The woman fled into the
wilderness, where a place had been prepared for her by God. Rather than representing the flight of Mary
and Joseph into Egypt, the flight of the woman into the wilderness evokes that
journey in reverse, out of Egypt at the Exodus (cf. Ezek. 29:3, where Pharaoh
is likened to a dragon). It is a reminder that the story of God’s people as
John witnesses it is the story of a new Exodus. Though the wilderness is often
viewed as a place of danger and desolation (hence Babylon is there at 17:3), it
is also the place of preparation, where God cared for his people prior to their
entering the promised land. The place …
prepared for her by God echoes the sealing of the one hundred and
forty-four thousand, or the measuring of God’s sanctuary and its worshippers
(7:1–7; 11:1–2). It offers assurance of divine care, though not exemption from
suffering. She is fed there (cf. the
story of Hagar, Gen. 21:14, 19) for one
thousand, two hundred and sixty days (see on 11:2 and 3). The ecclesial
interpretation of the woman has sometimes suggested a eucharistic reading of
her being fed or ‘nourished’ (picking up on the relationship between the manna
and the eucharistic bread: e.g. John 6). The illustration in the
thirteenth-century Trinity Apocalypse, for example, shows an angel approaching
the woman with the host and a chalice (van der Meer 1978: 159). (Ian
Boxall, The Revelation of Saint John [Black's New Testament Commentary;
London: Continuum, 2006], 181-82, emphasis in original)