Exegesis and Theology

Traditionally the answer to this question has been Rome or the Roman Catholic Church or Rome as a symbol of present or future realities. However, I wonder if the beast is the figure related to Rome (Dan 9:26; Rev 17:9) while the woman represents apostate Jerusalem.

Observations in favor of the woman as apostate Jerusalem

• Elsewhere Revelation identifies “the great city” (16:19; 17:18; 18:10) as Jerusalem (11:8). The judgment on the great city Jerusalem in 11:13 is the same judgment that came upon the great city Babylon in 16:19. Note that in 16:19 the great city is distinguished from the cities of the nations (Tanner, “Apostate Jerusalem,” 16–17; Burns, “Marriage,” 291; Provan, “Revelation 18,” 93, 94).
• Note that in Revelation 11 the name Jerusalem is not used. Instead, the city is identified as “the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified” (11:8). So there is a similarity on obliquely naming Jerusalem (Tanner, “Apostate Jerusalem,” 16–17).
• The harlot metaphor is a dominant metaphor for unfaithful Israel in the OT. While twice it is used of other nations (Tyre in Isa 23:15-18, and Nineveh of Assyria in Nah 3:4), elsewhere it is used of Israel (Isa 1:21; 57:8; Jer 2:2, 20; 3:1, 6; Ezek 16:15, 26, 28, 29; 16:35-41; 23:1-21, 30; Micah 1:7; and Hos 4:12) (Tanner, “Apostate Jerusalem,” 17; Burns, “Marriage,” 288; Provan, “Revelation 18,” 92).
• The destruction of the woman by the Beast and the ten horns recalls the destruction of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 23:22–35 (cf. Eze 16:39) (Tanner, “Apostate Jerusalem,” 18; Burns, “Marriage,” 292).
• The name written on the forehead “seems to parody the golden plate on the high priest’s turban” (Burns, “Marriage,” 288).
• The judgment of burning with fire was the judgment on a priest’s daughter if she became a prostitute (Lev. 21:9) (Burns, “Marriage,” 289).
• “it is Jerusalem which is recalled by 18.1, alluding to the divine glory leaving the temple and city in Ezekiel, and by 18.2, with its language of religious defilement. It is Jerusalem which fits best the covenant language of 18.5, where the city’s sins, rather than her love, have cleaved to God; 18.23-24 is based on Jer. 25.10, which is an oracle against Judah and Jerusalem; and so on” (Provan, “Revelation 18,” 93–94).
• The items of the city’s trade are largely items used of the temple and temple service. Exceptions, such as chariots and horses, recall Solomon (the builder of the Temple with materials from Tyre), who acquired chariots and horses in violation of Dt 17 (Provan, “Revelation 18,” 95).
• Revelation 18:24 (cf. 17:6) alludes to Matthew 23:35–37, which identifies Jerusalem as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (Provan, “Revelation 18,” 95).
• “It is certainly intriguing that passages like 18.22-23, with their picture of a city devoid of people and religious festivals, call to mind no book quite so much as the book of Lamentations, set in the period after Jerusalem has fallen and her people are in exile (cf., e.g., Lam. 1.1-5; 2.6-10; 5.14-18)” (Provan, “Revelation 18,” 95). Provan also notes the following:  “Jerusalem is the fallen princess (Lam. 1.1; Rev. 18.2, 7), burned with fire like Sodom (Lam. 2.1-4; Rev. 18.8, 18; and esp. cf. Lam. 4.6 with Rev. 11.8), a haunt for wild animals (Lam. 5.18; Rev. 18.2). She has known the reversal of God’s favour, especially symbolized in the use of vine and vineyard imagery to express God’s wrath rather than God’s blessing (Lam. 1.15; 2.6; Rev. 18.6; cf. Court, Myth, pp. 143-44); and her wealthy people have suffered disaster and deprivation (Lam. 4.5-9; Rev. 18.14-17)” (Provan, “Revelation 18,” 95–96, n. 49).
• I also find the relationship between the beast and the woman to make more sense if the beast is Rome (ruled by Antichrist) and the woman is Jerusalem. If the beast is Rome/Antichrist and the woman is the city of Rome, things get muddy. Revelation 17:16–17 especially get difficult. It is possible that the Roman Empire/Antichrist and the then horns turn on the city of Rome. But it makes much more sense for Rome/Antichrist and the ten kings to turn on Jerusalem and attack Jerusalem. There is also more biblical precedent for this latter view.
• Revelation 17 and 18 would thus stand in starker contrast with Revelation 19 and 21. Adulterous Jerusalem would be contrasted with new Jerusalem (Burns, “Marriage,” 293).

Objections and Responses

• Objection 1: Revelation 17:9 says that the women is seated on seven mountains. This clearly refers to Rome, which is known for being situation on seven hills.
  • Answer: The beast, which is correlated with Daniel’s fourth beast, does have a Rome connection. The seven mountains are related to the seven heads of the beast. The Antichrist is one of the heads of the beast. The woman is therefore distinct from, but related to, the Roman beast.
• Objection 2: Revelation 17:18 identifies the woman as “the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.” In John’s day, this would have been Rome.
  • Answer: In the future, it seems that the Antichrist will make Jerusalem his capital. In Scripture, it is Jerusalem (as the seat of the Davidic Messiah) that will have dominion over the kings of the earth. Antichrist will parody this.
• Objection 3: “The detailed picture in ch. 18 of a city at the center of the world’s commerce and (especially) maritime trade fails to fit even the most hyperbolic view that first-century Jerusalem could have had of itself” (Fanning, ZECNT, 449, n. 67).
  • Answer: This objection may be taking the maritime imagery too literally when there are textual indicators pointing in another direction. Some of this imagery is drawn from oracles against Tyre. Revelation 17:1 and 15 pictures the city as seated on many waters. The waters symbolize the peoples and nations (17:15), but they also evoke this Leviathan-beast who comes up from the waters. This imagery stands behind the maritime commerce imagery of chapter 18.
• Objection 4: The city can hardly be Jerusalem since Revelation 18:21 says this city “will be found no more.” The subsequent verses say that musicians, craftsmen, bridegrooms, merchants, and even lights and tools will be found in the city no more. Revelation 19:3 says, “The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.”
  • Answer: Revelation 19:3 is poetic language to speak of the eternal destruction of the city; it perhaps even alludes to the eternal destruction of the inhabitants of this city in the lake of fire. Similarly, Revelation 18:21ff. indicates the complete destruction and removal of this city. Note, however, that the woman is not Jerusalem per se but apostate Jerusalem. Apostate Jerusalem will be entirely done away. A New Jerusalem will replace it.

Significance: By labeling apostate Jerusalem as Babylon, God would be indicating that his own chosen city has by the end become identified with the opposition to God that has been running through the biblical storyline from Genesis 11 onward.

The Options

Option 1: “The language of being “thrown to the earth” (v. 9) could suggest Satan’s primordial fall from heaven, as many Jewish and Christian interpreters understand to be portrayed at least typologically in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 (cf. LAE 12:1–16:3). However, the limits to Satan’s actions described in Revelation 12 (e.g., no access to heaven, intense anger because his time is short) have hardly characterized his career since that primeval event itself. Possibly this later expulsion repeats and intensifies key features of the pattern of that original fall” (Fanning, ZECNT, 356).

Option 2: “A second quite plausible option is the decisive defeat of Satan at the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ. Verse 5c in this vision focuses on the exaltation of the woman’s male child, and several references in John’s Gospel point to Jesus’s coming death as the decisive judgment of Satan (John 12:31; 16:11; Luke 10:17–18 is sometimes read this way). But it seems unlikely that Satan is understood to have no more access to accuse Christians before God (v. 10) for the entire period after the cross of Christ. It makes more sense to understand a decisive victory to have come at the cross, resurrection, and exaltation (Col 2:15), but that this victory awaits its full accomplishment in the end times (see comments on v. 5c; cf. 1 Cor 15:20–28; Heb 2:8–9, 14–15)” (Fanning, ZECNT, 356).

Option 3: “A third interpretation takes this expulsion as a yet-future event just prior to the arrival of “the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah” on the earth (Rev 11:15; cf. 12:10a), at the time of the seventh trumpet when God’s revealed plan for redemption is brought to completion without further delay (10:6–7). This coheres with the point that the devil’s brief remaining time to inflict his anger will bring great woes for the earth and sea (v. 12b), and that the woman will need protection from him for a period of three-and-a-half years in the future (vv. 6, 14; cf. 11:2–3; 13:5)” (Fanning, ZECNT, 356).

Further Arguments for Option 3: A Timing within the Final Day of the Lord

John 12:31–32 does not seem to be the most relevant text for understanding Revelation 12:7–12. First, Revelation 12 concerns the expulsion of Satan from heaven to earth. John 21:31–32 concerns an expulsion from earth. Alford’s interpretation of John 12:31–32 harmonizes well with the rest of the biblical data: “Observe it is ἐκβληθήσεται, not ἐκβάλλεται, because the casting out (ἔξω, ἐκτῆς ἀρχῆς, Euthym., Grot., or better perhaps, out of ὁ κόσμος οὗτος, his former place) shall be gradual, as the drawing in the next verse. But after the death of Christ the casting out began, and its first-fruits were, the coming in of the Gentiles into the Church” (Alford, 836). Raymond Brown posits much the same: “However, the ordinary reading of vs. 31 is not a reference to Satan’s expulsion from heaven but to his loss of authority over this world. This inference seems contrary to the statement of I John v 19: ‘The whole world is in the power of the Evil One.’ Perhaps we can say that the victorious hour of Jesus constitutes a victory over Satan in principle; yet the working out of this victory in time and place is the gradual work of believing Christians. Even in the Christian life there is a tension between a victory already won (I John ii 13) and a victory still to be won (I John v 4-5)” (Brown, AB, 1:477).

Luke 10:18–19 relates to the mission of the seventy-two in which even the demons were subject to them. What they experienced was a foreshadowing, an initial experience, of the ultimate downfall of Satan (cf. Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, 63–64). David Garland (Luke, ZECNT, 428–429) explains:

Gathercole argues that this is a vision of endtime events and the ultimate downfall of Satan.13 Nolland claims it is a vision of the future akin to those of the Old Testament prophets. The prophets did not have visions of what had happened or was happening in heaven but what would happen. Jesus “has seen the coming triumph of the kingdom of God over the rule of Satan and has identified this triumph as his own task. He sees this as what God intends to achieve through him.”

Jesus, therefore, can put his followers’ success in a heavenly perspective that is hidden from them. He projects the limited defeat of demons onto the broader screen of the cosmic conflict between God and the forces of evil. What is happening is not simply the expulsion of random demons that they might come across in their travels but the beginning of the complete overthrow of Satan’s rule.

Thus, Jesus in Luke 10:18–19 could be looking forward to the eschatological events of Revelation 12:7–12. There are exegetical and contextual reasons for an eschatological location of Revelation 12:7–12. First, 12:12 indicates that the throwing down of the devil from heaven to earth signal to him that his time is short. This results in intensified wrath on the part of the devil. In addition, Both Revelation 12:6 and 12:14 place these events in the context of Daniel’s seventieth seven. Jesus, in the Olivet Discourse, with his reference to the abomination of desolation, locates that seventieth seven is the eschatological day of the Lord.

The reference to Michael also points in an eschatological direction. The angel Michael is mentioned only in Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1; Jude 9. The Daniel 10 verses and Jude 9 refer to past events. However, Daniel 12:1 occurs in the midst of a section (Dan 11:36–12:13) that deals with Antichrist (11:36) during the last half of Daniel’s 70th seven (12:1, 7). Daniel 10 had already indicated that in world affairs there are angelic battles behind the scenes. Revelation 12:7–12 would be an example of that in relation to Daniel’s seventieth seven. In fact, it would appear both from Daniel 12:1 and from Revelation 12:6, 14 that this battle in heaven results in the final expulsion of Satan from heaven just before the middle of the 70th seven.