Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Revelation 12:6

ἔχει. So Text. Rec[404] with C 1 and Treg[405] text. All other editors and Treg[406] margin add ἐκεῖ with אAB2P and early vg[407]

[404] Rec. Textus Receptus as printed by Scrivener.

[405] Tregelles.
[406] Tregelles.
[407] Vulgate.

τρέφουσιν. Text. Rec[408] and Lachmann read τρέφωσιν with Revelation 1.

[408] Rec. Textus Receptus as printed by Scrivener.

6. εἰς τὴν ἔρημον. Did she descend to earth? she had appeared in heaven before. See on Revelation 10:9. Possibly, as the vision proceeds, heaven, if we ought not to say the sky, becomes the mere background or even the canvas of its scenery.

ὅπου ἔχει [ἐκεῖ] τόπον. See critical note. The redundant adverb is genuine and a Hebraism. Most of the historical interpretations that have been advanced for this part of the vision proceed on the assumption that the Woman is the Christian Church. As interpretations, they are excluded if we admit that she is the ancient Israel: though applications and illustrations drawn from one may be appropriate to the other. On the view taken here, the doctrine of this chapter is analogous to that of Romans 11, though the point of view is not quite the same. St Paul distinguishes a double fulfilment of God’s promises to Israel—“the Election,” the believing minority, receive them now, and “all Israel shall be saved” at last. St John does not distinguish the two, but uses language that covers both. The Daughter of Zion is kept alive by God, both in the continued quasi-national life of the Jewish people, and in the number (be it large or small) of Christians of Jewish race; who are known to God, though for 1500 years at least they have, as a community, disappeared in the mass of their Gentile fellow-believers. It is hardly necessary to contradict the utterly unhistorical theory, that any now existing Christian nation can be identified with a portion of Israel. The theory is perhaps most absurd when applied to the English, whose ancestors are mentioned as a pagan tribe of north Germany, within 30 years, if not within three, of the date of this vision. (Tac. Germ. 40.)

ἡμέρας χιλίας διακοσίας ἑξήκοντα. See on Revelation 11:2-3. Here, as in the earlier of those verses, the time defined may be that of the humiliation of Israel, as perhaps in the second it is conceived as that of their temporary rejection. It is a curious coincidence (even on the hypothesis that distinctly Jewish elements have been incorporated in the Apocalypse, it can scarcely be more) that the desert fortress of Masada did hold out three years and a half after the fall of Jerusalem.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Revelation 12:6

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