Lambert, 204v.2-5v.:
It is obvious from what has been said
that this woman is the church, and it has also been made plain how this birth
should be understood. As she struggles to give birth to ser son (Christ), as
she tries with all her might and neglects nothing, the dragon stands in front
of her trying to take Christ, that is, his Word, away from the faithful by
making it ineffectual. For to devour the son means to remove the true faith in
his name. And indeed, Saan literally did all he could so that Christ born of
Mary would be killed by Herod. When he noticed that that plan did not work, he
did not rest until Jesus was killed by the Jews. After Christ rose from the
dead, he [Satan] stopped at nothing to suppress the faith in his Resurrection,
and to render Christ useless to us. When the holy apostles and other fathers
taught this faith with total sincerity, thus giving birth to Christ in others,
he and his own tried to take it away from the elect and are still trying to
this day by every kind of subterfuge. Every time the church gave birth, the
dragon tried to eat the offspring . . . what was it she gave birth so? A male
son. Why add male? Is it not every son a male? Male is the symbol of
courage and strength . . . So when he adds male it is as if he were
saying: This son will not be weak like the others. . . . His strength is shown
by the following sentence: who will govern, etc. Christ’s iron rod is
his unconquered Word. With this rod he was going to govern, together with his
ministries, all his nations, as he had been told by the Father in Psalm 2: you
shall break them with a rod of iron. (Irena Backus, Reformation Readings
of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg [Oxford Studies in
Historical Theology; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 53)