Dragon

(Deut. 32:33) — it is difficult to determine exactly what animal is meant by this name. It is not improbable that this is a generic name, denoting a certain class of animals distinguished by some common characteristic feature; yet from Lamentations (4:3) and Micah (1:8) it is evident that by this name is meant some particular animal, which howls, gives suck, and nurses its young. In the last-cited passage, however, it is rendered in Russian by the word “jackal.” The word rendered by the prophet Isaiah (27:1) as “leviathan,” “the writhing serpent,” “the sea monster,” is rendered in the book of Genesis (1:21) by the words “great fish/whale,” in Job (7:12) as “sea monster,” in Exodus (7:9) as “serpent,” and in Deuteronomy (32:33) as “dragon.” In general it should be noted here that among the Greeks and Romans, “dragon” meant a great and terrible serpent, a monster of extraordinary strength, size, and venomousness, with wings and a mouth breathing flame, dwelling now in the seas, now on land, especially in deserts.

In the New Testament, in the Apocalypse (Rev. 12:3; 13:11), by the words “great dragon,” depicted as red, with 7 heads and 10 horns, and an exceedingly great tail, is meant Satan, “that old serpent, the devil,” according to the explanation given within that same book.