Revelation 17:9

_ _ Compare Revelation 13:18; Daniel 12:10, where similarly spiritual discernment is put forward as needed in order to understand the symbolical prophecy.

_ _ seven heads and seven mountains — The connection between mountains and kings must be deeper than the mere outward fact to which incidental allusion is made, that Rome (the then world city) is on seven hills (whence heathen Rome had a national festival called Septimontium, the feast of the seven-hilled city [Plutarch]; and on the imperial coins, just as here, she is represented as a woman seated on seven hills. Coin of Vespasian, described by Captain Smyth [Roman Coins, p. 310; Ackerman, 1, p. 87]). The seven heads can hardly be at once seven kings or kingdoms (Revelation 17:10), and seven geographical mountains. The true connection is, as the head is the prominent part of the body, so the mountain is prominent in the land. Like “sea” and “earth” and “waters ... peoples” (Revelation 17:15), so “mountains” have a symbolical meaning, namely, prominent seats of power. Especially such as are prominent hindrances to the cause of God (Psalms 68:16, Psalms 68:17; Isaiah 40:4; Isaiah 41:15; Isaiah 49:11; Ezekiel 35:2); especially Babylon (which geographically was in a plain, but spiritually is called a destroying mountain, Jeremiah 51:25), in majestic contrast to which stands Mount Zion, “the mountain of the Lord’s house” (Isaiah 2:2), and the heavenly mount; Revelation 21:10, “a great and high mountain ... and that great city, the holy Jerusalem.” So in Daniel 2:35, the stone becomes a mountain — Messiah’s universal kingdom supplanting the previous world kingdoms. As nature shadows forth the great realities of the spiritual world, so seven-hilled Rome is a representative of the seven-headed world power of which the dragon has been, and is the prince. The “seven kings” are hereby distinguished from the “ten kings” (Revelation 17:12): the former are what the latter are not, “mountains,” great seats of the world power. The seven universal God-opposed monarchies are Egypt (the first world power which came into collision with God’s people,) Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Medo-Persia, Rome, the Germanic-Slavonic empire (the clay of the fourth kingdom mixed with its iron in Nebuchadnezzar’s image, a fifth material, Daniel 2:33, Daniel 2:34, Daniel 2:42, Daniel 2:43, symbolizing this last head). These seven might seem not to accord with the seven heads in Daniel 7:4-7, one head on the first beast (Babylon), one on the second (Medo-Persia), four on the third (Greece; namely, Egypt, Syria, Thrace with Bithynia, and Greece with Macedon): but Egypt and Greece are in both lists. Syria answers to Assyria (from which the name Syria is abbreviated), and Thrace with Bithynia answers to the Gothic-Germanic-Slavonic hordes which, pouring down on Rome from the North, founded the Germanic-Slavonic empire. The woman sitting on the seven hills implies the Old and New Testament Church conforming to, and resting on, the world power, that is, on all the seven world kingdoms. Abraham and Isaac dissembling as to their wives through fear of the kings of Egypt foreshadowed this. Compare Ezekiel 16:1-63; Ezekiel 23:1-49, on Israel’s whoredoms with Egypt, Assyria, Babylon; and Matthew 7:24; Matthew 24:10-12, Matthew 24:23-26, on the characteristics of the New Testament Church’s harlotry, namely, distrust, suspicion, hatred, treachery, divisions into parties, false doctrine.