Revelation 12 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Around AD 95, though the vision reaches back across the whole story from the birth of the Messiah
Location
The sky, seen as a stage, with the action moving from heaven down to the earth and a wilderness refuge
Audience
The seven congregations of Roman Asia, a small minority under pressure from both synagogue and state
Situation
A pregnant woman clothed with the sun is threatened by a seven-headed dragon waiting to devour her child. The child is snatched up to God, war breaks out in heaven, the dragon is thrown down, and he turns to pursue the woman and the rest of her children.
Key Background
The story of a threatened royal birth, a mother rescued, and a monster defeated was a widely known pattern in the ancient Mediterranean, including the myth of Leto, Apollo, and the serpent Python, which was told at Delphi and echoed in Roman imperial propaganda, so John is taking a story the empire used about itself and giving it a different ending. The woman's crown of twelve stars ties her to Joseph's dream in Genesis, marking her as the people of Israel giving birth to the Messiah rather than a single individual only. The sea dragon or chaos serpent was an old symbol of hostile empire in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, so identifying the dragon plainly as Satan links spiritual opposition and political oppression as one enemy.
Then an enormous appeared in the a wrapped in the sun, with the moon under her feet and a of twelve stars on her head.
She was pregnant and out in pain, screaming in the of
Then another sign appeared in the sky: an enormous with seven heads and ten horns, and seven on its heads.
Its tail swept a third of the out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, ready to her child the moment it was born.
She gave birth to a son — a male child who will all the nations with an But her child was up to God and to his
The woman fled into the to a place God had prepared for her, where she would be taken care of for 1,260
Then broke out in the and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and its angels fought back.
But the dragon was not and it lost its place in the heavens.
The enormous dragon was thrown down — that called the and the one who the whole world. It was thrown down to the earth, and its angels were thrown down with it.
Then I heard a loud voice in the heavens say: "Now has come — the power and the of our God, and the authority of Because the of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down — the who accuses them before our God day and night."
They the over the dragon through the of the and through the word of their — they did not cling to their own lives, even to the point of death.
So you heavens, and everyone who lives in them! But how for the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you with knowing its time is short.
When the dragon realized it had been thrown down to the earth, it the woman who had given birth to the male child.
But the woman was given two of a so she could fly to her place in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a and a — out of the serpent's reach.
Then the serpent water like a river from its mouth after the woman, trying to sweep her away in the
But the the woman — the ground opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had spewed from its mouth.
Then the dragon was with the woman and went off to against the of — those who follow God's commands and hold to the of