And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
Woman fled. Mary's flight with Jesus into Egypt is a type.
Where she hath. So C, Vulgate; but 'Aleph (') A B add, 'there.'
A place - that portion of the world which received Christianity professedly, mainly the fourth kingdom, having its seat in modern Babylon, Rome, implying that all the pagan would not be Christianized in the present order of things.
Prepared of God, х apo (G575)] - 'from:' 'on the part of God.' Not by human caprice, but by the fore-determined counsel of God, the woman, the Church, fled into the wilderness.
They should feed her - `nourish her.' Indefinite for 'she should be fed.' The pagan world, the wilderness, could not nourish her, but only afford an outward shelter. Here, as in Daniel 4:26, the third person plural refers to the heavenly powers, who minister from God nourishment to the Church. As Israel had its time of first bridal love, on first going out of Egypt into the wilderness, so the Church's wilderness-time of first love was the apostolic age, when separate from the Egypt of this world, having no city here, but seeking one to come; having only a place in the wilderness prepared of God (Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14). The harlot takes the world-city as her own, as Cain the first builder of a city, whereas the believing patriarchs lived in tents. Then apostate Israel was the harlot (Isaiah 1:21), and the young Christian Church the woman; soon spiritual fornication crept in, and the Church (Revelation 17:1-18) is no longer the woman, but the harlot, the great Babylon, which, however, has in it hidden the true people of God (Revelation 18:4).
The deeper the Church penetrated into pagandom, the more herself became pagan. Instead of overcoming, she was overcome by the world (Auberlen). The woman is 'the one inseparable Church of the Old and New Testament' (Hengstenberg), the stock of the Christian Church being Israel (Christ and His apostles being Jews), on which Gentile believers have been grafted, and into which Israel, on her conversion, shall be grafted, as into her own olive tree (Romans 11:17-24). During the church-historic period, or 'times of the Gentiles,' wherein 'Jerusalem is trodden down of the Gentiles,' there is no believing Jewish Church; therefore, only the Christian Church can be "the woman." There is meant, however, secondarily, the preservation of the Jews during this church-historic period, that Israel, once "the woman," and of whom the man-child was born, may become so again at the close of the Gentile times, and stand at the head of the two elections, literal and spiritual Israel, the church elected from Jews and Gentiles without distinction. Ezekiel 20:35-36, "I will bring you into the wilderness of the people (peoples), and there will I plead with you ... like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of Egypt" (note there): not a wilderness locally, but spiritually a state of discipline and trial among Gentile "peoples," during the long Gentile times, and finally consummated in the last unparalleled trouble under Antichrist, in which the sealed remnant (Revelation 7:1-17) who constitute "the woman," are nevertheless preserved "from the face of the serpent" (Revelation 12:14).
Thousand two hundred and threescore days - anticipatory of Revelation 14:1-20, where the persecution which caused her to flee is mentioned in its place: Revelation 13:1-18 gives the details. It is unlikely that Revelation should pass from Christ's birth to the last Antichrist, without notice of the long intervening church-historical period. Still, the history of Gentile nations in the Old Testament is only noticed in connection with Jewish history; in the New Testament, it is accordingly to be expected that the history of the world-nations should be noticed only in connection with that of the literal or the spiritual Israel, the Church. Probably the 1,260 days, representing this long interval, are RECAPITULATED on a shorter scale analogically during Antichrist's short reign. They are equivalent to three and a half years, which, as half of the divine seven, symbolize the world's seeming victory over the Church. As they include the times of Jerusalem's being trodden of the Gentiles, they must be much longer than 1,260 years, for above five and a half centuries more than 1,260 years have elapsed since Jerusalem fell.