There is one question that has been sidestepped until now, and it is the sharpest of the chapter: which birth does Revelation 12 depict? Everyone reads Bethlehem here, and honesty itself requires saying that virtually the whole history of interpretation does so. But the prophets know of one end-time birth, and without exception they place it in the time of trouble — and John brings in precisely their words.
Count them. Isaiah sees a woman in labor who cries out in her pangs, and immediately afterwards: "your dead shall live" (Isaiah 26:17-19). Jeremiah hears an impossible question — "does a man give birth?" — and says in the same breath: "it is a time of trouble for Jacob, but he shall be delivered out of it" (30:6-7). Micah cries: "writhe and burst forth, daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor [...] there you shall be rescued" (4:9-10), and a little further on God gives up His people "until the time that she who is to give birth has given birth" (5:3). Daniel sees Michael arise, the trouble such as has never been — and then the resurrection (12:1-2). And Isaiah once more, with the strangest sentence of all: "before she was in labor, she gave birth; before the pain came, she brought a son into the world" (66:7).
Six prophetic passages, one scene: birth pangs, birth, resurrection, rescue — and each time in the trouble of the last hour. And now Revelation 12. She cries out in birth pangs (12:2) is Isaiah 26:17 in the Greek words of the Septuagint. She bore a male child (12:5) is Isaiah 66:7 in that same Greek. The flight to the open country where she is rescued (12:6, 14) recalls Micah 4:10. And outside Daniel the angel Michael appears in only two places in the whole of Scripture: here and in Jude 9. Three verbal contacts and one thematic with the end-time birth, and Bethlehem is not narrated.
And then the question that follows: who is born at that birth? The New Testament knows "being born" in two ways, and neither of them is a stable. Of Jesus Himself it is the resurrection that is called His birth: "I have begotten You today" is applied by Paul to the raising from the dead (Acts 13:33), and this book calls Him "the firstborn from the dead" (1:5). And of His own the redemption of their body is called a giving birth: the whole creation is in the pains of childbirth while we wait for "the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:22-23). Whoever is born in these birth pangs is therefore not a child in Bethlehem, but a body that rises.
And therefore I dare to say it as it stands: the Child of 12:5 is Christ in His body. That is no discovery of mine but the idiom of Paul. "Just as the body is one and has many members [...] so also is the Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12) — the body bears the name of the Head. "Not: to seeds, as of many, but as of one: and to your seed, who is Christ", and 13 verses later: "if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed" (Galatians 3:16, 29). The two made into "one new man" (Ephesians 2:15), growing up together "to a mature man, to the measure of the fullness of Christ" (4:13), and Paul himself in birth pangs "until Christ is formed in you" (Galatians 4:19) — with the Jerusalem above as mother and Isaiah 54:1 alongside (4:26-27), the same book and the same image as 66:7-8. In Paul the present Jerusalem belongs with Hagar (4:25); the mother is Zion according to the promise (Isaiah 54:1), and so the woman of Revelation 12 is likewise Israel as bearer of the promise, not in her present unbelief.
Within this book itself the sharing is more direct still. The only thing 12:5 says about the Child — shepherding the nations with an iron rod — is exactly what John in 2:26-28 promises to the one who overcomes, "as I also have received it from My Father". And the place to which the Child is caught up, "to God and to His throne", is exactly the place of 3:21. Daniel already knew this double layer: the Son of Man receives dominion and kingdom (7:13-14), and the same dominion and the same kingdom are given "to the people of the saints" (7:27).
The Head, then, is not caught up in 12:5 but presupposed. He is already there: He is "His Anointed", whose authority has come in 12:10, and "the blood of the Lamb" by which they overcome in 12:11. Head and members are two orders — "Christ the firstfruits; then those who are Christ's at His coming" (1 Corinthians 15:23) — and 12:5 narrates the second. What is born and caught up there is the completed form, the fullness; and that is the answer to the question why the Child is born only here. Not because John skips 20 centuries, but because a fullness can only be born when it is full.
And then the order of the chapter at last falls into place without artifice. First the Child goes up (12:5). Then the dragon is thrown down to the earth (12:7-9), after the catching up and before the fifth trumpet (9:1), and "when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman" (12:13): with the fall the persecution begins. The flight follows later, at the signal of the abomination (12:14; Matthew 24:15-16); 12:6 and 12:14 tell not of two flights but of the same flight, told once before and once after the casting down. And the pain itself, the time of trouble for Jacob, falls on what is then still left: "the rest of her seed" (12:17). Two escapes before the pain, on two levels. The Child escapes upward — "watch and pray that you may be able to escape all these things that are about to happen, and to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:36), and the counter-image: "then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they shall not escape" (1 Thessalonians 5:3). The woman escapes outward — "go, my people, enter your rooms, shut your doors behind you; hide yourself for a little moment, until the wrath has passed" (Isaiah 26:20), and "you shall come even to Babylon; there you shall be rescued" (Micah 4:10). That is precisely the division of Isaiah 66: she escaped — exephygen, the verb of escaping before the pain is there — and bore a son (66:7); the birth pangs, when they come, are those of Zion's other children (66:8). And the Messiah Himself set the clock alongside it: wars and earthquakes are "the beginning of the birth pangs" (Matthew 24:8), the abomination comes after that, the great tribulation after that.
Expert IFour Contacts with the Prophets, Bethlehem Not Narrated — and the Price
[Marks] That Revelation 12 depicts the end-time birth of the prophets and not Bethlehem rests on four contacts, three verbal and one thematic (Micah 4:10); Bethlehem is not narrated, and Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 7:14 each share a single word: weighed. That this birth is corporate in Scripture (Isaiah 66:8; Romans 8:22-23): well-documented to weighed. That the body may bear the name of the Head: weighed, from Paul (1 Corinthians 12:12; Galatians 3:16, 29). That 12:5 and 12:17 divide the two births of Isaiah 66:7-8: weighed. And the price, out loud: this reading runs against virtually the whole history of interpretation, and the burden of proof lies with the one who departs from it. Two verses point in no direction and therefore do not count here: 12:4 (the devouring dragon) and 12:10 ("His Anointed"alongside"our brothers", which fits the Head-and-members reading but does not compel it). Revelation uses prōtotokos only of Jesus (1:5), and it does not occur in 12:5. So 12:5 does not carry this reading alone: it carries it together with 2:26-28, 3:21, 12:11-12, Isaiah 66:7 LXX, the measure of 12:14 and Paul. Whoever removes one of those supports is left with a possibility, not a witness. Disputed, with the opposing voice named in full.
Expert IIWhy 12:5 Points Forward and Not Back
Against this reading stands one seemingly strong objection: does Revelation not constantly look back within its visions? It seems so, and it is not so. The rule is this: all retrospect in this book is characterization and never narration — the book characterizes its figures by what lies behind them and from 4:1 on narrates exclusively "what must take place after this"; the passages that seem to look backward have been weighed verse by verse in Revelation Unsealed, in the commentary on 1:19. And the consequence for 12:5 is decisive: she bore and it was caught up stand as aorists in the narrative chain that runs from 12:5 to 12:17, with "when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth" (12:13) as an explicit link — and what stands in that chain lies before us and not behind us.
Nor is 12:4a a retrospect. "His tail drags a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth" belongs to the description of the sign (drags is in the present tense, threw in the aorist), and the action has its own words in this very book: "the stars of heaven fell to the earth" is the sixth seal (6:13). The fourth trumpet (8:12) shares only the fraction "a third", and there a third of the sun, moon and stars is darkened, not thrown to the earth. The fall of Satan and his angels is narrated not in 12:4a but in 12:7-9; 12:4a is a portrait of the dragon and leaves the time open; 6:13 refers to it, with the heavenly lights that fall as the natural side and the host of the dragon as the spiritual layer behind it (contested) — and so links the sign of the dragon to the day on which this book sets the birth. Well-documented (the verbal echo 12:4a ↔ 6:13); the application of the reading key weighed, strong.
There is one question that has been sidestepped until now, and it is the sharpest of the chapter: which birth does Revelation 12 depict? Everyone reads Bethlehem here, and honesty itself requires saying that virtually the whole history of interpretation does so. But the prophets know of one end-time birth, and without exception they place it in the time of trouble — and John brings in precisely their words.
Count them. Isaiah sees a woman in labor who cries out in her pangs, and immediately afterwards: "your dead shall live" (Isaiah 26:17-19). Jeremiah hears an impossible question — "does a man give birth?" — and says in the same breath: "it is a time of trouble for Jacob, but he shall be delivered out of it" (30:6-7). Micah cries: "writhe and burst forth, daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor [...] there you shall be rescued" (4:9-10), and a little further on God gives up His people "until the time that she who is to give birth has given birth" (5:3). Daniel sees Michael arise, the trouble such as has never been — and then the resurrection (12:1-2). And Isaiah once more, with the strangest sentence of all: "before she was in labor, she gave birth; before the pain came, she brought a son into the world" (66:7).
Six prophetic passages, one scene: birth pangs, birth, resurrection, rescue — and each time in the trouble of the last hour. And now Revelation 12. She cries out in birth pangs (12:2) is Isaiah 26:17 in the Greek words of the Septuagint. She bore a male child (12:5) is Isaiah 66:7 in that same Greek. The flight to the open country where she is rescued (12:6, 14) recalls Micah 4:10. And outside Daniel the angel Michael appears in only two places in the whole of Scripture: here and in Jude 9. Three verbal contacts and one thematic with the end-time birth, and Bethlehem is not narrated.
And then the question that follows: who is born at that birth? The New Testament knows "being born" in two ways, and neither of them is a stable. Of Jesus Himself it is the resurrection that is called His birth: "I have begotten You today" is applied by Paul to the raising from the dead (Acts 13:33), and this book calls Him "the firstborn from the dead" (1:5). And of His own the redemption of their body is called a giving birth: the whole creation is in the pains of childbirth while we wait for "the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:22-23). Whoever is born in these birth pangs is therefore not a child in Bethlehem, but a body that rises.
And therefore I dare to say it as it stands: the Child of 12:5 is Christ in His body. That is no discovery of mine but the idiom of Paul. "Just as the body is one and has many members [...] so also is the Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12) — the body bears the name of the Head. "Not: to seeds, as of many, but as of one: and to your seed, who is Christ", and 13 verses later: "if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed" (Galatians 3:16, 29). The two made into "one new man" (Ephesians 2:15), growing up together "to a mature man, to the measure of the fullness of Christ" (4:13), and Paul himself in birth pangs "until Christ is formed in you" (Galatians 4:19) — with the Jerusalem above as mother and Isaiah 54:1 alongside (4:26-27), the same book and the same image as 66:7-8. In Paul the present Jerusalem belongs with Hagar (4:25); the mother is Zion according to the promise (Isaiah 54:1), and so the woman of Revelation 12 is likewise Israel as bearer of the promise, not in her present unbelief.
Within this book itself the sharing is more direct still. The only thing 12:5 says about the Child — shepherding the nations with an iron rod — is exactly what John in 2:26-28 promises to the one who overcomes, "as I also have received it from My Father". And the place to which the Child is caught up, "to God and to His throne", is exactly the place of 3:21. Daniel already knew this double layer: the Son of Man receives dominion and kingdom (7:13-14), and the same dominion and the same kingdom are given "to the people of the saints" (7:27).
The Head, then, is not caught up in 12:5 but presupposed. He is already there: He is "His Anointed", whose authority has come in 12:10, and "the blood of the Lamb" by which they overcome in 12:11. Head and members are two orders — "Christ the firstfruits; then those who are Christ's at His coming" (1 Corinthians 15:23) — and 12:5 narrates the second. What is born and caught up there is the completed form, the fullness; and that is the answer to the question why the Child is born only here. Not because John skips 20 centuries, but because a fullness can only be born when it is full.
And then the order of the chapter at last falls into place without artifice. First the Child goes up (12:5). Then the dragon is thrown down to the earth (12:7-9), after the catching up and before the fifth trumpet (9:1), and "when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman" (12:13): with the fall the persecution begins. The flight follows later, at the signal of the abomination (12:14; Matthew 24:15-16); 12:6 and 12:14 tell not of two flights but of the same flight, told once before and once after the casting down. And the pain itself, the time of trouble for Jacob, falls on what is then still left: "the rest of her seed" (12:17). Two escapes before the pain, on two levels. The Child escapes upward — "watch and pray that you may be able to escape all these things that are about to happen, and to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:36), and the counter-image: "then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they shall not escape" (1 Thessalonians 5:3). The woman escapes outward — "go, my people, enter your rooms, shut your doors behind you; hide yourself for a little moment, until the wrath has passed" (Isaiah 26:20), and "you shall come even to Babylon; there you shall be rescued" (Micah 4:10). That is precisely the division of Isaiah 66: she escaped — exephygen, the verb of escaping before the pain is there — and bore a son (66:7); the birth pangs, when they come, are those of Zion's other children (66:8). And the Messiah Himself set the clock alongside it: wars and earthquakes are "the beginning of the birth pangs" (Matthew 24:8), the abomination comes after that, the great tribulation after that.
Expert IFour Contacts with the Prophets, Bethlehem Not Narrated — and the Price
[Marks] That Revelation 12 depicts the end-time birth of the prophets and not Bethlehem rests on four contacts, three verbal and one thematic (Micah 4:10); Bethlehem is not narrated, and Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 7:14 each share a single word: weighed. That this birth is corporate in Scripture (Isaiah 66:8; Romans 8:22-23): well-documented to weighed. That the body may bear the name of the Head: weighed, from Paul (1 Corinthians 12:12; Galatians 3:16, 29). That 12:5 and 12:17 divide the two births of Isaiah 66:7-8: weighed. And the price, out loud: this reading runs against virtually the whole history of interpretation, and the burden of proof lies with the one who departs from it. Two verses point in no direction and therefore do not count here: 12:4 (the devouring dragon) and 12:10 ("His Anointed" alongside "our brothers", which fits the Head-and-members reading but does not compel it). Revelation uses prōtotokos only of Jesus (1:5), and it does not occur in 12:5. So 12:5 does not carry this reading alone: it carries it together with 2:26-28, 3:21, 12:11-12, Isaiah 66:7 LXX, the measure of 12:14 and Paul. Whoever removes one of those supports is left with a possibility, not a witness. Disputed, with the opposing voice named in full.
Expert IIWhy 12:5 Points Forward and Not Back
Against this reading stands one seemingly strong objection: does Revelation not constantly look back within its visions? It seems so, and it is not so. The rule is this: all retrospect in this book is characterization and never narration — the book characterizes its figures by what lies behind them and from 4:1 on narrates exclusively "what must take place after this"; the passages that seem to look backward have been weighed verse by verse in Revelation Unsealed, in the commentary on 1:19. And the consequence for 12:5 is decisive: she bore and it was caught up stand as aorists in the narrative chain that runs from 12:5 to 12:17, with "when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth" (12:13) as an explicit link — and what stands in that chain lies before us and not behind us.
Nor is 12:4a a retrospect. "His tail drags a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth" belongs to the description of the sign (drags is in the present tense, threw in the aorist), and the action has its own words in this very book: "the stars of heaven fell to the earth" is the sixth seal (6:13). The fourth trumpet (8:12) shares only the fraction "a third", and there a third of the sun, moon and stars is darkened, not thrown to the earth. The fall of Satan and his angels is narrated not in 12:4a but in 12:7-9; 12:4a is a portrait of the dragon and leaves the time open; 6:13 refers to it, with the heavenly lights that fall as the natural side and the host of the dragon as the spiritual layer behind it (contested) — and so links the sign of the dragon to the day on which this book sets the birth. Well-documented (the verbal echo 12:4a ↔ 6:13); the application of the reading key weighed, strong.