Revelation 12:1-2

The Woman in the Sky

I might not have bitten off enough in this bite. That will not affect the study, other than making it much shorter for content than usual.

This study’s subject is the pregnant woman with the 12 stars around her head. Over the last nearly forty years, I have heard a number of different takes on who this woman is, but I do think there is a biblical answer to this, and I will demonstrate this by looking at the text. When you see the symbolism used, you will not be able to unsee it. Before this, however, we will look at them and see if they can hold up to the scrutiny of our Berean study of Scripture.

The first of these views, and you can get this with a Brave browser search, or any other search you choose, is that this is Mary, the mother of Jesus. This is particularly favored by Catholics, because if she can be seen as the immaculate heavenly woman, she can be made the co-redemptrix of man, and the Scriptures do not support this idea anywhere else. They try to make it fit with a reference to verse five, but it doesn’t really work.

The second view is that this is the nation of Israel. This is the version I hold, and we will look at why later.

The third view is that this is the church, which makes all her offspring all of those who follow Jesus, who are in chapters 2 and 3 named those who overcome. A place I used to fellowship held this view, though they did not make it mandatory, just like the two witnesses discussion. I listened, I don’t think I ever held this too tightly if at all. Verse 6 would be some biblical attachment, but again we will see it does not hold.

The last one to briefly list is that this woman represents Eve, the mother of all living, but that connects in my thinking more with universalist theology than anything else, as that would make “the rest of her seed” in verse 17 all of humanity, and it is clear that not all of humanity will be saved. To believe that represents theological backflips and inconsistencies that I cannot make.

This is a view we cannot afford to get wrong because of the implications to the rest of our personal theology. This sign, if misinterpreted, can lead to great error like Roman Catholicism. They end up making Mary the co-redemptrix of humanity, which the rest of Scripture does not support. To make this the Church birthing the overcomer is less of a stretch, but it still leaves out half of the bible, the Old Testament. There is no clear view of the Church in the Old Testament unless we force things into the text in a way that breaks the text in both the Old and New Testaments.

You know what there is in the Old Testament that is referred to in the New Testament, particularly in Romans 9-11 inclusive? Israel. With that, let’s get into the text.

I broke the text down as follows:

KV1a: The First Great Sign in Heaven

1: A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars;

1-2: The Great Sign in Heaven

This is a “Great Sign” in heaven, and we are dealing with symbolic language. Sometimes poetry will be involved. Not everyone agrees with my view, but I do think it is one of two majority biblical views. I can only here give you what I believe because if I do not, I break the Scriptures as I understand them. Here we go.

KV1a: The First Great Sign in Heaven

1: A great sign appeared in heaven:

Because we are looking at this a bite-sized chunk at a time, it is necessary to give a greater context as we go, context being the main interpretive tool used in the study of anything. There is a war going on throughout creation, and there are those on the side of God and all that is good, and there are those that are not so good. There are 7 main characters in the drama, the first 4 are described in this chapter; the woman, the dragon, the male child, and Michael, the Archangel. (In chapter 13, we will be introduced to the sea-beast, the earth-beast, and then the 144,000. We will say more about each when we consider each of them in turn.)

These are the main characters seen in the war that will end history as we know it. Let’s get into the text.

1-2: The Great Sign in Heaven

There is a lot here. Let’s just get into the text.

1: A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars;

In the text, a great sign appeared in heaven. A “σημεῖον μέγα” according to John, who is apparently standing on the earth and looking up, although that may be speculation on my part. The first word I notice here is “mega.” It is BIG. It is large in size and large in prophetic significance. What is this big thing? It is, in the Greek text, sēmeion, a sign or symbol that points to something else. That something else is in my view, the nation of Israel. Now anyone with basic familiarity with the Old Testament will immediately think of Genesis 37:9-11, which says, “Now he had still another dream, and related it to his brothers, and said, “Lo, I have had still another dream; and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” He related it to his father and to his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.” Wait! There are only eleven stars! This is the dream of Joseph, the other (12th) star. The sun here in the stated understanding of that dream is that Israel (Jacob) is the sun, and the moon is his collective wives. The stars are the sons of Israel. This woman is clothed with the sun, Israel. The Moon is under her feet, she is one of the wives of Israel, Leah specifically. We don’t have to go through the names of all the offspring this evening, we will when we look at the 144,000 and think about what they may represent.

Clearly, this imagery has been used before, and this is its first usage. This evening is the last time in Scripture that this specific imagery is used. This suggests to me that these things are connected. The Law of First Mention is a principle for defining things in biblical studies. We have just defined this Great image with a ring of stars around her head as Leah, the wife of Israel, through whom Judah came. This is significant, because of the identity of the Male Child coming in a future study. That “crown” of stars in the original text is στέφανος, the kind of crown that an athlete would wear when he won a race. The word for Star is “ἀστέρων,” the feminine form, because we are speaking of a woman in Greek. Koine Greek is a gendered language that can be a little nuanced, but this isn’t a Greek lesson on purpose. The imagery itself has been used before to refer to Israel and His sons.

We can see other things about the woman with the crown of stars in the next verse.

2: and she was with child; and she *cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth.

Again, there is a lot of information inferred. She was with child. This is a married woman. There are some that would claim that this is the bride of Christ and the male child coming in verse 5 is therefore the overcomer, but think about that. That would be fornication or adultery. The Bride of Christ is referred to by Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:2 as follows: “For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.” The Bride of Christ is a pure virgin according to Paul. This lady is pregnant. She must be married. God would not describe this kind of sign with an example of sin, if you’re asking me. It is true that humans sin. God would not use this as an example for this sign to introduce this character in the holy drama unless he had to, and he will with the dragon and the beasts. Besides, the remnant church will symbolically appear later. We have already named her as Israel in this sign. Who was Israel in the Old Testament? This is how God refers to Israel in the Old Testament, specifically Isaiah:54:1-8.

“Shout for joy, O barren one, you who have borne no child;

Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not travailed;

For the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous

Than the sons of the married woman,” says the LORD.

“Enlarge the place of your tent;

Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not;

Lengthen your cords

And strengthen your pegs.

“For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left.

And your descendants will possess nations

And will resettle the desolate cities.

“Fear not, for you will not be put to shame;

And do not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced;

But you will forget the shame of your youth,

And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.

“For your husband is your Maker,

Whose name is the LORD of hosts;

And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel,

Who is called the God of all the earth.

“For the LORD has called you,

Like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit,

Even like a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,”

Says your God.

“For a brief moment I forsook you,

But with great compassion I will gather you.

“In an outburst of anger

I hid My face from you for a moment,

But with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you,”

Says the LORD your Redeemer.”

He describes the nation of Israel in Isaiah as the wife of God. Now remember, this is symbolism we’re reading this evening. The Lord God, who knows and loves His people intimately, used the nation of Israel, his figurative wife, to produce a literal Savior, the Male Child in verse 5, in our hermeneutic. Just and Jesus used His own Sacrifice on the Cross to make us all His brothers and sisters, spiritually speaking (we were adopted according to Paul and Peter).

Beloved, this is something amazing. God and Israel together have produced a Male Heir to creation, partially from that text in Isaiah. That Male Heir redeemed those whom God caused to turn to Him in reality and faith to become little brothers and sisters of our Lord. We are one big spiritual happy family, known as the children of Abraham, according to Paul in Romans 4:5-8. See it: “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: ‘BLESSED ARE THOSE WHOSE LAWLESS DEEDS HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN, AND WHOSE SINS HAVE BEEN COVERED. “BLESSED IS THE MAN WHOSE SIN THE LORD WILL NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT.’“

To go on with the verse, it says that “she cried out.” I’ve seen all three of my children born. The first two were normal births, and I’ve seen that kind of crying out. The Greek word is “κράζει,” and I think it’s where we get our English word “crazy.” Susan wasn’t terrible, she didn’t yell out, “You did this to me…” or other stuff, just that it hurt. And I got to kind of coach her through that, although the nurses really did all the work. My point here is that it is a LOUD cry. When my son Michael was born, the nurses told me it was going to be a few hours, so I took the opportunity to grab a coffee (it was about 1:30 in the morning) and send some email to family and friends that wanted to know, like that. In all, I was gone about 20 minutes. As I got back onto the maternity ward (8th floor at the General), I could tell something of some kind was happening because the nurses were all panicked and running around. One of the nurses saw me, and told me to hurry up and get into the room. I thought Susan was in medical trouble because of all the panic. As it turned out, she was about to give birth, having dilated something like 4 cm in those 20 minutes. She was crying out so loudly, I could hear her from the elevators around the corner. It was…crazy. It just seems like the best word. And then my son was born, just like this Male Child will be.

The normal way to break this down is to take the first six verses at once, but these symbols are important, and I don’t want to miss possible nuances. We have now seen what at least I view as the proper interpretation of this character. This nation of Israel is in a great amount of pain and distress, about to give birth to the Saviour of humanity.

What truths can we glean from this? Well, the world is in a great deal of distress, and Israel as a nation is slowly being isolated and separated from all of her allies and defenders. We are watching it happen now in real time. This causes anxiety as a result for everyone on Earth. What this acknowledges this evening is that we see that and understand what everyone else is going through. Beloved, we have the answer to their anxiety.

This great sign of Israel producing a male child is a picture of one Miriam, a Jewish Girl who lived in the day when BC became AD, miraculously gave birth to a baby boy that would save any who would turn from their sins and toward Him in faith. She was also betrothed until the power of God made her miraculously pregnant with the body that God Himself would live in on Earth, as what we would think of as the “theotokos,” the God-bearer, which was officially adopted by the ancient church at the council of Ephesus in I think AD 431. This is where the Catholic cult goes off the rails and treats her as immaculate (without sin) with absolutely NO Scripture to back it up, and none of the disciples or church fathers agreed with this position. The term is meant to be a nod at the two distinct natures of Christ, the fully human nature and the fully deity of the Messiah, united in hypostasis. We in fact call this the Hypostatic Union theologically.

This boy that was born grew up perfectly observing the perfect Law of Moses, and at the perfect time, yielded up that perfect life to perfectly atone for our sins and perfectly deliver all those who would turn to Him from the perfect wrath of God. We will speak more about this when we speak about that Man Child in verse 5. For now, what I will say is that we do not have to fear what is coming upon the world (Luke 21:26), but we can instead turn to Christ and away from those things that we lust after the most. We all know what those are. That is what it means to “repent” in the Bible. Then we must “believe” (Gk., pistis) in the fact that He rose from the dead after dying in our place on that cross as the absolute proof that He died in our place and dealt with our own sins. If you believe that you will NOT panic when everything starts to go wrong with the world on an international level.

And THAT’s what I saw in this bit of text.

Next time, we will deal with verses 3-6. I am adjusting for a miscalculation in how much text I can actually get through in a week. As I stated, I don’t want to miss any of the nuance or meaning that should be communicated from the passage.