¹ Then I saw a beast emerge from the sea: it had seven heads and ten horns, with a coronet on each of its ten horns, and its heads were marked with blasphemous titles.

² I saw that the beast was like a leopard, with paws like a bear and a mouth like a lion; the dragon had handed over to it his own power and his throne and his immense authority.

³ I saw that one of its heads seemed to have had a fatal wound but that this deadly injury had healed and the whole world had marvelled and followed the beast.

⁴ They prostrated themselves in front of the dragon because he had given the beast his authority; and they prostrated themselves in front of the beast, saying, 'Who can compare with the beast? Who can fight against it?'

⁵ The beast was allowed to mouth its boasts and blasphemies and to be active for forty-two months;

⁶ and it mouthed its blasphemies against God, against his name, his heavenly Tent and all those who are sheltered there.

⁷ It was allowed to make war against the saints and conquer them, and given power over every race, people, language and nation;

⁸ and all people of the world will worship it, that is, everybody whose name has not been written down since the foundation of the world in the sacrificial Lamb's book of life.

⁹ Let anyone who can hear, listen:

¹⁰ Those for captivity to captivity; those for death by the sword to death by the sword. This is why the saints must have perseverance and faith.

¹¹ Then I saw a second beast, emerging from the ground; it had two horns like a lamb, but made a noise like a dragon.

¹² This second beast exercised all the power of the first beast, on its behalf making the world and all its people worship the first beast, whose deadly injury had healed.

¹³ And it worked great miracles, even to calling down fire from heaven onto the earth while people watched.

¹⁴ Through the miracles which it was allowed to do on behalf of the first beast, it was able to lead astray the people of the world and persuade them to put up a statue in honour of the beast that had been wounded by the sword and still lived.

¹⁵ It was allowed to breathe life into this statue, so that the statue of the beast was able to speak, and to have anyone who refused to worship the statue of the beast put to death.

¹⁶ It compelled everyone -- small and great alike, rich and poor, slave and citizen -- to be branded on the right hand or on the forehead,

¹⁷ and made it illegal for anyone to buy or sell anything unless he had been branded with the name of the beast or with the number of its name.

¹⁸ There is need for shrewdness here: anyone clever may interpret the number of the beast: it is the number of a human being, the number 666.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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