Symbols are introduced in Revelation 1 and used throughout the book.
“I have also spoken by the prophets,
And have multiplied visions;
I have given symbols through the witness of the prophets.”Hos 12:10, NKJV
The KJV translates symbols as similitudes, and the World English Bible, parables. The word in Hebrew is Strong’s H1819, damah, dalet + mem + hey, “to be like, to resemble,” according to Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon. A similitude, according to Webster’s, is a counterpart, a double, a visible likeness, an image, or an imaginative comparison, a simile.
“This verb appears thirty times in Biblical Hebrew and twice in Biblical Aramaic (Dan 3:25, 7:5). … The verb is also an ideal one for the author of the Song of Solomon where the respective lovers search for appropriate figures of speech to convey their depth of love for each other.”
Harris, Archer, and Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, pg. 437 (emphasis added).
“[This method of assuring the church of the final triumph of the gospel provides] a clear demonstration, in the end, of the divine origin and inspiration of the book itself. This latter object, indeed, would have been in fact accomplished by a plain declaration, but it would be best accomplished by such details as would show that the whole course of events was comprehended by the Holy Spirit—the real author of the whole.… The method in which this is mainly done in this book is by pictures or symbols; for, above all the other books in the Bible, the Apocalypse is characterized by this method of representation, that it may eminently be called a book of symbols.”
Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament…: Revelation, pp. li-lii.
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