Wild or dangerous animals

These are animals that are wild or are dangerous to humans. It can refer not only to animals such as lions and wolves, but also to snakes.

In the book of Revelation the “beast” is associated with great wickedness.

The fact that behemah, chayah and cheva indicate a wild or dangerous animal can usually be determined by modifiers in the text, such as “evil", “wild", “of the field", “of the earth", or “of the forest".

In the books of the Maccabees the word thērion, literally “big animal” usually refers to the elephant. See Elephant.

ACT 28:4; ACT 28:5: In verse 3 Paul is said to have been bitten by a viper (See Viper), but in verses 4 and 5 in the Greek it is called “to thērion ("the dangerous creature"). In most English versions this is translated as “the snake", and in most languages this will be the natural thing to do. Some translations use an expression meaning “the poisonous thing".

HEB 12:20: In this verse the reference does not seem to be to dangerous animals in particular, but to animals generally. Many modern English versions translate thērion here as “an animal".

In all other cases for thērion an expression for “wild animal” or “dangerous animal” is used. The creature in Revelation, being symbolic in nature, is sometimes referred to in translations by the name of a particular animal that represents evil in the local culture (for example, a hyena). However, this should only be done as a very last resort, since the writer of Revelation uses a general rather than a specific word, leaving the reader to imagine what sort of dangerous animal he is referring to. Care should be taken to distinguish clearly between the “living creatures” of chapters 4–6, which represent good, and the “wild animals” of later chapters, which represent wickedness.

The following material is adapted from the UBS Handbook on the Revelation to John, comments on REV 11:7 and REV 13:1:

The word translated “beast” means simply “animal” and the American Translation (AT) and Phillips (Phps) translate here “the animal", which is a bit strange in English. A translator must find, if possible, a distinctive word for these creatures. Perhaps use can be made of words taken from legends or fairy tales, where fantastic animals are fairly common. Here something like “monster” or “wild beast", or even “ogre", may be appropriate. In certain languages where there are only the two categories, domesticated animals or wild animals, it will be necessary to define “beast” with a phrase such as “a terrible wild animal", “a huge, horrible animal", or even “a frightening, savage animal".