Revelation 12:3

Revelation 12 turns from the judgments and trumpets of chapters 8 to 11 to the spiritual war that lies beneath the events of history. It shows the conflict between God’s people and Satan from the birth of Christ onward, and the three figures introduced here, the woman, her son and the dragon, carry the rest of the chapter. The verses that follow tell of war in heaven, of the dragon named and cast down to the earth (Revelation 12:9), of the victory of God’s kingdom proclaimed in heaven (Revelation 12:10–12), and of the dragon’s wrath turned against the woman.

John received his visions in exile on Patmos, most likely in the reign of the emperor Domitian around AD 95, when Christians were suffering under the power of Rome. To people under that pressure this chapter shows who their real enemy is, and it shows them that God has already set his King on the throne. What John sees is a vision, given in signs, and the things it pictures are real: Christ was born, Satan set himself against him, and God protects his people.

John calls her “a great wonder”, and the Greek word is sēmeîon, a sign, mark or token, in Strong’s words “an indication, especially ceremonially or supernaturally”. John sees her as a sign, so we read the woman, the dragon and the child as figures that stand for real persons and powers. The word for woman, gynḗ, is the ordinary word for a woman or a wife. Her clothing of sun, moon and stars lifts her far above any ordinary woman, and “in heaven” shows that the conflict about to unfold is a heavenly one.

The plainest key to her is Joseph’s dream, in which the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to him (Genesis 37:9–10). His father took the sun and moon as himself and Joseph’s mother, and the stars as Joseph’s brothers. With Joseph they make twelve, the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Believers differ on who the woman is, and each view has something in the passage behind it.

• Israel. On this reading the woman is the nation of Israel, from whom the Messiah came. The twelve stars are the twelve tribes, as in Joseph’s dream, and the promise that the sceptre would stay with Judah until its true ruler came (Genesis 49:10) is fulfilled in the son she bears.
• The church. On this reading the woman is the whole body of believers, clothed with Christ, who is pictured by the sun, and set over the world, which is pictured by the moon under her feet. The twelve stars are the twelve apostles, the foundation on which the church is built (Ephesians 2:20). Paul speaks of the heavenly Jerusalem in the same way: “Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Galatians 4:26–27).
• The whole people of God. On this reading she is God’s one covenant people through all of history, Israel in the Old Testament and the church in the New, who brought forth the Messiah and go on bearing witness to him. This view holds together her giving birth to Christ in verse 5 and her flight and keeping in verse 6.
• Mary. On this reading the woman is Mary, the mother of Jesus, since she is the one who gave birth to the male child. Those who read the woman more broadly point to the heavenly scale of the picture and to the long persecution of the woman that follows in the chapter.

On every reading the woman belongs to God. She is the people, or the one from that people, through whom God brought his Son into the world, and God guards her.

“And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.” Each word adds to the pain. “Cried” is krázō, to call aloud, to scream or shriek, a loud and desperate cry. “Travailing in birth” is ōdínō, to feel the pains of childbirth, literally or figuratively. “Pained” is basanízō, a strong verb that means to torture and is used of torment. “To be delivered” is tíktō, to bring forth. Her pain is great, and it is aimed at a birth that is about to happen.

Birth pains were a familiar picture in the prophets for the anguish that comes before a great act of God. Isaiah describes the terror of the day of the LORD as the pain of a woman in travail (Isaiah 13:8). Jeremiah sees men holding themselves like women in labour in the time of Jacob’s trouble, from which Jacob will be saved (Jeremiah 30:6–7). Isaiah has God’s people say that they have been like a woman with child, crying out in her pangs as her delivery draws near (Isaiah 26:17). Jews of John’s day spoke of the “birth pangs of the Messiah”, a time of suffering expected before he came, and John’s first readers would have heard the woman’s cry in that light.

So the woman’s labour pictures the long suffering and longing of God’s people as they waited for their Deliverer. The prophets had promised that a virgin would conceive and bear a son (Isaiah 7:14) and that a ruler of Israel would come out of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2–3). Then “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman” (Galatians 4:4).

The pain also tells us the birth was fought over, for the dragon is already waiting in the next verse. And the pain has an end in view. Jesus says that a woman in travail has sorrow, but once the child is born she remembers the anguish no more for joy (John 16:21). Paul writes that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Romans 8:22), and Jesus spoke of the troubles before the end as birth pains, “the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8). In each place the pain leads to something new that God is bringing.

The woman’s anguish also looks ahead to what her son would suffer: his humility, his rejection and his death on the cross. Through that suffering God has delivered us from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13), and Christ became “the first begotten of the dead” (Revelation 1:5).

The second sign comes with “behold” (idoú), which calls John to look. The dragon is great (mégas) in power and red. drákōn is the word for a fabulous kind of serpent, perhaps one supposed to fascinate, from a word meaning to look. The chapter names him outright a few verses later: “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). “That old serpent” takes us back to the tempter in Eden (Genesis 3), and Isaiah’s promise that the LORD “shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” uses the same figure for the evil set against God.

His colour, pyrrhós, means fire-like or flame-coloured. It fits his character, for the dragon stands for violence, bloodshed and murderous hatred.

The heads and horns come from the visions of Daniel, where beasts stand for great empires and oppressive kingdoms (Daniel 7). Daniel’s fourth beast also has ten horns (Daniel 7:7). Seven heads speak of complete power and of the many forms evil political power has taken through history, and horns stand for power and for kings. In Revelation the ten horns may point to a final alliance of rulers who side with the dragon. For John’s first readers, living under Rome, the picture would have called to mind the empire that was persecuting them. Behind such powers stands a spiritual enemy, as Paul says: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).

The third part of the stars are the angels who rebelled with Satan and fell with him. The word for star is astḗr, and in prophecy stars often stand for angels, for rulers or for people of high standing. Here the usual reading takes them as the angels who joined Satan’s rebellion and were cast out of heaven with him, and who now work as demons under his authority on the earth, as verse 9 describes. The tail that drew them pictures the dragon’s power and his deceiving influence, which led others into rebellion.

Isaiah’s taunt against the king of Babylon, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” (Isaiah 14:12–15), has long been read as a picture of Satan’s fall as well. Jesus said, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven” (Luke 10:18). The verse shows how wide Satan’s first rebellion reached, and where the evil spirits that oppose God and his people came from.

“The dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.” To devour is katesthíō, literally to eat down, to consume entirely. The dragon takes up his place in front of the woman at the very moment of the birth, and his aim is to destroy the child at once.

His hatred of this child is old. When God first spoke of the serpent’s defeat he said of the woman’s seed, “it shall bruise thy head” (Genesis 3:15), and the serpent has set himself ever since against that promised seed. When Christ was born, Herod’s slaughter of the children of Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16) was one earthly form of this same rage. The dragon stood ready with all his power, and still the child was born.

The man child is Jesus Christ. He is the one “who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron”, words taken from the promise to God’s anointed King in Psalm 2:9, and he is the one caught up to God and to his throne. “Man child” is árrhēn huiós, a male son, and the phrase stresses that he is a son born as a man. Isaiah had foretold his birth and his reign: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6–7).

“Rule” is poimaínō, to tend as a shepherd, to supervise. A shepherd’s rule includes guarding the flock and disciplining it, and with a rod of iron it becomes the rule of a King whose authority over the nations is complete. “All nations” joins pâs, all, with éthnos, which means a nation or people and in a wider use the Gentiles. His rule reaches every people on earth. The rod is rhábdos, a stick, a cane or a royal baton, and sidḗreos means made of iron. In Israel the sceptre was the sign of a king’s rule, and a sceptre of iron speaks of strength that cannot be broken and of righteous judgment. John sees this rule carried out when Christ returns as King of kings and Lord of lords, and from his mouth goes a sharp sword to smite the nations (Revelation 19:15–16).

With the child safe on the throne, the woman flees (pheúgō) from danger into the wilderness. The verses that follow tell of war in heaven and of the dragon cast down to the earth, where he turns his wrath on her, and her flight is God’s way of preserving her. The word for wilderness, érēmos, means a desolate, lonely or solitary place, a desert. In Scripture the wilderness is a place of testing and of God’s provision. Israel was fed there with manna and given water from the rock (Exodus 16), and Elijah, fleeing, was fed by ravens (1 Kings 17).

She has “a place prepared of God”. The place (tópos) is a definite one, and “prepared” is hetoimázō, to prepare or make ready. God made it ready beforehand, by his own will and foresight, so the woman’s safety rests on his care and his planning. “That they should feed her there” uses tréphō, to nourish, for food given day after day. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). Isaiah says of the LORD, “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd” (Isaiah 40:11), and Jesus told his disciples that the Father who sees the sparrow fall has numbered the very hairs of their heads (Matthew 10:29–31).

In the woman’s keeping we see Christ keeping his church. He promised, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). His people will have tribulation in the world, and he has overcome the world (John 16:33). He is “the bread of life” (John 6:35), the one who nourishes his people in the wilderness until he returns.

These six verses show us the war behind the history we see. God’s people suffer: the woman labours in pain, a dragon waits to destroy what she bears, and she ends in the wilderness. Every scene, though, ends with God. The child is born, he is caught up to God’s throne, and the woman has a place that God himself made ready.

So the passage gives us a King who already reigns. The one Satan meant to devour sits on God’s throne, and his rule over all nations is sure. It gives us the comfort of a refuge prepared beforehand and of food given day by day, from the God who fed Israel and Elijah in the desert. And it gives us days that are counted. The trouble of God’s people has a length that God has fixed, and Jesus says of his sheep, “neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28–29).