12:1-2. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: She was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. (RSV)
“…From the words of Isaiah ‘Before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child,’ the doctors concluded, ‘that the Messias should be manifested before the destruction of the city.’ Thus the Chaldee paraphrast upon the place; ‘She shall be saved before her utmost extremity, and her king shall be revealed before her pains of childbirth.’ Mark that also; ‘The Son of David will not come, till the wicked empire [of the Romans] shall have spread itself over all the world nine months; as it is said, ”Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth.”” [2:318]
“…from that clause, … Is a nation brought forth at once? for Sion travailed and brought forth her children, is gathered as well, that the Gentiles were to be gathered and called to the faith before that destruction; which our Saviour most plainly teacheth, ver. 10, [Mark 13], ‘But the gospel must first be preached among all nations.’ For how the Gentiles, which should believe, are called ‘the children of Sion,’ and ‘the children of the church of Israel,’ every where in the prophets, there is no need to show, for every one knows it….”
(Concerning the time of travail): “…the word…sorrows, in this place to be understood; and it agrees not only with the sense of the prophet alleged, but with a most common phrase and opinion in the nation concerning…the sorrows of the Messiah, that is, concerning the calamities which they expected would happen at the coming of the Messiah….” [2:441]
12:3. “…a great red dragon….”
Jesus called the Pharisees “a generation of vipers, (serpents.)”, Matt. 12:34. “Not so much ‘the seed of Abraham,’ which ye boast of, as ‘the seed of the serpent,’….the Antichrist, the Opposer, 2 Thess.ii.4. A nation and offspring diametrically opposite, and an enemy to that seed of the woman, and which was to bruise his heel.'”
“… the Jewish nation, …. They were … a generation of vipers at the same time that the Baptist first appeared among them; and this bears the same signification as ‘the seed of the serpent.’….(Matt. 3:7)
“…Hence, not without ground, it is concluded that that nation was rejected and given over to a reprobate sense, even before the coming of Christ. They were not only…a generation, but…an offspring of vipers, serpents sprung from serpents. Nor is it wonder that they were rejected by God, when they had long since rejected God, and God’s word, by their traditions…. [2:77-8]
On John 8:37: “…our Saviour‘s discourse is to shew the Jews that they are the seed of that serpent that was to bruise the heel of the Messiah: else what could that mean, ver.44, ‘Ye are of your father the devil,’ but this, viz. ‘Ye are the seed of the serpent.?'” [3:334-5]
12:5. “… her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.” (RSV)
“Jewish authors tell you, that Christ, before their times, had indeed been born in Bethlehem, but immediately snatched away they knew not whither, and so hid that he could not be found….” [3:316. See also Vol. 2:34-5 commentary on Matt. 2:1]
“They conceive a twofold manifestation of the Messiah; the first, in Bethlehem; but will straightway disappear and lie hid. At length he will shew himself; but from what place and at what time that will be, no one knew. In his first appearance in Bethlehem, he should do nothing that was memorable; in his second was the hope and expectation of the nation. The Jews therefore who tell our Saviour here, {John 7:27), ‘when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is,’ whether they knew him to have been born at Bethlehem or no, yet by his wonderful works they conceive this to have been the second manifestation of himself: and therefore only doubt whether he should be the Messiah or no, because they knew the place…from whence he came; having been taught by tradition, that Messiah should come the second time from a place perfectly unknown to all men.” [3:316]
12:5 “… who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron.” (RSV)
Davies [62], quoting from Psalms of Solomon (first century B.C.) 17.32]. “In one passage, indeed, the Gentiles are spared in the Messianic Age, but they are spared merely in order that they may serve Israel, ‘He shall possess the nations of the heathen to serve him beneath his yoke’ ….”
12:1-5. “…and she brought forth a Man-child who was to rule all nations….”
Isaiah 7:14 foretold that a virgin would bring forth a child. In the historical context, King Ahaz was concerned that the enemy would destroy Jerusalem and the House of David. Lightfoot interprets the prophecy as “…’that sooner should a pure virgin bring forth a child, than the family of David perish’….Ahaz had a certain and notable sign, that the house of David should be safe and secure from the danger that hung over it. As much as if the prophet had said, ‘Be not so troubled, O Ahaz; does it not seem an impossible thing to thee, and that never will happen, that a pure virgin should become a mother? But I tell thee, a pure virgin shall bring forth a son, before the house of David perish.'” [2:19]
12:6. “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred [and] threescore days.”
The ‘wilderness’ is sometimes the same sense as the ‘desert’. This often indicated places where there were not fences and thus the lands belonging to one man were not distinguished from those belonging to another. Such places were mountainous or otherwise quite barren, or desolate and without inhabitants. [1:212]
The heathen world is sometimes referred to in the Jewish traditions as ‘the wilderness’. John the Baptist is said to have begun his ministry “in the wilderness.” “For when the heathen world is very frequently in the prophets called ‘the wilderness,’ and God promiseth that he would do glorious things to that wilderness, that he would produce there pools of waters, that he would bring in there all manner of fruitfulness, and that he would turn the horrid desert into the pleasure of a paradise (all which were to be performed in a spiritual sense by the gospel); it excellently suited even in the letter with these promises, that the gospel should take its beginning in the wilderness.” [1:215]
“…Be ashamed, O papist, to be so ignorant of the sense of the word…wilderness, or desert; which in the common dialect sounds all one as if it had been said, ‘He lived in the country, not in the city; his education was more coarse and plain in the country, without the breeding of the university, or court at Jerusalem.'” [2:45]
12:6: “…that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.”
“ The Jews expected the Messiah to feed them with manna: “…’The latter Redeemer‘ [that is, Messiah; for he had spoken of the former redeemer, Moses, immediately before] ‘shall be revealed against them, &c. And whither will he lead them? Some say into the wilderness of Judah; others, into the wilderness of Sihon and Og.’ [Note that our Saviour … when he fed such a multitude so miraculously, was in the desert of Og, viz. in Batanea, or Bashan.] … And shall make manna descend for them. … ‘The former redeemer caused manna to descend for them; in like manner shall our latter Redeemer … cause manna to come down, as it is written, ‘There shall be a handful of corn in the earth,’ Psalm lxxii.16.'” [3:305]
12:7-8. “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, 8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.”
Lightfoot compares Luke 10:18 to this passage in Revelation and says: “…’heaven’ is to be interpreted ‘the church.'” [3:97]
“… a reprobate people certainly they were, whose religion had made void the commandments of God: a reprobate nation, who in vain worshipped God after the commandments of men, Matt.xv; and by such commandments of men which had leavened, yea, poisoned their minds with blasphemy and hatred against the true Messiah and the pure truth of God, Isa.xxix.13:….” [4:159]
12:10: “And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.”
12:11. “… and they loved not their lives unto the death.”
Davies, [264] “… what is important is that the obedience unto death to which the ‘Maccabean’ martyrs bore witness made a profound impression upon Jewry…. [Of the author of the Assumption of Moses, R. H. Charles is quoted by Davies:] For him the true saints and heroes of the time were not Judas and his great brethren, but an obscure group of martyrs, Eleazar and his seven sons, who unresistingly yielded themselves to death on behalf of God and the Law.”8 [Note 8: “Ap. and Ps.vol. II, p. 407.”]
12:12. “…woe to the inhabiters of the earth…” (See 6:10 above.)
12:17. “…remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
“There was, indeed, a certain remnant among them to be gathered by Christ: and when that was gathered, the rest of the nation was delivered over to everlasting perdition. This is …that remnant of the apostle, Rom. xi.5, which then was, when he writ those things; which then was to be gathered, before the destruction of that nation.” [2:78]
Commenting on Rom. 5:5, “… we suppose the Jewish nation, as to the more general mass of it, was cast off before the times of Christ; yet no question there was in all ages … a remnant according to the election of grace, and in that age more especially wherein Christ and his gospel began to shine out. And that he meant the calling of this remnant in that age and time wherein the apostle wrote, and not any call of the whole nation to be hereafter, what can be more plainly said than what is said in these words, … at this present time?….
“… ‘Let it be granted that the nation, as to the main body of it, was cast away for some ages past; yet is it so cast away that there is no hope for any Jew? By no means. For … at this present time, there is a remnant, as it was in the days of Elijah: I myself am one of that remnant.'” [4:163]