And saved themselves, flying to places beyond pursuit.
He followed them, their weapons he broke up.
Broken they lay, and in great heaps they were captured.
A crowd of followers, full of astonishment,
Its remains lifted up, and on their shoulders hoisted.
And the eleven tribes pouring in after the battle
In great multitudes, coming to see,
Gazed at the monstrous serpent....
In the fragment just quoted we have the ‘flaming sword which turned every way’ (Gen. iii. 24). The seven distinct forms of evil are but faintly remembered in the seven thunderbolts taken by Bel: they are now all virtually gathered into the one form he combats, and are thus on their way to form the seven-headed dragon of the Apocalypse, where Michael replaces Bel.[10] ‘The angels, her allies who had come to help her,’ are surely that ‘third part of the stars of heaven’ which the apocalyptic dragon’s tail drew to the earth in its fall (Rev. xii. 4). Bel’s dragon is also called a ‘Tempter.’
At length we reach the brief but clear account of the ‘Revolt in Heaven’ found in a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum, and translated by Mr. Fox Talbot:[11]—