Revelation 12


Revelation 12 is the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is traditionally attributed to John the Apostle, but the precise identity of the author remains a point of academic debate. This chapter contains the accounts about the woman, the dragon, and the child, followed by the war between Michael and the dragon, then the appearance of the monster from the sea. William Robertson Nicoll, a Scottish Free Church minister, suggests that in this chapter the writer has created a Christianised version of a Jewish source which "described the birth of the Messiah in terms borrowed from... cosmological myths that of the conflict between the sun-god and the dragon of darkness and the deep".
While others have said the passages correspond to Greco-Roman combat legends involving dragons, there are distinctions between the Python myths known during the 1st and 2nd Century CE and Revelations. According to David Barr, the Egyptian conflict of Set-Typhon who pursues the goddess Isis, is said to fit better, as the chaos creature is consistently depicted as a red animal, and attacks heaven casting down various stars and constellations.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 17 verses. The Vulgate version has 18 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are among others:

Old Testament references

New Testament references

The Woman, the Dragon and the Child (12:1–6)

Verse 1

The King James Version refers to "a great wonder" and the Revised Standard Version refers to "a great portent". The Greek word used is σημεῖον, rendered sign in many other passages in the New Testament. Anglican biblical commentator William Boyd Carpenter writes that "the word sign is preferable to wonder, both in this verse and in Revelation 12:3. It is the same word which is rendered sign in. It is a sign which is seen: not a mere wonder, but something which has a meaning; it is not 'a surprise ending with itself', but a signal to arrest attention, and possessing significance; there is 'an idea concealed behind it'."

Verse 3

The word rendered "dragon" -, - occurs 9 times in the New Testament, only in the Book of Revelation, where it is uniformly rendered as here: "dragon". The word for diadem occurs only three times in the New Testament, always in the Book of Revelation.

Verse 5

  • "A man child": from Greek: υἱὸν ἄρρενα, , literally: "a son, a male". The term "man child" in is translated from the Hebrew term: בן זכר, where in the Greek it is υἱὸς ἄρσην, or simply ἄρσην as in the Septuagint rendering of this passage.
  • "Rule" from Greek: ποιμαίνειν, , meaning "tend as a shepherd". It was prophesied in, that Christ should break the nations with a rod of iron.

Michael and the Dragon (12:7–12)

Verse 7

Michael appears in the Book of Daniel as "the special patron or guardian angel of the people of Israel".

Verse 9

  • "Old serpent": This is the only place in canonical Scripture where without doubt it is revealed that the 'Tempter in Eden' was 'the Devil'.

Verse 11

  • "Overcame him by the blood of the Lamb" or "conquered him on account of the blood of the Lamb", implying that the power of the accuser or the devil was removed when 'the Lamb of God' had taken away the sin of the world, and when the redeemed people have the boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.

The Dragon and the Woman (12:13–17)

Verse 14

  • "Two wings of a great eagle": Bauckham sees the "eagle's wings" and the "wilderness" in this verse as "exodus motifs".

Verse 16