The Woman of Revelation 12 cannot possibly be Mary

 People sometimes notice that the woman of Revelation 12 has a child who will rule the nation with a rod of iron, and from that they assume that the woman is Mary, since ruling the nations with a rod of iron is something ascribed to Christ.

However, the woman of Revelation 12 cannot possibly be Mary.  Revelation 12 is part of an extended vision that begins in Revelation 4.

Revelation 4:1-5 

1 After this I looked, and, behold, a door [was] opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard [was] as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. 2 And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and [one] sat on the throne. 3 And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and [there was] a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. 4 And round about the throne [were] four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold. 5 And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and [there were] seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.

The things which must be hereafter means things that are still future to John when John was prophesying these things.  Whether or not that is still future is outside the scope of this post.  

This vision contains a number of units, such as: 

• the book with the seven seals (Revelation 5:1-8:1)
• the sealing of the 144,000 (Revelation 7)
• the seven trumpets (Revelation 8:2-Revelation 11:15)
• the little book (Revelation 10)
• the two witnesses (Revelation 11:1-13)
• the three woes (Revelation 8:13-Revelation 12)
• the battle with the red dragon (Revelation 12) 
• the beast from the sea (Revelation 13:1-8)
• the beast from the earth (Revelation 13:11-18)
• the seven angels and their judgment (Revelation 14-18)
• the seven bowls of wrath (Revelation 15:1-Revelation 16)
• etc. (there are more, but hopefully you get the idea)

The woman is introduced at Revelation 12:1 at the beginning of the (sub-)vision of the battle with the red dragon, which itself is part of the third of the three woes.

 Revelation 8:13 introduces the three woes:

Revelation 8:13 And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!

Notice the connection between the three woes, and the three remaining trumpets of the three angels (out of the seven angels with seven trumpets), namely the fifth angel, the sixth angel, and the seventh angel.  

The Fifth angel sounds in Revelation 9:1.  Revelation 9:12 then says "One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter."  The Sixth angel sounds in Revelation 9:13. Revelation 11:14 then says "The second woe is past; and, behold the third woe cometh quickly."  That's when (in verse 15) the seventh angel sounds, and third woe begins.  In case you have any doubt that this is part of the same overall vision that began in Revelation 4, note the consistent imagery:

Revelation 11:15-16 

15 And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become [the kingdoms] of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. 16 And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God,

Notice that the twenty-four elders around the throne are still there, although now they are no longer sitting, but have fallen on their faces to worship God. 

Revelation 11 ends at verse 19.  Revelation 12:1, thus, comes only six verses after Revelation 11:14 and the woe that was described as coming quickly.  Within the midst of the vision of the battle with the dragon is the explicit mention of "woe":

Revelation 12:12 Therefore rejoice, [ye] heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

The scene changes at Revelation 13:1, where John is no longer in heaven, but now by the sea.  So, we can only conclude that Revelation 12 is part of the account of the third woe associated with the seventh trumpet of the seventh angel.

Jonathan Edwards (mis-?)quoting Revelation 16:5

One of my favorite Christian philosophers is Jonathan Edwards. In this instance, however, Edwards seems to have made a slight error that is significant primarily to someone like myself, with an intense interest in the text of Revelation 16:5.  The misquotation is found in one of Edwards' sermons, the short title of which is shown below:

(Sermon: Wicked Men Useful in their Destruction Only, Works, Vol. VIII, p. 146) 

Notice that in this sermon, Jonathan Edwards cites Revelation 16:5-6 but provides a wording that substitutes "art to come" for either "Holy" or "shalt be", depending on what his base text was.  I wanted to be sure that this was not the printer's error, so I tracked down the manuscript copy of this sermon, which sadly did not exculpate Edwards:

(Jonathan Edwards Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/archival_objects/204574 Accessed December 30, 2024.)

The Yale archive dates this sermon to July 1734.  Although there was at least one printed edition before 1734 that used the Greek equivalent of the verb "to come" at Revelation 16:5, my suspicion is that Edwards wrote the quotation from memory and mentally conflated the text.  

My suspicion seems to be confirmed from Edwards' notes on the Apocalypse, where he seems to have copied out the KJV English text with the "shall be" reading:

(Jonathan Edwards Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/archival_objects/205543 Accessed December 30, 2024.)

The edited transcript of Edwards' famous "Blank Bible" (source) does not itself address the issue, although the notes direct us to the portion provided above and few other places in Edwards' notes:

Revelation 16.] Concerning the seven vials, see "Revelation," no. 86.Ibid., 198–99. See ibid., "Extracts from Lowman," beginning with "The First Vial."This sentence and the following sentence are later additions. Works, 5, 232–50. Concerning the three first vials, see "Miscellanies," no. xx;Works, 13, 195–96. ["Revelation,"] no. 23.Ibid., 2, 134–35.

The digital image of the notes is this:

Jonathan Edwards Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/archival_objects/205524 Accessed December 30, 2024. (image 1687)

And the image of the text itself is this:

Jonathan Edwards Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/archival_objects/205524 Accessed December 30, 2024. (image 1686)

So, this seems to rule out that Edwards had some alternative printing of the English text from which he was working.  It cannot absolutely rule out the possibility of him having a Greek text, but considering that the quotation comes from Edwards' sermon on Ezekiel 15:1-2, it seems more probable that it is simply an error of memory.

We see similar errors after him in the late 1700s and early to mid-1800s. 

Specifically: 

(Sinclare Kelburn, The Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ Asserted and Proved ... in Five Sermons, Etc. United Kingdom, p. 24.)(1792)

(William Hale, Synopsis,  A synopsis of the signs of the times, past, present, and future, attempted to be traced from the chronological prophecies in the original Scriptures. Ireland, p. 32)(1817)

Two further examples come from a book published by the Brethren movement.  No individual author is identified (or at least, was identifiable to me):

The Time of the End Not Yet. (1850). United Kingdom: James Nisbet and Company. (p. 269)

The Time of the End Not Yet. (1850). United Kingdom: James Nisbet and Company. (p. 278)

Then there is this odd mashup:

Samuel Eyles Pierce, An Attempt on the Behalf of the Called and Believing People of the Most High God, to Set Before Them the Fountain of Everlasting Consolation in Christ Jesus, So that They May be Perfectly Relieved from All Fears Concerning Death and Dying. United Kingdom, p. 97 (1815)

I have no reason to suppose that any of these subsequent misquotations of Revelation 16:5 are influenced by Edwards or his sermon.  Instead, I would simply attribute these quotation errors to similar lapses in memory. 

This post, I hope, underscores the limitations of relying on patristic quotation alone as evidence of the text in front of a particular church father.  This limitation is heightened when the quotation is like the one provided by Edwards above, or even more so when an author does something similar to Pierce, in creating an amalgam from various texts, all at once.

This post should also serve as a reminder to be careful about putting any theologian on a pedestal.  Everyone, even a genius like Jonathan Edwards, makes mistakes.

Finally, I hope this post serves as an anecdote against the idea that the KJV's reading at Revelation 16:5 was somehow "received" by the church since 1611.  Even Edwards, who was a famously brilliant scholar with an intense personal interest in the book of Revelation, did not so receive the text as to accurately remember it on every occasion.  Likewise, other English-speaking folks made similar lapses in memory over the years.  It's true that Edwards probably did not consciously reject Beza's emendation of the text, but nevertheless it remains the case that there was not a careful, thoughtful decision to accept one reading of the text over another by Edwards and many others over the centuries.  These are simply folks who used what they had at hand.

N.B. This post was sparked by Pastor Matthew Everhard's fascinating brief documentary on Edwards' notetaking system (link to video).