And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The Septuagint rendering omits "great;" otherwise it is a closely accurate representation of the Massoretic text, save that the translator seems to have had, not דא מן־דּא, but as in the Syriac, חדא מן־חדא, as he renders ἓν παρὰ τὸ ἕν.
Theodotion has μεγάλα, but does not so slavishly follow the Aramaic construction at the end. The Peshitta is very close to the Massoretic, save that in the last clause it agrees with the LXX. The number four is, in apocalyptic writings, significant of the world; "the four winds" mean the whole world.
Here it is human history that is summed up in the four beasts. So in Zechariah we have "four horns" that symbolize the oppressors of the people of God (Daniel 1:18; Daniel 2:1). We have "four" chariots in the sixth chapter of Zechariah, which seem to be symbols of the same thing.
Beasts. Animals of one sort or another are used of nations in the prophets; thus Egypt is symbolized in Isaiah 27:1-13, as "leviathan," presumably a crocodile (Isaiah 51:7), as "a dragon" in Ezekiel 29:3 Babylonia is figured as an eagle (Ezekiel 17:3).
Composite beings are used as symbols also, as Tyro is addressed as a '"covering cherub." In the Book of Revelation Rome is figured as a beast with seven heads and ten horns (Revelation 13:1). In the Book of Enoch (85.
—90.) we find this figurative use of animals carried much further. Assyria and Babylonia and, following them, Persia made great use of composite, monstrous animal forms as symbols, not so much, however, of political as of spiritual powers.
This distinction is the less important, that political events were regarded as the production of spiritual activity.