A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

Revelation 12:1

Revelation 12 may seem like a strange place to go to for a website named after Daniel 7. However, it makes sense if you realise the events of Revelation 12 have already happened in the last century, and they lead up to the events of Revelation 13, which is closely linked to Daniel 7. I believe Revelation 12 can be interpreted with the help of other Bible passages it references.

Firstly, an underlying principle to understand the symbolism of the people and beasts in Revelation, and elsewhere in the Bible, such as Daniel, is that they represent large groups of people: empires, nations or organisations. Sometimes they can reference attributes of an individual who represents the group as its leader. A good example to show this is Daniel's explanation to Nebuchadnezzar of his dream:

This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.

After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth.

Daniel 2:36-39

Nebuchadnezzar's dream was of a great statue with a head of gold, shoulders of silver and a torso of bronze. Daniel says the head of gold is Nebuchadnezzar, as king he represents his empire: Babylon. However, when he talks about the next two parts of the statue he talks about kingdoms, not their kings. We now understand that the first three parts of the statue represented the empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia and Greece.

Now for Revelation 12:

She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth... She gave birth to a son, a male child, who "will rule all the nations with an iron scepter."

Revelation 12:2,5

The reference to an iron scepter is a link to Revelation 19:15 (and other similar verses) where it describes Jesus Christ's return and rule over the nations. However, the son in Revelation 12 is not Jesus Christ himself, just as the head of gold was not Nebuchadnezzar, but who they represent: Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon, so represented Babylon. Jesus Christ is king of Israel, so the son being born in Revelation 12 is the country of Israel, born in 1948.

Revelation 12 starts with a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars (verse quoted at the top of the page). This is a reference to Joseph's dream:

Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. "Listen," he said, "I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me."

Genesis 37:9

In Joseph's dream the sun and moon were his father, Jacob, and mother, Rachel, and the eleven stars were his eleven brothers. So the twelve stars in the crown of the woman represent the twelve sons of Jacob - the twelve tribes of Israel. The mother, therefore, represents the Jewish people who gave birth to their country, Israel.

With this interpretation the rest of Revelation 12 becomes easier to explain: the enormous red dragon (later called Satan) swept a third of the stars out of the sky. We have already seen that the stars are the twelve tribes of Israel: the Jews. So this is a reference to the Holocaust, and therefore the dragon, Satan, represents Nazi Germany at this time. 

Later on, in verse 15, Satan makes one further attempt to fight the woman, with a river of water from his mouth. This represents the 1948 Arab-Israeli war immediately after Israel's Declaration of Independence, with the river of water being the surrounding nations unsuccessfully invading Israel.

Postscript

The most common explanation I have seen for Revelation 12 is that it relates to the birth of Jesus Christ, since Jesus Christ is clearly referenced in Revelation 12:5. However it is odd that such a clear historical event described elsewhere in the Bible would be covered in such a strange vision. Also there is the beginning of Revelation, which makes it clear the vision is a future event to John, the writer of Revelation:

The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.

Revelation 1:1

I believe my explanation, realizing that the Son is Israel (headed by its king, Jesus) is far more consistent with the events described in the chapter.

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