Revelation

Chapters

1. 1
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4
5. 5
6. 6
7. 7
8. 8
9. 9
10. 10
11. 11
12. 12
13. 13
14. 14
15. 15
16. 16
17. 17
18. 18
19. 19
20. 20
21. 21
22. 22

In the maps

• Revelation 5:8

  The elders in heaven present the prayers of the saints to the Lamb. Pitre cites this beside James 5:16 (p 85): those in heaven are involved in the prayers of those on earth, so intercession does not stop at death. The queen mother who brought petitions to the Davidic king is alive in heaven and still brings them.

• Revelation 11:19

  John sees the heavenly temple opened and the ark of the covenant within it — and the very next words (there were no chapter breaks in the original) describe a Woman clothed with the sun. Pitre argues John is identifying the two: the ark seen in heaven is the mother of the Messiah. This is the biblical root of the Assumption: the new David has brought the true ark into the heavenly sanctuary.

• Revelation 12:1

  A Woman appears in heaven, clothed with the sun and crowned with twelve stars, about to give birth to the Messiah who rules the nations (v. 5). Pitre reads her as Mary — the New Eve at war with the ancient serpent, the ark just seen in the heavenly temple, and the crowned queen mother of the Davidic King — while allowing that she also represents Israel and the Church. Her crown answers the objection that a 'Queen of Heaven' is a pagan idea.

• Revelation 12:2

  The Woman cries out in the pains of labour. Pitre asks where Mary's birth pangs are, given the Fathers' belief that Bethlehem was painless, and answers: at the cross. Her travail is the 'birth pangs of the Messiah,' the sorrow of Calvary from which the children of God are born, as Jesus foretold in John 16:21.

• Revelation 12:5

  The Woman's son is the Messiah of Psalm 2, and he is caught up to God's throne the moment he is born. Pitre uses the verse three ways: the child is an individual, Jesus, so the Woman is an individual too (pp 33–34); the immediate 'catching up' shows the birth is a symbol of death, resurrection and ascension, so the Woman's pangs are Calvary, not Bethlehem (pp 126–127); and a Son enthroned in heaven implies a mother who is a heavenly queen (pp 80–81).

• Revelation 12:6

  After the birth the Woman flees into the wilderness. Pitre's Greek parallel table (p 127) lines up Isaiah 66:7 LXX with Revelation 12:2, 6 and 5 — she was in labour, she escaped, she bore a male — to show John is building the vision on Isaiah's prophecy of the painless birth. That is his third reason the Woman's pangs are the anguish of the cross rather than literal labour at Bethlehem.

• Revelation 12:17

  The dragon, defeated in his attack on the Woman and her Son, goes to war against 'the rest of her offspring,' those who keep God's commandments and hold the testimony of Jesus. Pitre uses this as Scripture's own statement that Mary has other children besides Jesus — not by blood, but the Church. The enmity of Genesis 3:15 continues between the serpent and the Woman's seed, and her seed includes us.

• Revelation 17:9

  The dragon's seven heads and ten horns are decoded as kings who persecute the Church. Pitre uses this to settle whether the Woman of Revelation 12 is an individual or the Church (pp 34–35): the dragon is Satan and also a group, and the male child is Christ and also his followers (12:17), so the Woman too is both — Mary, and the people of God. The most ancient readers of Revelation said the same.

• Revelation 21:5

  The One on the throne makes all things new. Pitre ends chapter 2 here (p 41): Mary, the New Eve, is the beginning of the new creation, the supreme example of what God's grace can do in a mere human creature, and the promise that in the resurrection we too will be completely free from sin.