The woman, the child, and the dragon in chapter 12 - is that about Mary?
Reading time: 1 minute
Revelation 12’s vision - a woman clothed with the sun giving birth while a dragon waits to devour her child - is often read as a scene about Mary, and it’s easy to see why: it clearly depicts the birth of the Messiah.
Look closer, though, and the woman’s description (twelve stars, echoing Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37 about Israel’s twelve tribes) points to something bigger than one person: Israel herself, giving birth to the Messiah on behalf of the whole covenant people, with the dragon (Satan) waiting to destroy him the way Herod once tried. It functions as a kind of cosmic retelling of the Christmas story, pulling back the curtain to show the spiritual battle happening behind the events of Bethlehem - and the twist is the same one running through the whole book: the child seems helplessly exposed, and yet the dragon fails completely, every time, at every attempt.