Robertson Word Pictures - Revelation 12:1 - 12:1

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Robertson Word Pictures - Revelation 12:1 - 12:1


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

A great sign (sēmeion mega). The first of the visions to be so described (Rev 13:3; Rev 15:1), and it is introduced by ōphthē as in Rev 11:19; Rev 12:3, not by meta tauto or by eidon or by eidon kai idou as heretofore. This “sign” is really a teras (wonder), as it is so by association in Mat 24:24; Joh 4:48; Act 2:22; Act 5:12. The element of wonder is not in the word sēmeion as in teras, but often in the thing itself as in Luk 21:11; Joh 9:16; Rev 13:13.; Rev 15:1; Rev 16:14; Rev 19:20.

A woman (gunē). Nominative case in apposition with sēmeion. “The first ‘sign in heaven’ is a Woman - the earliest appearance of a female figure in the Apocalyptic vision” (Swete).

Arrayed with the sun (peribeblēmenē ton hēlion). Perfect passive participle of periballō, with the accusative retained as so often (9 times) in the Apocalypse. Both Charles and Moffatt see mythological ideas and sources behind the bold imagery here that leave us all at sea. Swete understands the Woman to be “the church of the Old Testament” as “the Mother of whom Christ came after the flesh. But here, as everywhere in the Book, no sharp dividing line is drawn between the Church of the Old Testament and the Christian Society.” Certainly she is not the Virgin Mary, as Rev 12:17 makes clear. Beckwith takes her to be “the heavenly representative of the people of God, the ideal Zion, which, so far as it is embodied in concrete realities, is represented alike by the people of the Old and the New Covenants.” John may have in mind Isa 7:14 (Mat 1:23; Luk 1:31) as well as Mic 4:10; Isa 26:17.; Isa 66:7 without a definite picture of Mary. The metaphor of childbirth is common enough (Joh 16:21; Gal 4:19). The figure is a bold one with the moon “under her feet” (hupokatō tōn podōn autēs) and “a crown of twelve stars” (stephanos asterōn dōdeka), a possible allusion to the twelve tribes (Jam 1:1; Rev 21:12) or to the twelve apostles (Rev 21:14).