Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

12:1-2
as we shall see, the Woman here stands for the Church
in the form of Old Covenant Israel.) St. John’s first readers
would immediately have thought of previous prophetic
uses of the Woman as representing the Church (see,
e.g., Isa. 26; 49-50; 54; 66; Jer. 3-4; Lam. 1; Ezek. 16;
Hos. 1-4; Mic. 4). Some of the prophetic passages about
the Woman-Church are not particularly complimentary,
for Israel had often descended into adultery
with heathen gods. But the symbol in Revelation 12 is
a glorious vision of the Church in her purity, as the wife
of God: She is, in the image of her Husband (Ps. 104:2;
Rev. 1:16; 10:1), clothed (the same word as in 10: 1)
with the sun (cf. Isa. 60:1-2). The moon under her
feet and her crown of twelve stars enhance the picture
of glory and dominion – indeed, of her ascent from
glory to glory (1 Cor. 15:41; 2 Cor. 3:18). Solomon
proclaims that the Bride is “lovely as Jerusalem, terrible
as an army with banners” (Cant. 6:4); she
looks forth like the dawn,
Beautiful as the full moon,
Resplendent as the sun,
Terrible as an army with banners. (Cant. 6:10)
This Woman, St. John says, is the Mother of Christ:
She is seen to be with child (the same Greek expression
used of the Virgin Mary in Matthew 1:18, 23), carrying
in her womb the Messiah who is destined “to rule all
the nations with a rod of iron” (v. 5). The image of the
Woman/Mother has its origins all the way back to the
Garden of Eden and the protevangelium – the first
proclamation of the Gospel, in which God revealed
that through the Woman would come the Redeemer to
crush the Serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). The picture then
becomes a regular motif in the historical outworking of
God’s purposes with Israel. One familiar example
occurs in the story of Jael and Sisera, which tells how
the enemy of God’s people is destroyed, his head
shattered, by a woman (Jud. 4:9, 17-22; 5:24-27; cf. the
death of Abimelech in Jud. 9:53). This is also a major
theme in the story of Esther and her deliverance of
Israel. The definitive fulfillment of this prophecy took
place in the Virgin Birth, as Mary clearly recognized:
He has done mighty deeds with His arm;
He has scattered those who were proud
in the thoughts of their heart.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones,
And has exalted those who were humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
And sent away the rich empty-handed.
He has given help to Israel His servant,
In remembrance of His mercy,
As He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and his seed forever. (Luke 1:51-55)
Isaiah’s prophecy of the Virgin Mother is the specific
Biblical background for St. John’s vision of the Woman,
as Philip Carrington explains: “The actual words are
drawn not from any heathen myth, but from the
prophet Isaiah, Moreover the LORD spake again unto
Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a Sign of the LORD thy God; ask it
either in the Depth, or in the Height above (7:10-11); or, to
translate it into Johannine language, either in the
Abyss or in Heaven. In Isaiah the language appears to
be purely a rhetorical flourish; but it is obviously the
origin of St. John’s Sign in Heaven.
“This is made perfectly clear by what follows in Isaiah.
The king refuses to ask for the Sign, and Isaiah replies,
The LORD himself shall give you a Sign; Behold, a
Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call his
name Immanuel [7:14]. The words of St. John are
simply a quotation from the earlier prophet: There
appeared a great Sign in the Sky, a Woman . . . with child,
and she cried in her pain and was in torment to be delivered.
More than this, St. John has given us a much closer
translation of the Hebrew than our Authorized
Version, which is influenced by the Septuagint; the
Greek translation does, indeed, say, A Virgin shalI
conceive, but the original Hebrew only says, A Woman is
with Child, and St. John has given it to us exactly. And,
what is more, the words Crying in her pain and was in
torment come from Isaiah also (26:17).
“St. John is therefore announcing the birth of the male
child, the warrior king, foretold by . . . Isaiah.” 6
St. John thus brings together all the Woman-imagery of
the Bible for this composite portrait of the covenant
community, laboring to bring forth the Messiah: She is
Eve, the Mother of all living, whose Seed will crush the
Dragon’s head; she is also Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel,
Jochebed, Hannah, and the other women of the
covenant who gave birth to deliverers, forerunners of
the Seed; she is the Virgin Mary, through whom the
promises to the fathers met their fulfillment. But this
great cosmic figure cannot simply be identified with any
one of these women; rather, each of them individually
embodied and portrayed before the world a different
facet of the Woman’s meaning, imaging the labors of
the Church to give birth to the Messiah:
As the pregnant woman approaches the time to give birth,
She writhes and cries out in her labor pains,
Thus were we before Thee, O LORD. (Isa. 26:17)
As prophetic revelation progresses in Scripture, it
becomes increasingly clear that the Old Covenant
Church is laboring to bring forth the Christ (cf. Mic.
4:9-5:9): He was the basic promise of the Abrahamic
covenant. This is what Israel was waiting for, being in
labor and pain throughout her existence. This is the
most essential meaning of Israel’s history, apart from
which it has no significance: the bearing of the
Manchild (cf. John 16:20-22), the Savior of the world.
From the protevangelium to the Flood, from the
Abrahamic Covenant through the slavery in Egypt, the
Exodus, the settling of Canaan, the Babylonian
Captivity, the return from exile, and the suffering under
the Greeks and the Romans, Israel was laboring to give
5. The word woman (or women) is used 19 times in Revelation, prompting Ford
to suggest that “the woman symbol is almost as important as the Lamb”
(Revelation: Introduction, Tran.dation, and Commentary [Garden City:
Doubleday and Company, 1975]), p. 188.
6. Philip Carrington, The Meaning of the Revelation (London: SPCK, 1931), pp.
204f.
7. See, e.g., Matt. 27:50; Mark 3:11; 5:7; 9:24; 10:48; 15:13; John 1:15; 7:28;
12:13, 44; Acts 19:28, 32, 34; Rom. 9:27; Gal. 4:6; James 5:4; and see its use
especially in Revelation: 6:10; 7:2, 10; 10:3; 14:15; 18:2,18-19; 19:17.
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