Revelation 12:1-6 Commentary

The Woman symbolizes the chosen ones of Israel (the Church). The crown of 12 stars symbolizes the 12 tribes of Israel and/or the 12 disciples. The male child pertains to Jesus. According to the preterist interpretation (Chilton, Ford, Mounce), the woman fleeing to wilderness pertains to the flight of Jewish Christians from the siege of Jerusalem to Pella in 66 CE (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3:5) (Osborne, Grant R, Revelation, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, pages 454-486).

1. The New Oxford Annotated Bible comments on the relevant passages: 12 .1–17: The vision of the woman, the child, and the dragon is rich in symbolism drawn from mythological traditions found in ancient Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as in the Hebrew Bible. One well-known version of the story tells of the goddess Leto, pregnant with Apollo, who is menaced by the dragon Python, who pursues her because he knows that Apollo is destined to kill him (Hyginus, Fabulae 140). Here this material is reinterpreted in terms of Jewish traditions and expectations as the story of the birth of the messiah. 1: A great portent, a sign or omen in heaven that points to a momentous event on earth; see v. 3; 15.1; cf. Lk 21.11; Didache 16.6. The woman is unnamed, and her precise identity is uncertain. Many scholars understand her as the symbolic representation of Israel, from whom the messiah is born (v. 5); the twelve stars thus refer to the twelve tribes. Patristic and medieval Christian interpreters most often took her to be Mary the mother of Jesus, or sometimes the church. Elements of her description are characteristic of several ancient goddesses. 3: The dragon, identified in v. 9 as “the Devil” and “Satan,” is Leviathan, the great sea monster of Canaanite tradition and of the Hebrew Bible (Job 40.25; Isa 27.1), one name for the primeval watery chaos. Seven heads and ten horns, 13.1; 17.3; cf. Ps 74.13–14. These details are probably drawn from Dan 7.1–8, where they represent various empires and rulers; it is unclear what they symbolize here; cf. 17.9–10.

R H Charles, back in his 2 volume ICC commentary on the Revelation of St John (1920, vol 1, pp 298-332), suggested that 12:7-10, 12 are based on two Jewish sources in a semitic language, while vs 1-5 & 13-17 were derived from a “heathen” source and adapted by a Jew (not a Christian), before it was used by the author of ch 12.