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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 12:14, a time, times and half a time
The woman is fed for Daniel's three and a half years of trouble for God's people, a period 12:6 counts as 1,260 days.
Revelation 12:14; Revelation 12:6, in every translation this tool compares.
A countdown everyone knows by heart can be used for a new season. Daniel twice speaks of a time, two times and half of a time. It is a limited period when the enemy oppresses the holy ones, three and a half years. John uses Daniel's phrase in 12:14 and the same length counted in days, 1,260, in 12:6. In Daniel it is the persecutor's time. Here it is also the time God protects and feeds his people.
The same three and a half times. John's Greek kairon kai kairous kai hemisy kairou is the exact wording of Daniel 12:7 in the vault's Greek Daniel. The Aramaic of Daniel 7:25 is iddan veiddanin uflag iddan.
In Daniel the period is Israel's trouble under an arrogant king. John also makes it a time of protection: the woman is fed in the wilderness during it, while the dragon rages. Beale reads John as extending the span to the church worldwide, from Christ's resurrection to his return. MacArthur reads it as the last half of the tribulation.
The sources read the number as a limit God sets. The persecution is real but measured, and the devil's time is short (12:12). Beale ties it to 11:2-3 and 13:5, where the same span appears as 42 months and 1,260 days.
Not a span John made up. He takes Daniel's three and a half times word for word, and in 12:6 he counts the same span as 1,260 days.
Beale counts the three and a half years among his universalizing uses: Daniel 7:25 and 12:7 extended from Israel to the church worldwide. He says 12:6 is the clearest text for the period's limits, from the resurrection in verse 5 to the end. He adds that the forty-two months may echo Israel's forty-two stages in the desert (Numbers 33) and cites midrashim that link Hosea's wilderness to Daniel's period. Keener and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible point to Daniel 7:25 and 12:7, as do the ESV Study Bible, the CSB Study Bible and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible. The grade is drawn here: the phrase is word for word from Daniel.
Heiser reads Daniel 12 aloud and says it is where the numbers come from. He reads Revelation 11 and 12 together because they share the 1,260 days. Following Boccaccini, he sets Daniel's 1,260, 1,290 and 1,335 days on a 360-day calendar and floats links to Passover, Weeks and Booths, but he calls this speculation he cannot be sure of.
The ESV Study Bible and the CSB Study Bible report the futurist view that the 1,260 days are the second half of a future tribulation. MacArthur reads the span as three and a half years, the last half of the tribulation, while God keeps Israel in the wilderness. Beale and Keener take the period as the whole time between Christ's comings. Keener notes that more than 1,260 days had passed since Jesus rose when John wrote, and that writers of such visions used numbers for the kind of time, not its length. Heiser holds that the persecution and rescue are already begun and not yet complete.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 12:6 and 12:14, and introduction, Universalization
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 12:6 and 12:13-14
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Revelation 12:6 and 12:14
- ESV Study Bible, notes on Revelation 12:6 and 12:14
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 12:13-14
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 12:14
- Septuagint, Daniel 7:25 and 12:7, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Hebrew and Aramaic text of Daniel 7:25, Miqra according to the Masorah (Sefaria)
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 12:14
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 12: The Woman, the Child, and the Dragon, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 12:6 and 12:14
