Revelation 12—The Woman and the Dragon; “War” in Heaven

Revelation 12—The Woman and the Dragon; “War” in Heaven 

Background 

In chapters 6 through 11 of the Revelation the readers have observed a series of plagues upon the earth, such as both Christians and Jews expected would take place during the climactic time at the End of the Present Age. But these events as our writer has described them, were not actually predictions at all. They were expressed in traditional Jewish apocalyptic language, but there are clues throughout them all that the writer was using his symbolism to describe the kind of actual events that already had been taking place in his own lifetime. And there are hints throughout chapters 6-11 that John was reminding his readers that they too had already experienced or observed such a series of disastrous events. Among these events were the following: 

1. Severe earthquakes in the Roman province of Asia (to which John writes the Revelation) beginning about 60 CE; 

2. A humiliating defeat of the Roman army at the hands of the Parthians in 62 CE; 

3. The persecution of Christians in Rome at the instigation of the Emperor Nero, following the great fire in Rome in 64 CE; 

4. The horrors of the Jewish War with Rome in Palestine from 66 to 73 CE, resulting in the siege and destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, and the siege of Masada and the mass suicide of its defenders in 73 CE; 

5. The suicide of Nero in 68 CE followed by civil war in the empire as four claimants for the throne fought it out for a whole year (the “year of the four emperors”), while the Roman world echoed with the tramp of marching armies; 

6. The eruption in 79 CE of Mount Vesuvius, that resulted in the burial of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. This created a pall of darkness so widespread that people throughout the Mediterranean world feared the very destruction of the physical order was upon them; 

7. The serious grain famine of 92 C.E. throughout the entire Roman Empire, which was being ruled at the time by a madman named Domitian, who seemed like Nero returned from the dead. Domitian was the first Emperor to demand universal worship of himself throughout the Empire. Failure to comply was punishable by death. 

The visions described in chapters 6-11 were describing a world like that, and were asserting the sovereignty of God over a world like that. And now, after the triumphal shout of Revelation 11:15-19, the readers would seem to have come to the End, the final victory—yet half of the book is still left to come. On the one hand, Revelation 11:15-19 is a summary of all that is about to come. On the other hand, the victory already has been accomplished. The remainder of the book is about to describe the “mopping-up” operations, and the background as to how and why the victory has taken place. 

Revelation 12:1-6 - The Woman and the Dragon 

The series of visions beginning with chapter 12 provides answers to a question the writer’s first-century readers may be asking: “Why is persecution coming upon Christians in the near future?” The answer given is that “the Satan”—the dragon—is the enemy behind it all, working through his agents in the world. These agents are the “Beast” from the sea—which will be identified as the Roman Empire—and the “Beast” from the land—which will be identified as those in authority in the province of Asia who promote the cult of emperor worship. The writer asserts in the strongest possible way that the Satan and his agents are doomed to fail, and to be destroyed. 

Revelation 12:1 speaks of a “sign” or “portent” in heaven. In the Gospel According to John the word used here (semeion) was used to speak of what the Synoptic Gospels called “miracles.” The word semeion speaks of an unusual or amazing appearance that gets attention and points to a meaning beyond itself. Semeion is also the common Greek word for a constellation of stars in the sky, often interpreted as a “portent” of things to come (cf. Matthew 2:1-12, although the term itself is not used there), and that is probably the meaning here. 

Is the constellation Virgo, the sixth sign of the Zodiac? And is the dragon the constellation Draco, or Serpens, or Hydra, or possibly some combination of all three? That may be a starting point. But actually, we must look beyond the symbols of astrology and the phenomena of astronomy for our interpretation. The woman with her child, and the dragon, are figures of the writer’s inspired imagination, projected onto the starry heavens. 

There are several mythological stories from the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean that may illuminate this passage. But first we should remind ourselves that a “myth” in the technical sense is a story from the remote past that is told to explain facts, expressions, practices, or beliefs held in the present. A “myth” embodies some ultimate truth about human existence or some universal aspiration; and it provides imagery by which people in every generation interpret and express their own experiences. 

A “myth” is capable of being re-enacted in every succeeding age by those whose imagination has been awakened and illuminated by its truth. Thus it can serve as a stimulus to the imagination and a spur to action. This, of course, is a different use of the term than that used in everyday society, in which, when we speak of an idea as a “myth” we imply that it is untrue. But in the technical literary and religious sense as we use it here, for a story to be a myth at all, it must speak of ultimate truth. Such a story may be about something that never actually happened historically, yet something that happens to us every day. 

In the myths and folklore of many nations not far from the writer and his readers there were a number of stories about a usurper king who, doomed to be killed by a prince as yet unborn, attempts to cheat the fates by killing the prince at birth. The prince is miraculously snatched away from the usurper’s clutches and hidden away until he is old enough to kill the usurper and claim his inheritance. This theme occurs in many forms in the mythology of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. 

In Egypt, the red dragon Set pursues the goddess Isis and is later killed by her son, the sun god, Horus. Some interpreters have suggested that the Biblical story of the baby Moses, hidden in the bulrushes of the Nile, might be related to this legend. 

In Greece, the dragon Python attempts to kill the soon-to-be-born son of Zeus, who will be the sun god, Apollo. Python is foiled when the sea god Poseidon aids Apollo’s mother Leto in her escape to the Island of Delos. There Apollo is born, and he subsequently returns to Mount Parnassus to kill the dragon in its cave at Delphi. The Island of Delos, incidentally, would have been visible to John from his imprisonment on the neighboring Island of Patmos, and it is quite likely that he would have been familiar with this story. 

But both stories are forms of the “solar myth,” in which the dragon of darkness tries to kill the sun god, only to be killed by the sun god as the new day dawns. 

When Biblical writers utilize such myths they generally “demythologize” them by pointing out more directly the universal truths implicit in the imagery used. Here, for example, the writer of the Revelation apparently finds similarities between the old legends and the current situation of Christ and His people in the Roman Province of Asia about 95 CE. 

On the earthly scene, according the tradition preserved in the narrative of Jesus’ birth in the Gospel According to Matthew (2:1-12) Jesus was born at a time when Herod the Great feared a Messiah might come to take his throne away from him. So Herod sought out and killed the children of Bethlehem. But Jesus and His family escaped to Egypt, and later returned so that He could complete His mission. It is possible that John was aware of this Gospel account, or of the tradition behind it. 

On the heavenly scene Jesus’ resurrection and ascension could be considered a kind of escape, from the realm of the Satan on earth, to God’s Heavenly realm, from which He would shortly return to destroy the devil. 

But John is also re-writing the old pagan myth, deliberately intending to contradict its contemporary political applications. We know from extant contemporary records that the solar myth was a living myth during the late first century. During the reign of the Emperor Domitian, when the Revelation was composed and published, Domitian thought of himself as an incarnation of the sun-god Apollo, and expressed this belief with images on Roman coins. But John in the following chapters is about to portray that emperor as one of the agents of the Satan, doomed to destruction. Likewise the goddess Roma, representing the Roman Empire, was worshipped in Asia in connection with local cults of the mother-goddess. But John is going to portray her as a great prostitute, the seducer of the world, who will go to her own destruction. 

Who, then, in John’s version of this story, are the woman clothed with the sun, and the great red dragon with the seven heads and ten horns? 

The woman in the vision does not actually represent Mary, mother of Jesus. She the people of God, who, as Israel in the Hebrew Bible, produced Jesus the Messiah, and who, as the Church, the “new Israel,” is now the persecuted “offspring” of the woman (Revelation 12:17). The sun, moon, and star imagery is taken from Genesis 37:9, where Joseph tells of his dream about the sun, moon, and stars bowing down to him. Thus, the woman represents, not Mary, but the Messianic community. 

The child is Jesus, the Messiah. The reference to his “ruling with a rod of iron” is an allusion to Psalm 2:7-9. That Psalm, originally written for the coronation of one of the kings of Israel, had become understood in tradition as referring to the coming Messiah. John appears to speak in these chapters only about Jesus’ birth and his resurrection/ascension, omitting His life and death entirely. 

The portrayal of a flight into the wilderness has two antecedents in Hebrew history. In 168 BCE loyal Jews fled from the Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV “Epiphanes” (1 Maccabees 2:29 ff.; 2 Maccabees 5:27) so that they could keep the Torah. 

Throughout the Book of the Revelation and the Book of Daniel there occur references to a time-period of 1260 days (1290, or 1335 in some cases), 42 months, 3½ years, or a time, times, and half a time. Historically this period began in June 168 BCE when Antiochus published an edict forbidding observance of the Jewish religion (1 Maccabees 1:41-53; 2 Maccabees 6:1-6 ff.). About the same time his forces polluted the Jerusalem Temple and its altar (1 Maccabees 1:54-61; 2 Maccabees 6:4-5). This was the so-called “abomination of desolation” (1 Maccabees 1:54; cf. Daniel 9:26b-7; 11:31; 12:11; Mark 13:14; Matthew 24:15-16; Luke 21:20). In December 165 BCE, almost exactly 3½ years after its altar had been polluted, Judas Maccabeus returned from the wilderness with his guerrilla army to cleanse the Temple (1 Maccabees 4:36-59; 2 Maccabees 10:1-8). 

Likewise, in 70 CE the Christians of Jerusalem fled the city of Jerusalem to a town named Pella, across the Jordan River just before the Romans came to besiege the Holy City (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3:5; cf. Mark 13:14; Matthew 24:15-16; Luke 21:20). Thus such a time-period came to symbolize a time of oppression and persecution. 

The great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns is an ancient figure from Near Eastern mythology. The Babylonian creation story told of a great red-gleaming serpent or dragon named Tiamat, who was killed by the god Marduk, and from whose carcass the world was created when Marduk divided the carcass into two halves. A much older Akkadian version lies behind the Babylonian story. An Akkadian seal from 2500 BCE pictures this dragon as a seven-headed monster. Fragments or allusions to this story also occur in the Hebrew Bible, where the Canaanite names for the dragon are used: Rahab (Isaiah 51:9, and Leviathan (Psalms 74:12-14; Isaiah 27:1; Job 40:15-24). 

The early chapters of Genesis reflect knowledge of the Babylonian mythology. In Genesis 1 the tehom, the "great deep," is divided when God creates the world. The Hebrew word tehom is derived from the Babylonian name Tiamat. And of course Genesis 3 provides the most famous serpent story in the Bible. But there are more than just allusions to the myth within the Hebrew Bible. There is also “de-mythologizing.” Jeremiah likens the historical Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon to the famous monster in Jeremiah 51:34; and Ezekiel likens an actual Egyptian Pharaoh to such a dragon in Ezekiel 29:3); the inter-biblical work Psalms of Solomon (2:29) makes the dragon represent the Roman General Pompey "the Great." 

Revelation 12:7-17 – “War” In Heaven 

Revelation 12:7-9 seeks to explain why the dragon’s fury has been directed toward the earth. The dragon is identified in verse 9 as “the Devil, [the] Satan.” John says the dragon was defeated during a “war in Heaven,” and was therefore cast down to the earth, where he turned his rage against God’s people. We ought to avoid pressing the details of this story in too literal a fashion. But it is worthwhile to examine its very complicated background. 

There is in Scripture the echo of an ancient Near Eastern myth about a primeval war in Heaven. In that story a minor god was ambitious to become the supreme god. The result of this was that the minor god was cast out of heaven. The Assyrians and the Babylonians had the story of Ishtar, the god of the morning star, who rebelled and was cast down. 

There is a definite reference to this story in the Book of Isaiah 14:3. The prophet describes an ancient Near Eastern king as being brought down to defeat and death, and entering Sheol, the place of the dead. The prophet likens this ruler to “Lucifer,” the god of the morning star, child of the goddess of the dawn. Isaiah probably had in mind the historical Assyrian ruler Sargon II, or less likely, his successor Sennacherib. A later editor of the text seems to have in mind a Babylonian ruler, probably Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon. 

The Canaanites also had a version of the Babylonian myth of Ishtar. Their name for the god was helel ben shahar, the very name Isaiah uses for him. The apparent name “Lucifer” is from the Latin Vulgate translation of the Hebrew. Both names mean “light-bearer.” Here is another instance of “de-mythologizing,” in that the old story of a mythical god has now become only an illustration of the fall of an actual Near Eastern tyrant. Certain early Christian writers interpreted that story in light of Luke 10:18, connecting “Lucifer” with the Satan, and thus reviving a mythology that the prophet had already overcome. Revelation 12 may be an echo of the original myth. 

Of course the actual figure of the Satan does occur in the Hebrew Bible, although not in Isaiah 14. The Hebrew word satan itself simply means “an adversary, one who opposes another in his purposes, or one who accuses, a prosecutor” (Numbers 22:22-23; 1 Samuel 29:4; 2 Samuel 19:22; 1 Kings 5:4; 11:14, 23, 25; Psalms 71:11, 13; 106:6, 20). 

In Job 1:6-9 and 2:1-6 and in Zechariah 3:1-2 the Biblical writers portray a being called “the Satan” as a member of Yahweh’s Heavenly court, an inhabitant of Heaven who has every right to be there. He is God’s prosecuting attorney—an “accuser” or “adversary,” one who acts solely within the express permission of God and who keeps within the limits God has fixed for him. Even in the New Testament there are suggestions of the Satan’s role as prosecutor (1 Timothy 3:6 and 1 Peter 5:8), and Revelation 12:10 specifically refers to that role. 

In 1 Chronicles 21:1, a very late passage in the Hebrew Bible, the personality of this being has become even more focused. Here the word “Satan” has become a proper name, and not just the title of an office. Now this being is seen as a tempter who was able to provoke David to conduct a census of Israel (presumably against the will of God). (The later Chronicler has altered the much earlier text in 2 Samuel 24:1 that indicates Yahweh Himself incited David to conduct the census). 

It appears that from the concept of the Satan’s function as a prosecutor there eventually developed during the inter-Biblical period the concept of a “devil” (Greek: diabolos). This word means “slanderer.” William Barclay has pointed out that it is not a great step from being an “accuser,” one who brings true charges, to being a “slanderer,” one who makes false charges. 

Furthermore, all of the ideas we have presented above became combined during the inter-Biblical period to make the “Devil” into an angel who had rebelled against God and who had been cast out of Heaven (2 Enoch 29:45). Having been cast out of Heaven, by the time of the New Testament writers he had become for their readers the “prince of the air” (Ephesians 2:2 and the “prince of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11) and the Evil One par excellence (Matthew 6:13). In the temptations of Jesus he is called “Satan” (Mark 1:13; Matthew 4:10; Luke 4:8), “the Devil” (Matthew 4:1, 5, 8, 11; Luke 4:2, 3, 5, 6, 13) and “the Tempter” (Matthew 4:3). 

But there is another figure from Yahweh’s Heavenly court in the Hebrew Bible who also makes an appearance in the New Testament—the Angel (Hebrew: malakh = “messenger”) of Yahweh. This being operates generally as the guide and protector of those who revere God (Genesis 24:7, 40; 1 Kings 19:5 ff.; 2 Kings 1:3, 15) and occasionally as one who brings plague and destruction upon those who do not revere Yahweh (2 Samuel 24:26 f.; 2 Kings 19:35 f.). He is sometimes pictured as being who serves in Yahweh’s Heavenly court as a Heavenly judge and/or defense attorney to represent Yahweh’s people (Zechariah 3:1 ff.) against the “Satan,” the prosecutor. 

Sometimes the Angel of Yahweh is given the name, “Michael, the archangel” (Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1). According to 1 Enoch 40:6 he was thought to be the guardian angel of Israel, and he fills that role in Daniel 10:13, 21 and 12:1 also. His task in Daniel 12:1 is to be leader of Israel in her last battle against evil. In the New Testament, Jude, verse 9, refers to a passage in the non-canonical Assumption of Moses (assuming it to be an authoritative Scripture?) in which Michael disputed with Satan about the body of Moses. 

Revelation 12:7 speaks of a “war in heaven.” If we were to take this literally it would seem unthinkable that the Almighty God would actually allow such a situation to develop. But the writer of the Revelation nowhere describes what he means by “war” in this chapter. The nature of this war is not disclosed. No weapons are named and no fatalities are reported! A very strange “war,” indeed! 

Our previous knowledge of the backgrounds of the figures of the Satan and Michael suggest to the readers that the contest in Heaven was a bloodless and purely verbal conflict (Revelation 12:11), taking place in the Heavenly law court, in which Michael proves victorious (cf. Revelation 2:16!). The dragon (the Satan) is not slain, as one might expect in a literal war. The struggle was essentially a legal battle between opposing counsel, with the result that one of the attorneys was disbarred. And the Satan, having lost his cause in the Heavenly court, also has lost his job. There is no room for him any more in Heaven. 

At this point we should remind ourselves of previous discussions about the relationship between earthly events and heavenly events in apocalyptic symbolism. Every earthly event has its counterpart in heaven, and vice-versa, for the apocalyptist. And sometimes the symbols represent things to come, and other times they represent things that have already happened. 

So just what events on earth would be the counterpart of the victory in Heaven? Revelation 12:11 provides a clue: the victory in Heaven can only be the crucifixion of Christ, His self-offering on behalf of sinners in taking up the cross. The Heavenly chorus joyfully proclaims that the victory was won, not by the legal expertise of Michael, but by the life-blood of the Lamb! 

This would explain why it had to be Michael, not Jesus Himself, portrayed in the Heavenly “war” as God’s representative. As the victory is represented in Heaven as being won, Jesus was hanging on the cross! Because Jesus was at that time a part of the earthly reality, He could not at the same time serve as a part of the Heavenly symbolism. Michael’s victory was simply the Heavenly and symbolic counterpart of the earthly reality of the cross, according to the writer of the Revelation. 

One might even say, going back to the original analogy, that Michael in fact was not the general who led the fighting, but only the staff officer in the Heavenly headquarters. He was able to move the Satan’s flag (the dragon) from the Heavenly map because Jesus had won the real victory on Calvary. Thus, we conclude that the vision in Revelation 12 is a picture of the recent past and present more than one of the distant future. 

Revelation 12:11 further declares that the martyrs who have suffered persecution for their faith have by their own testimony also had a part in the overcoming of the Satan: 

1. Their martyrdom is in itself a conquest. The person who dies rather than deny his faith has proved himself superior to every seduction of Satan—cf. the promises to the “conqueror” in the letters to the seven churches in Asia (Revelation 2:7, 10-11, 17, 26, 28; 3:4-5, 12, 21). 

2. The martyrs’ victory is also due to Jesus’ sacrifice. Jesus’ death and resurrection of Jesus were a victory over evil as Jesus overcame the worst that evil could do to him. So also the martyrs. Because of the cross they have been forgiven of their sins, and now there is nothing of which the Satan, the accuser, can accuse them. 

3. The martyrs did not love their lives even unto death. They did not consider that life was more important than loyalty to God. This does not necessarily refer to actual dying, but it certainly means setting loyalty to Christ above safety, security, and comfort. 

Based on commentaries by George B. Caird in the Harper’s/Black’s New Testament Commentaries, William Barclay in the Daily Study Bible Series, T. F. Glasson in the Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible, I. T. Beckwith, Henry Barclay Swete, R. H. Charles in the International Critical Commentaries Series, and others.