And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.
Compare Revelation 13:18; Daniel 12:10. Spiritual discernment is needed to understand the symbolical prophecy.
Seven heads are seven mountains. The connection between mountains and kings must be deeper than the outward fact to which allusion is made, that Rome (the then world-city) is on seven hills [whence she observed a Septimontium the feast of the seven-hilled city (Plutarch); and on imperial coins she is represented as a woman seated on seven hills-Coin of Vespasian, 'Roman Coins,' p. 310; Ackerman, 1:, p.
87]. The seven heads can hardly be at once seven kings or kingdoms (Revelation 17:10), and seven geographical mountains. But, as the head is prominent in the body, so the mountain in the land. Like 'sea,' 'earth,' "waters
... peoples" (Revelation 17:15), so "mountains" have a symbolical meaning, namely, prominent seats of power. Especially such as oppose the cause of God (Psalms 68:16-17; Isaiah 40:4; Isaiah 41:15; Isaiah 49:11; Ezekiel 35:2); Babylon geographically in a plain, spiritually is "a destroying mountain" (Jeremiah 51:25), in majestic contrast to which stands mount Zion, "the mountain of the Lord's house" (Isaiah 2:2); Revelation 21:10, "a great and high mountain ... that great city, the holy Jerusalem." So in Daniel 2:35, the stone becomes a mountain-Messiah's universal kingdom supplanting the world-kingdoms.
As nature shadows forth spiritual realities, so seven-hilled Rome is a representative of the seven-headed world-power, of which the dragon is the prince. The "seven kings" are hereby distinguished from the "ten kings" (Revelation 17:12): the former are what the latter are not, "mountains," great seats of the world-power. The seven universal God-opposed monarchies are Egypt (the first world-power arrayed against God's people), Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Medo-Persia, Rome, the Germanic Slavonic empire (the clay of the fourth kingdom mixed with its iron in Nebuchadnezzar's image, a fifth material, Daniel 2:33-34; Daniel 2:42-43, symbolizing this last head). These seven might accord with the seven heads in Daniel 7:4-7, one head on the first beast (Babylon), one on the second (Medo-Persia), four on the third (Greece; namely, Egypt, Syria, Thrace with Bithynia, and Greece with Macedon); but Egypt and Greece are in both lists. Syria answers to Assyria (from which 'Syria' is abbreviated), and Thrace with Bithynia answers to the Gothic-Germanic-Slavonic hordes which, pouring on Rome from the North, founded the Germanic-Slavonic empire. The woman sitting on the seven implies the Old and New Testament Church conforming to, and resting on, the world-power, the seven world-kingdoms. Abraham and Isaac dissembling as to their wives, through fear of kings of Egypt, foreshadowed this. Compare Ezekiel 16:1-63; Ezekiel 23:1-49, on Israel's whoredoms with Egypt, Assyria, Babylon; Matthew 6:24; Matthew 24:10-12; Matthew 24:23-26; Colossians 3:5, on the New Testament Church's harlotry-namely, distrust, hatred, treachery, party divisions, false doctrine.