20:2. He is the personal Satan, Revelation 12:9, arrayed in the skin of the Roman empire. So Rome’s great predecessor, Egypt, Ezekiel 29:3, is a dragon: “I am against thee, Pharaoh, the great dragon that liest in the midst of its rivers.” Probably the physical reference is to the crocodile. In the second and third centuries of our era the dragon was adopted as a Roman ensign, and is thus described by Ammianus Marcellinus: “The dragon was covered with purple cloth, and fastened to the end of a pike gilt and adorned with precious stones. It opened its wide throat, and the wind blew through it; and it hissed, as if in a rage, with its tail floating in several folds through the air.” Elliott.

Red Fire-coloured, not blood-coloured; yet indicating both his slaughterous character and his hellish origin. The seven heads subsequently referred, physically, to the seven hills of Rome, (Revelation 17:9,) and politically to the seven great empires of which Rome is the sixth and seventh. Notes Revelation 17:10. It is clear that the dragon is here symbol of Roman paganism, as the woman is symbol of the Christianity that paganism would destroy. The ten horns refer, perhaps, basally, to the ten kingdoms into which the Roman empire immediately fell, analogous to the ten toes of Daniel’s image, and ultimately to the universality of modern nations. Notes Revelation 17:12-14. It is a remarkable inconsistency in Alford that he admits the symbolism of the woman as the Christian Church, and yet ignores that of her antagonist, the dragon, as heading the antichurch of antichrist. And yet it is notable how antithetically our seer places before us the two in position in Revelation 12:1-4, before he proceeds to narrate the action.