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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 12:2, crying out in labor pains
The woman in labor draws on the prophets' picture of Zion as a mother in pain, whose child means rescue from captivity.
Revelation 12:2, in every translation this tool compares.
A worried parent saying the waiting is the worst part puts a whole family's hope into one picture. The prophets pictured Zion as a woman in labor. Her pains were the suffering of exile; the birth was the coming rescue. John's woman cries out as she is about to give birth. The sources hear Isaiah 26, Isaiah 66 and Micah 4 behind her, and the old promise to Eve beneath them all.
A woman in labor who cries out as the birth comes near. The Greek of Isaiah 26:17 has the same three words John uses: odinousa (in labor), tekein (to give birth) and a verb for crying out. Micah 4:10 calls daughter Zion to writhe like a woman giving birth.
John adds a word no birth scene uses: basanizomene, being tormented. Beale notes it is never used of labor pains anywhere else, and in Revelation it means torment or persecution. So the pain becomes persecution. In Isaiah 26 the people cannot give birth to rescue; here the child does come. The setting moves from exile in Babylon to a woman in heaven.
The labor pains are the trials of God's people while they waited for the Messiah. In Isaiah and Micah a birth meant the end of captivity. John uses that hope for the birth of Christ, and Beale reads the mother as the faithful community of both Testaments.
Not a scene about the cross. Beale notes that the woman suffers here, not the child. Her pains are the long wait of God's people, not Christ's death.
Beale calls this an allusion to prophetic pictures of Israel as a pregnant mother whose pains stand for captivity and whose delivery stands for rescue (Isaiah 26:17-18; 66:7-9; Micah 4:9-10; 5:3). He notes the Targum of Isaiah explains the pains as distress, and that 4 Ezra 9-10 builds a similar vision of Zion in labor. He traces all these texts, and Revelation 12:2, back to Genesis 3:15-16. In the Greek of Isaiah 26:17 a travailing woman draws near to give birth and cries out in her pangs. Keener and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible cite Isaiah 26, Isaiah 54 and 66 and Micah 5:3, and mention a Qumran hymn of a woman in labor. The CSB Study Bible also hears Isaiah 7:14, and Beale sets out the shared words sign, woman, with child and son. The grade is drawn here: several texts share the picture, and none alone supplies it.
Reading Beale and McDonough, Heiser says the birth pangs are the suffering of foreign captivity, and the birth is the coming deliverance: the exile ends when the Messiah comes. He lists Isaiah 26, Isaiah 66 and Micah 4 and 5. He also follows them in tracing these texts to Genesis 3:15-16, and notes a Qumran hymn with the same picture.
The CSB Study Bible links the birth pains to Genesis 3:15-16 and to Isaiah 7:14, the virgin birth. Beale sees Isaiah 7:14 as part of the pattern but holds that the woman is corporate, and Keener points to the remnant as mother. Beale also notes Feuillet's view, that the pains are Christ's at Calvary, and rejects it. MacArthur reads the mother as Israel, in pain through the centuries as she waited for the Messiah to defeat Satan, sin and death.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 12:2
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 12:2
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 12:1-2
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 12:1-2
- Septuagint, Isaiah 26:17 and Micah 4:10, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 12:2
- 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 12:2
