Draconika

Dragons in the Bible

Dragons are mentioned in several verses of the Bible.

The word "dragon" appears more than thirty times in the King James Bible, from the Old Testament prophets to the Book of Revelation. Some of these dragons are true cosmic monsters, like Leviathan and the seven-headed red dragon who wars against heaven. Others turn out to be a translator's choice for an ordinary desert animal. Sorting out which is which means looking at the original Hebrew and Greek words, the older myths of the ancient Near East, and the way Jewish and Christian readers interpreted these passages over the centuries.

The Hebrew Words Behind "Dragon"

The English word "dragon" in the Old Testament usually translates one of two similar Hebrew words.

Tannin (plural tanninim) means a great serpent or sea monster. In Genesis 1:21, God creates the great tanninim of the sea on the fifth day; the King James Version (KJV) calls them "great whales." In Exodus 7, Aaron's staff becomes a tannin before Pharaoh, and the KJV calls it a "serpent." Elsewhere the KJV does translate tannin as "dragon," as in Psalm 74:13, "thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters," and Psalm 91:13, "the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet."

Tannim, an almost identical plural, appears in passages about ruined cities and wild places. Isaiah 13:22, Isaiah 34:13, Jeremiah 9:11, Micah 1:8, and similar verses describe abandoned land that becomes "a dwelling place for dragons." Most modern scholars think this word means jackals, and modern translations such as the New International Version and the English Standard Version usually render it that way. Micah's "wailing like the dragons" makes much more sense as the howl of jackals at night. So many of the KJV's dragons are not monsters at all.

When Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek in the centuries before Christ (the Septuagint), they often used the Greek drakōn, meaning a great serpent. Latin translations followed with draco, and English translators in turn wrote "dragon." The New Testament, written in Greek, uses drakōn only in Revelation.

Leviathan

The Bible's most famous sea monster is Leviathan (Hebrew Livyatan). Isaiah 27:1 promises that God "shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." Psalm 74:14 speaks of God breaking "the heads of leviathan," which suggests a monster with more than one head. Psalm 104:26, by contrast, pictures Leviathan playing harmlessly in the sea God made for it.

The longest description is in Job 41, where God challenges Job to try catching Leviathan with a hook. The creature has scales packed so tight that no air can get between them, and weapons bounce off it. Burning lamps and sparks of fire leap out of its mouth, and smoke pours from its nostrils (Job 41:19–21). Readers have long noticed that this is close to a fire-breathing dragon. Some commentators identify Leviathan with the crocodile or the whale, while others see it as a poetic picture of chaos that only God can tame.

Leviathan has an ancestor. Clay tablets from the Canaanite city of Ugarit, in modern Syria, describe Lotan (or Litan), a "twisting serpent" with seven heads defeated by the storm god Baal. The wording is so close to Isaiah 27:1 that most scholars conclude the biblical writers knew this older story and adapted it to show that Israel's God, not Baal, rules the sea. Job 40 pairs Leviathan with Behemoth, a huge land beast, and later Jewish legend said the two would be served as a feast for the righteous at the end of days.

Rahab, the Sea Dragon

Rahab is a different monster, not to be confused with Rahab the woman of Jericho in the Book of Joshua (her name is spelled differently in Hebrew). This Rahab, whose name suggests "arrogance" or "storm," is another symbol of the raging sea. Job 26:12 says God "smiteth through the proud" (literally, Rahab) by his understanding, and Psalm 89:10 says, "Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces." Isaiah 51:9 links the two monsters directly: "Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?"

The Bible also uses Rahab as a nickname for Egypt (Isaiah 30:7 and Psalm 87:4). This shows a pattern found throughout the prophets: the chaos dragon becomes a symbol for proud empires that oppress God's people. Scholars call these battle stories the Chaoskampf ("struggle against chaos"), a theme also found in the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish, where the god Marduk defeats the sea goddess Tiamat.

Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar as Dragons

The prophets sometimes call real kings dragons. In Ezekiel 29:3, God speaks against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, "the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers," who claims to have made the Nile himself. The image fits a crocodile basking in the river, and Ezekiel describes God pulling him out with hooks in his jaws. In Jeremiah 51:34, Jerusalem complains that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, "hath swallowed me up like a dragon." The dragon here is a symbol of a greedy, devouring power.

Fiery Flying Serpents

The Bible has a few other serpent creatures that sometimes get counted among dragons. In Numbers 21, "fiery serpents" bite the Israelites in the wilderness, and Moses makes a bronze serpent on a pole to heal them; centuries later King Hezekiah destroyed it, because people had begun burning incense to it. Isaiah 14:29 and 30:6 mention a "fiery flying serpent." The Hebrew word is saraph, the same root as the seraphim, the fiery angels of Isaiah's vision. What the prophet had in mind is debated, but a flying, burning serpent is about as close to the classic dragon as the Old Testament gets.

The Serpent in Eden

The serpent of Genesis 3, who persuades Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, is called nachash, the ordinary Hebrew word for a snake. Genesis itself only calls it the most cunning of the wild animals. After the fall, God curses it to crawl on its belly and eat dust, which many readers took to mean that it had once walked upright or had legs.

Over time, Jewish and Christian interpreters came to see the serpent as the Devil in disguise. The Wisdom of Solomon, written in Greek a little before the time of Jesus, says death entered the world through the envy of the devil, and the Book of Revelation makes the link explicit by calling the dragon "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan" (Revelation 12:9). From then on, Christian thinkers read Eden's serpent, Leviathan, and the dragon of Revelation as one enemy. Medieval and Renaissance painters sometimes gave the Eden serpent legs, wings, or even a woman's head.

Bel and the Dragon

The story of Bel and the Dragon is an addition to the Book of Daniel found in the Greek Septuagint. Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include it as Daniel chapter 14, while Protestant Bibles place it in the Apocrypha or leave it out. In it, Daniel first proves that the idol Bel does not really eat the food offered to it; the priests and their families have been sneaking in through a secret door. Then the king shows Daniel a great dragon, or serpent, that the Babylonians worship as a living god. Daniel says he can kill it without sword or club. He boils pitch, fat, and hair together, makes cakes, and feeds them to the dragon, which bursts open. The angry crowd has Daniel thrown into the lions' den, where he survives for six days. A retelling of this tale is on our page Tannin and the Prophet Daniel.

The Great Red Dragon of Revelation

The Bible's most dramatic dragon appears in Revelation 12. A woman "clothed with the sun" is about to give birth, and "a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads" waits to devour her child. Its tail sweeps a third of the stars from the sky. The child is taken up to God, and war breaks out in heaven: the archangel Michael and his angels fight the dragon and throw it down to earth. The dragon then pursues the woman, but the earth opens and swallows the flood it pours from its mouth.

In Revelation 13, the dragon gives its power to a beast rising from the sea, and a second beast from the earth that has horns like a lamb "spake as a dragon." In Revelation 16:13, unclean spirits like frogs come out of the dragon's mouth. Finally, in Revelation 20:2, an angel seizes the dragon, binds it for a thousand years, and seals it in the bottomless pit. After a brief release, it is cast into the lake of fire.

Revelation borrows freely from the Old Testament: the seven heads recall Leviathan and Lotan, and the sea beast echoes the beasts of Daniel 7. Many scholars read the dragon's beasts as symbols of the Roman Empire, which persecuted early Christians, while believers across the centuries have read the vision as a picture of the final defeat of evil.

Biblical Dragons in Art and Legend

These passages shaped the Western dragon. Because Revelation identified the dragon with Satan, European dragons became symbols of sin and the Devil, and defeating one became a sign of holiness. Saint Michael is usually painted standing over a dragon, and saint legends multiplied the theme: Saint George, Saint Margaret of Antioch, and Saint Martha all overcome dragons in medieval stories such as those collected in the Golden Legend. Medieval manuscripts of the Apocalypse show the seven-headed red dragon in vivid color, and William Blake painted a famous series of Great Red Dragon watercolors around 1805. For the wider story of how these ideas spread, see The History of Dragons and Western Dragons.

Every "Dragon" in the King James Bible

The following passages in the King James Bible mention dragons:

In the Old Testament:

In the New Testament:

Nehemiah 2:13 refers to a place in Jerusalem, the "dragon well," which modern versions call the Jackal Well or the Dragon Spring. Deuteronomy 32:33 compares the wine of Israel's enemies to "the poison of dragons," meaning the venom of serpents.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are dragons real according to the Bible?

The Bible uses "dragon" in several ways: for real animals such as jackals, serpents, or crocodiles; as poetic symbols for chaos and proud nations; and, in Revelation, as a vision of Satan. It does not describe dragons as a species in the way modern fantasy does.

Is Leviathan a dragon?

Leviathan is described as a sea serpent with impenetrable scales, more than one head (Psalm 74:14), and fire and smoke coming from its mouth and nostrils (Job 41). Isaiah 27:1 calls it "the dragon that is in the sea," so in practice the answer is yes.

Who is the dragon in Revelation?

Revelation 12:9 names it directly as the Devil and Satan, "that old serpent." It has seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns, and is defeated first by the archangel Michael and finally at the end of the book.

Why do modern Bibles have fewer dragons than the King James?

Translators now understand that the Hebrew tannim, which the KJV rendered "dragons," usually means jackals. Verses about real sea monsters still often use "dragon," "serpent," or "sea monster."

Sources and Further Reading

  • The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, New Revised Standard Version, 5th ed., ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford University Press, 2018).
  • Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith, eds. and trans., Stories from Ancient Canaan, 2nd ed. (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012).
  • Enūma Eliš (The Epic of Creation) and Anzû, in Stephanie Dalley, trans., Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford University Press, 1989).
  • Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton University Press, 2012).
  • John Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament (Cambridge University Press, 1985).
  • Hermann Gunkel, Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton, trans. K. William Whitney Jr. (Eerdmans, 2006).
  • Daniel Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 2013).