Revelation 12

Chapter 12 is the most theologically dense chapter in the book and the key to reading the cosmic conflict that underlies all the specific visions. The woman clothed with the sun is one of the most multi-layered symbols in Revelation. She has been read as Mary (the mother of the messiah, with the twelve stars as the apostles), as Israel (the twelve stars as the twelve tribes, her offspring as both Christ and the church), as the church itself (giving birth to Christ in the experience of faith and mission), and as a combination of all three. The solar and lunar imagery draws on Genesis 37:9-10, where Joseph's dream places the sun, moon, and eleven stars as figures for his father, mother, and brothers — implying Israel. The male child caught up to God who will rule with a rod of iron (Psalm 2:9) is clearly Christ; the condensing of his entire earthly life into a single phrase — caught up to God and to his throne — is striking. The 1,260 days in the wilderness recall Elijah in the wilderness (1 Kings 17, 19) and the forty years of Israel in the wilderness, and frame the entire period of the church's tribulation as a wilderness sojourn under divine care.

The war in heaven (12:7-12) provides the heavenly explanation for the earthly conflict the seven churches are enduring. Satan's original role in the Hebrew Bible is as the accuser (the meaning of the word in Hebrew), the one who brings charges against humans before the divine court — as in Job 1-2 and Zechariah 3. In Revelation he has performed this function before God day and night, but the blood of the Lamb and the testimony of the martyrs has defeated the accuser's case: the charges cannot be sustained against those for whom the Lamb has already died. The throw-down is the consequence of the Lamb's victory in chapter 5; chapters 6 through 12 are the outworking of what that victory means. The dragon's rage on being cast to earth — because he knows that his time is short — is the theological explanation for the intensified persecution the churches are experiencing. The more desperate the opposition, the closer the end: the logic is explicitly stated (12:12). The woman with eagle's wings flying to the wilderness (12:14) is a deliberate echo of Exodus 19:4, where God carried Israel on eagle's wings out of Egypt. The church's period of tribulation is a new exodus.