Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Revelation 12:13-14

Revelation 12:13-14. From what has been said it will be evident that with the 13th verse there is no reverting to the point which we had reached at Revelation 12:6. On the contrary, another step is taken in advance; and we are invited to behold in actual warfare the forces that in the first scene had been only ideally described, and the entrance of one of which into the world had been brought before us in the second. The dragon has not been led to submission by the fact that he had been driven out of heaven. He has rather been roused to greater fury (Revelation 12:12), and in that fury he attacks the woman. She is described as the woman which brought forth the child of man's sex, and is thus identified with the woman of Revelation 12:1. Yet she is not exactly the same. Then she was viewed as the ideal, now she is viewed as the actual Church, not indeed as the Church of Israel, but as the Church universal, the Church of every age and nation, the Church within which the light of Divine truth shines, and which is persecuted by the devil's darkness.

Although, however, thus persecuted the woman is not overcome. The light is safe under the care of God. This circumstance is set forth in the fact that to the woman were given the two wings of the great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness into her place. The flight, the wilderness, the nourishment afforded there, and the flood of water to be immediately spoken of, remind us so much of the flight of Israel from Egypt to the promised land as to leave no doubt that these events lie at the bottom of the description, although, as usual, they are treated with great freedom, forming only the starting-point from which the Seer proceeds to the clothing of his idea. The eagle is certainly not that of chap. Revelation 8:13. Yet the articles employed in the original, which are not generic, show that a definite eagle is meant. It can be no other than the eagle of Exodus 19:4; Deuteronomy 32:11; Psalms 36:7. The eagle is God Himself, and its wings are His wings. On these wings the woman flies into the desert, into her place, i.e the place of Revelation 12:6, the place already prepared for her, and where, though in the desert, she shall be secure. What is good, what is Divine, has not in this world its Canaan. It is still in the wilderness, but it is preserved there by the loving care of the Most High.

In this place she is nourished. The reference is probably to the history of Elijah, who was nourished first at the brook Cheritn and then at Zarephath during the three years and a half when there was no rain; but it may be also to the extraordinary means by which God sustained His people in the wilderness, not by natural supplies of food, but by the manna, the water, and the flesh with which He miraculously provided them. This is done for a time, and times, and half a time, or for three years and a half, the whole period of the militant condition of the Church in a present world.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Revelation 12:13-14

Old Testament

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