John’s description of those heads as “like lions’ heads” indicates again that we are not to think of a literal army. A lion’s head, with its mane of hair and its teeth‑filled mouth, is threatening—and a zillion horses approaching with such threatening heads is altogether deadly.
17 And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths.