Lesson 27: The Woman…

Revelation 12:1-6
1 And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.
3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems.
4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.
5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to His throne,
6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

There are four symbolic women in the book of Revelation. The first is Jezebel in Revelation 2:20. We know from Bible history (1 Kings 16 and 21) that this could not have been the real woman by that name, so we understand that this woman was symbolic of what the real woman represented – idol worship.

This woman in these verses is also symbolic because no real woman could be clothed with the sun or have the moon at her feet. But these descriptions tell us this woman represents Israel – as we can tell from verse 5. The “male child” is Jesus at His first coming.

We will meet the other two symbolic women in chapters 17 and 19.


As we noted in the beginning of this study, it is important to pay attention to “what was, what is, and what is to come” in this Book of Revelation; and here in verse two we see the past – “she WAS pregnant.” These verses show, as a revelation of Jesus Christ, that all of the history of the Bible is to be considered as a single story of this struggle between this “woman” (Israel) and the “dragon” (Satan). The picture of the dragon waiting before the woman so he could devour the child is that of King Herod trying to kill Jesus after the wisemen asked where they could find Him (Matthew 2:16). As we read in this same Matthew passage, Joseph was commanded by God to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt – the wilderness through which Israel had journeyed when they left Egypt hundreds of years earlier.

Verse 6 says a place IS (present) prepared in which the woman IS TO BE (future) protected for 1260 days. When is this to be? We saw this number in an earlier lesson – the number of days the two witnesses would be protected – Revelation 11:3. It is one half of the 7 years of the Great Tribulation. God knows the details, even to the number of days when something will happen.

*What gives you the most trouble in knowing whether the Bible is saying something that is meant for you?