Revelation 12:13

12:12-17 The church and all her friends might well be called to praise God for deliverance from pagan persecution, though other troubles awaited her. The wilderness is a desolate place, and full of serpents and scorpions, uncomfortable and destitute of provisions; yet a place of safety, as well as where one might be alone. But being thus retired could not protect the woman. The flood of water is explained by many to mean the invasions of barbarians, by which the western empire was overwhelmed; for the heathen encouraged their attacks, in the hope of destroying Christianity. But ungodly men, for their worldly interests, protected the church amidst these tumults, and the overthrow of the empire did not help the cause of idolatry. Or, this may be meant of a flood of error, by which the church of God was in danger of being overwhelmed and carried away. The devil, defeated in his designs upon the church, turns his rage against persons and places. Being faithful to God and Christ, in doctrine, worship, and practice, exposes to the rage of Satan; and will do so till the last enemy shall be destroyed.

And when {17} the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. (17) The third part: a history of the woman delivered, consisting of two parts, the present battle of Satan against the Christian Church of the Jewish nation, in Re 12:13-16: and the battle intended against the Church of the Gentiles, which is called holy by reason of the gospel of Christ in Re 12:17.

Revelation 12:13-17 . And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth: &c. — When the dragon was thus deposed from the imperial throne, and cast unto the earth, ( Revelation 12:13 ,) he still continued to persecute the church with equal malice, though not with equal power. He made several attempts to restore the pagan idolatry in the reign of Constantine, and afterward in the reign of Julian; he traduced and abused the Christian religion by such writers as Hierocles, Libanius, and others of the same stamp and character; he rent and troubled the church with heresies and schisms; he stirred up the favourers of the Arians to persecute and destroy the orthodox Christians. But the church was still under the protection of the empire, ( Revelation 12:14 ,) and to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle — As God said to the children of Israel, ( Exodus 19:4 ,) Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, &c.; so the church was supported and carried, as it were, on eagles’ wings: but the similitude is the more proper in this case, an eagle being the Roman ensign, and the two wings alluding probably to the division that was then made of the eastern and the western empire.

In this manner was the church protected, and these wings were given, that she might flee into the wilderness, into a place of retirement and security, from the face of the serpent — Not that she fled into the wilderness at that time, but several years afterward; and there she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time — That is, three prophetic years and a half, which is the same period with the twelve hundred and sixty days, or years, before mentioned. So long the church is to remain in a desolate and afflicted state, during the reign of antichrist; as Elijah, while idolatry and famine prevailed in Israel, was secretly fed and nourished three years and six months in the wilderness. But before the woman fled into the wilderness, the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood, ( Revelation 12:15 ,) with intent to wash her away. Waters, in the style of the Apocalypse, ( Revelation 17:16 ,) signify peoples and nations; so that here was a great inundation of various nations excited by the dragon, or the friends and patrons of the old idolatry, to oppress and overwhelm the Christian religion.

And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth; when the devil saw that he could not uphold his kingdom by paganism, nor further execute his malice by pagan emperors, but was wholly routed and overcome, as to that power. He persecuted the woman which brought forth the man-child; to let us know that he retained his malice, though he had lost his former power, he goes on in pursuing the church of God to its ruin, only doth it in another form; heretofore in the form of a pagan, now under the pretence of a Christian; by heretics, the spawn of Arius and Photinus, (who were before this time), and by Pelagius, Nestorius, and Eutyches, who all were between the years 400 and 500, and by antichrist, the beast we shall read of, Revelation 13:1 , with seven heads and ten horns.

The Deliverance of the Woman, Revelation 12:13-17 13 . he persecuted the woman ] The reference is probably in the first instance to the Roman persecution of the Jews, in and after the wars of Titus and Hadrian: both the bitterness with which those wars were conducted (Josephus probably exaggerates the clemency of Titus), and the savage fanaticism which provoked it, were the Dragon’s work. So also were the mediæval persecutions of the Jews by Christians: and so is the social or intellectual intolerance which is by no means extinct yet, and which is actually often bitterest against a Christian Jew who does not forget his nationality.

Revelation 12:13 . Καὶ ὅτε κ . τ . λ ., and when the dragon saw that he was cast to the earth ) Arnolf, a monk of Ratisbonne , says Ussher, who makes himself an eye-witness of the matter, affirms that a portentous dragon was seen in the air about these times ( de S. Emmerammo, l . 2, t . 2, ant. lect. H. Canisii , pp. 98, 99). “Having been placed in Pannonia some years before, on a certain day from the third hour to the sixth, I saw the devil, or a dragon, suspended in the air. But his magnitude was incredible, his length so great, that he seemed to be extended, as it were, through the space of a mile.” Admonitius, who converses with him in this dialogue, asks of Arnolf: Did you at all remember at that time any of these things, which the blessed John writes in his Apocalypse respecting the dragon and the beast? He replies: Truly these things came into my memory, but the recollection of what is written in the same Apocalypse especially harassed me, in which is contained: Woe to you, because the dragon is come to you with great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time .—[Ussher[129]] de success. Eccles. Christian, f. 46, 47. The same, s. 36, from Glaber Rodulph , relates that such a portent was seen in Gaul, about A. 1000 or afterwards. And Arnolf flourished about A. 1040.

Wherefore the visions related by Rodulph and Arnolf were between the beginnings of the short time and of the 3½ times , and then the dragon was certainly already cast to the earth, persecuting the woman: but I am not credulous enough to assent to the statement, that this enemy was then actually seen in Gaul and in Pannonia. Yet I thought that this account ought to be mentioned, because a man of great weight, James Ussher, both related it, and plainly enough assented to it. Let those who find more testimonies of such phenomena, produce them: let those who are strong in spiritual judgment, weigh them. [129] Ussher’s collected works, vol. ii., p. 101.

13. Resuming from Re 12:6 the thread of the discourse, which had been interrupted by the episode, Re 12:7-12 (giving in the invisible world the ground of the corresponding conflict between light and darkness in the visible world), this verse accounts for her flight into the wilderness (Re 12:6).