‘And when the monster saw that he was cast down to the earth he persecuted the woman who brought forth the male child, and there were given to the woman the two wings of the great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time from the face of the serpent.'
So persecution comes from the fact that Satan is defeated. This persecution by the serpent begins in Acts with the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 7), and continues on through the history of the early church in Jerusalem. The fleeing into the wilderness to be nourished does, as we have seen, parallel the experience of Elijah, and the period, three and a half years, is the same, but here it is stated in days to demonstrate God's daily concern for His people. Especially in mind is the flight from Jerusalem, Judea and Galilee, from the persecutions of false ‘Messiahs' and equally vicious Romans, at the time of the final destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.
The idea of the wings of ‘the great eagle' has in mind ‘the flying eagle' in Revelation 4:7 which was one of the living creatures, referred to again in Revelation 8:13 as ‘a flying eagle' with ‘a great voice'. This would suggest the participation of a living creature, one of the cherubim, in the protection of the woman, the faithful in Israel. The psalmist tells us of God that ‘he rode upon a cherub and did fly, yes, he flew on the wings of the wind' (Psalms 18:10), and that is in mind here. The woman is privileged to ride, as it were, to safety on a cherub. In other words she has God's special protection as she flees.
It is also connected with Exodus 19:4 where God says to Israel “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself”, i.e. to Mount Sinai in the wilderness, the place of God's revelation of Himself and the making of the covenant. So her flight is seen as a precursor to later enjoyment of ‘the Promised Land'.
The description of the eagle as ‘a great eagle' goes beyond just this, however, and suggests, as we have seen, the participation of the living creature. We can recognise from Exodus 19:4 that the woman was not borne away from God in her flight, but was borne to Him. It was not a loss but a gain.
Compare how God was borne to the people of Israel in exile on the wings of the cherubim (Ezekiel 1). There His people had been forcibly taken away, but when they reached their destination they found God was there with them. (The greatest eagle of all is found in Deuteronomy 32:11, where the eagle who bore Israel is God Himself, but that was from the wilderness, not to it. God will not leave His people in the wilderness permanently).
John clearly has in mind in this description (how could he not?) the fact that the woman's flight parallels the previous flight by the people of Israel into the wilderness for safety from the threat of Pharaoh (Exodus 14:5), where they also were fed by God. Then it was Pharaoh who sent his armies after them to his own destruction.
In Jeremiah 46:8 these armies of Egypt are in fact likened to ‘waters like rivers' that cover the earth. ‘Egypt rises up like the Nile, and his waters toss themselves like the rivers, and he says “I will rise up, I will cover the earth, I will destroy the city and its inhabitants”.' So Egypt and its armies are visualised in terms of the Nile whose waters like rivers seek to destroy, like a great river sweeping over the land. This picture John now takes up.