“A gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources available for coping with it,” writes Columbia University professor Andrew Delbanco.[i] Tellingly, the title of his book is The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil. But Satan is not dead—not yet, anyway. (See Revelation 20.7–10 for that happy event.) And John’s Revelation certainly has not lost its sense. So, to it we must turn if we are to find again, or perhaps sharpen anew, our sense of evil. In this important task, chapters 12–14 provide invaluable help.
A Woman, Her Son, and a Dragon (Revelation 12.1–6)
The script of every theatrical play begins with dramatis personae, a list of characters. So too does the theological drama of Revelation 12–14 begin by listing three main characters: a woman, her son, and a dragon. It adds a précis of the drama, the conflict between the first two and the last, a conflict that begins near Creation and ends on the Last Day.
The son and the dragon are easy enough to identify. Of the mother’s son, John writes: “She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne…” (12.5). This, rather obviously, is Jesus. The image of him ruling with a rod of iron derives from Psalm 2.9, which speaks of “the rulers tak[ing] counsel together, against the LORD and against his anointed,” i.e., the Messiah. John used the image in 2.27, and he reuses it once more time in 19.15. It reminds us, along with the reference to God’s throne, that Jesus is not merely our Savior; he is also the King.
The dragon is, according to 12.9, “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.” He is, in other words, the crafty serpent of Genesis 3 that tempted Adam and Eve to eat from the forbidden tree. Interestingly, it is only here that the Bible identifies the crafty serpent with the devil. The story of the conflict between humanity and the devil begins in Genesis, but it receives its proper interpretation and termination in Revelation. We do not understand the beginning of God’s work unless we view it in light of the end.
Who, then, is the woman? A simple and seemingly obvious answer is that she is Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is also the wrong answer, for John’s language is symbolic. The woman is a “great sign.” But of what? Grant R. Osborne offers this convincing answer: “The woman is ‘clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.’ This threefold description of her majesty stems from Joseph’s dreams of Gen. 37:1–9…. It is generally agreed that the ‘sun and moon’ refer to Joseph’s parents, Jacob and Leah, while the stars are his brothers…. In Jewish literature ‘twelve stars’ often refers to the twelve patriarchs or the twelve tribes…. Therefore, it seems likely that the woman here represents Israel, the people of God (with 12:17, where she represents the church, we can conclude that she represents the whole people of God, Israel and the church).”
So, the story of the woman, her son, and the dragon is the story of the conflict between the people of God, their Savior, and their enemy. It is the story prophesied in Genesis 3.15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.” And it has an incredibly happy ending. But before we can reach that happiness, we must experience some pain. To that subject we will turn in our next devotional.
[i] Andrew Delbanco, The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux: 1995), 3.
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