[12:1] The chapter begins, not with a vision of
the seer (cf. 4:1; 5:1; 6:1; 7:1, and elsewhere), but with the description of
an extraordinary appearance in heaven. A woman becomes visible who is enveloped
by the rays of the sun, like a robe; beneath her feet is the moon, and twelve
stars encircle her head, like a diadem. Obviously a particular stellar
constellation is being considered here: whenever the sun passes into the sign
of Virgo, which was often equated with Isis by the ancients, then the full moon
stands at her feet in the night sky. This heavenly phenomenon, visible to all, is
interpreted now as a “portent,” that is, as a proclaiming reference to events
of the end time. Quite analogously in early Christian apocalyptic tradition,
mention is made of more or less extraordinary heavenly signs that signal a
coming event (Mark 13:24–25; Matt. 24:29–30; Luke 21:25). In the Middle Ages
devotion to Mary saw the mother of Jesus in Virgo, and from these the picture
of the queen of heaven became a central motif of ecclesiastical painting and
sculpture.
Yet the context rules out this interpretation of a specific historical
figure. The heavenly woman, rather, is an image of the end-time salvation
community, a symbol of the church. She is the heir of the promises of the Old
Testament people of God; pointing to this is the reference to the twelve stars
(cf. Gen. 37:9), which symbolize the holy twelve tribes in their end-time
fullness and perfection (cf. 7:4–8; 14:1). Against the possibility that the
heavenly woman refers to the people of God of the old covenant, out of which
the Messiah was born, is both the continuation of the story (vv. 13–17) and
quite generally the fact that nowhere in Revelation is the question of the
relationship of Israel to the church treated as a theological theme. The
certainty that the church has her roots in Israel and that now she has entered
into the claims of Israel is sufficient for it (cf. 7:4–8). Also,
considerations of whether the heavenly woman may be understood as a heavenly
prototype of the church, as a community of the consummation, find no support in
the text, which clearly speaks in what follows of the earthly fate of this
woman and localizes her place on earth. That the woman appears “in heaven” does
not indicate a serious contradiction when one recognizes that here heaven is
introduced not as the place of God and his heavenly assembly but as the
firmament on which an appearance of symbolic significance becomes visible. That
the woman is clothed by the sun and stands above the moon—no different than the
crown of stars—signifies the promises to the church: to her is promised the
future consummation and the triumph over the powers of darkness. (Jürgen
Roloff, A Continental Commentary: The
Revelation of John [trans. John E. Alsup; Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1993], 145)
