So does apocalyptic and prophetic passages. It's the nature of the genre. Just look at all the other dozens of images in Revelation and the OT prophets.
But Revelation 20 is something different indeed:
No, not really. There are images like chains and thrones. They are not real, literal items. (Can Satan, a spirit being, really be held with a literal chain?) And so the phrase "a thousand years" is a also an image speaking of a perfect length of time which is known only to the Father.
Christ uses the specific number "a thousand" 6 times in 6 consecutive verses. It's as if he wanted us to REALLY understand something here.
Indeed, but that does not mean we have to assign an literal understanding to the text. That assumption that it must be a literal number is not supported from the rest of Revelation or the NT.
I appreciate your zeal for the truth, I just think your conclusions are wrong.
That's a different issue. Look at all the OT and NT passages that refer to a number of years. There are very very few passages in which they are referring to anything BUT a specific number of years.
But Revelation 20 is something different indeed: No, not really. There are images like chains and thrones. They are not real, literal items. (Can Satan, a spirit being, really be held with a literal chain?) And so the phrase "a thousand years" is a also an image speaking of a perfect length of time which is known only to the Father.
I realize that's your supposition, but absent any evidence to the contrary and considering the specificity and repetition of "a thousand years" and that Revelation is meant to reveal information, again I think it wise to consider it really means a thousand years.