Apocalypse Revealed #538
538. Having seven heads. This symbolizes irrationality owing to their falsifying and profaning the Word's truths.
A head symbolizes wisdom and intelligence, and in an opposite sense, irrationality. However, the seven heads here, being the heads of the dragon, symbolize more specifically irrationality owing to a falsification and profanation of the Word's truths. For the number seven is predicated of things that are holy, and in an opposite sense, of things that are profane (no. 10). Consequently we are told next that on its heads were seen seven jewels, 1 and jewels symbolize the Word's truths, there truths falsified and profaned.
That a head symbolizes wisdom and intelligence is apparent from the following passages:
I will give you wise and intelligent men..., and I will make them your heads. (Deuteronomy 1:13)
...Jehovah... has closed your eyes, namely, the prophets; and He has covered your heads, namely, the seers. (Isaiah 29:10)
In Daniel 2:32 the head of Nebuchadnezzar's image of fine gold symbolizes the wisdom of the first age, which existed in people of the Most Ancient Church.
That in an opposite sense a head symbolizes irrationality and foolishness is apparent in the book of Psalms:
God will smite the head of His enemies, the hairy crown of the one who walks in his guilty ways. (Psalms 68:21)
In Genesis 3:15 the head of the serpent that would be trampled has the same symbolism, and so does "striking the head over much land" in Psalms 110:6-7; Lamentations 2:10; 2 Samuel 13:19).
Moreover, seven heads later in the book of Revelation, namely, in Revelation 13:1, 3; 17:3, 7, 9, also symbolize irrationality owing to a falsification and profanation of truths.
Footnotes:
1. The word translated as "jewels" here means diadems or crowns in the original Greek and Latin, but the writer's definition of the term elsewhere make plain that he regularly and consistently interpreted it to mean jewels or gems.
Revelation 17:8
8
The beast that you saw was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go into destruction. Those who dwell on the earth and whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel when they see that the beast was, and is not, and shall be present.
