The Heptads of Revelation

I was reading some old sermons on Revelation and came across a note that there are 19 heptads (seven things) in the book. I wanted to check this. Here is what I came up with. The ESV uses the word seven 55 times in 31 verses. They boil down to the following list.

1. Seven churches of Asia
2. Seven spirits before God’s throne
3. Seven golden lampstands (refer to the above churches)
4. Seven stars (the messengers of those churches)
5. Seven torches/lamps of fire (same as the seven spirits above)
6. Seven seals
7. A lamb with seven horns and seven eyes (the eyes are the same as the seven spirits of God)
8. Seven angels with seven trumpets
9. Seven thunders
10. Seven thousand people
11. A red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven diadems
12. A beast from the sea with seven heads (and ten diadems on its horns)
13. Seven angels with seven plagues
14. Seven golden bowls full of God’s wrath (same as seven plagues)
15. Woman sitting on a scarlet beast, with seven heads and ten horns
16. Seven mountains (the seven heads of the above beast)
17. Seven kings

As to the significance of the number seven and its repetition, I do not have all the answers. The traditional answer is that the number seven refers to completeness or fullness. That may well be the case in some of the more symbolic references. Many of the references are simply to a countable number of items that happen to be seven in number.

Incidentally, the number ten occurs frequently as well (11 times in 8 verses), though not as often as seven.

1. Ten days
2. Ten thousand times ten thousand angels
3. A red dragon with ten horns
4. A best from the sea with ten horns and ten crowns
5. A scarlet beast with ten horns
6. Ten kings (same as the ten horns above)