And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
και σημειον μεγα ωφθη εν τω ουρανω γυνη περιβεβλημενη τον ηλιον και η σεληνη υποκατω των ποδων αυτης και επι της κεφαλης αυτης στεφανος αστερων δωδεκα
10 Church Fathers comment on this verse
By the woman clothed with the sun, he most clearly designated the Church, clothed in the Word of the Father, Who shines more brightly than the sun. When he speaks of the moon under her feet, he means that the Church, like the moon, is adorned with heavenly glory. The expression, "on her head a crown of twelve stars," points to the twelve Apostles, through whose ministry the Church was established.
The woman who appeared in heaven, clothed with the sun and crowned with twelve stars, with the moon as her footstool, being with child and crying out in the pains and pangs of birth, is in the proper and exact sense our Mother, the Virgin. She is a certain power, distinct in herself from her children. The prophets, because of the properties attributed to her, called her now Jerusalem, now the Bride, now Mount Zion, now the Temple and tabernacle of God. She is a power striving toward illumination.
According to the prophet: “Shine, O Jerusalem,” as the Spirit cried to her, “for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord shall shine upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee. Nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness rising upon thee. Lift up thine eyes and look around: all these gather together and come to thee; thy sons shall come from afar, and thy daughters shall be carried in arms” (Isa 60:1-4).
This is the Church, whose children will all come to her together after the resurrection, streaming to her from every side. Having reached the light that knows no evening, and having clothed herself with the radiance of the Word as with a garment, she will rejoice. For with what other most precious or worthy adornment should the queen be adorned, she who is clothed with light as with a garment, that she may become the Bride of the Lord, for which the Father called her?
Come then, being exalted in mind, and look, as you look upon bridal virgins, at this great woman. She shines with pure and spotless beauty, whole and unfading, yielding nothing to the radiance of light. Instead of a garment she is clothed with light itself. Instead of precious stones she is adorned upon her head with shining stars.
For what clothing is to us, light is to her. What gold or glittering stones are to us, the stars are to her. These are not such stars as occupy their visible place, but better and more brilliant ones. Those here may be counted only as their images and likenesses.
This is the ancient Church of the fathers, prophets, and holy apostles. She endured sorrows and the sufferings of travail until He once promised by the prophets appeared from her people and in her flesh.
“Clothed with the sun” points to the hope of resurrection and the promise of glory. The moon signifies the fall, according to the debt of death, of the bodies of the saints, which can never be altered.
As life for men diminishes and will increase in the future, so the hope of those who sleep has not been extinguished altogether, as some suppose. Rather, they will have light in the darkness in the likeness of the moon.
The crown of twelve stars signifies the crown of the fathers, presumably the twelve patriarchs, from whom the Spirit, according to Christ’s birth in the flesh, was going to receive flesh. By “Spirit” Victorinus apparently means Christ, with “Spirit” referring to the divine nature of Jesus.
Some understood the woman clothed with the sun to be the Most Holy Theotokos, Who suffered much before Her Son was known. But since our Lord was born long before this revelation, the great Methodius, seeing that this does not fit the birth of the Lord, takes the woman as the Holy Church.
It will be useful to cite here the words of Methodius himself. In his discourse he speaks in the person of the virgin Procla: “The woman clothed with the sun is the Church. Light serves as her garment, and the best and brightest stars serve as gold and precious shining stones. She has ascended upon the moon. Moisture in nature depends upon the moon. Here, allegorically, the moon signifies the faith of those being cleansed and freed from corruption by baptism.
She is in travail, regenerating the soulish into the spiritual, and transforming them in form and image according to the likeness of Christ.”
And further: “It is not fitting to understand the One newly born as Christ Himself, for the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word of God was fulfilled long before the revelation to John. John speaks and prophesies of present and future things.”
Then he continues: “Necessity itself compels us to confess that the one in travail and giving birth to the redeemed is the Church. The Spirit bears witness of her in Isaiah: ‘Before she travailed, she brought forth; before the pain of labor came, she escaped and bore a male child’ (Isa 66:7). From whom did she escape? Certainly from the serpent, in order to bear men, the spiritual Zion of the male sex.”
Further: “Thus Christ is spiritually born in each of us. Therefore the Church wraps us in swaddling bands and is in travail until Christ, born within us, is formed in us, so that everyone united to Christ may become Christ.”
So too the Church has clothed herself in the Sun of righteousness, Christ. “For she has under her feet the light of the nocturnal luminary, which points to worldly life, changing like the moon.” Her head bears the crown of apostolic doctrines and virtues.
The same Methodius says: “Since moisture depends upon the moon, it signifies baptism, which is called allegorically the sea. It is saving for those being born, but destructive for demons.”
John says that the Church stands with her feet on one part of herself, that is, on false and evil Christians. "And on her head was a crown of twelve stars." By these twelve stars the twelve Apostles may be understood. The woman clothed with the sun signifies the hope of the resurrection. Therefore it is written: "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father" (Mt 13:43).
The vision wishes to describe more fully all the circumstances connected with the antichrist. The becoming man of the Lord, Who appropriated and subjected the world to Himself, became the occasion for the antichrist’s awakening and his preparation by Satan. The antichrist was awakened so that the world might again fall away from Christ and be persuaded to pass once more to Satan’s side.
Since the fleshly conception and birth of the Lord were also the beginning of His becoming man, John’s composition establishes a certain order and coherence for what it is about to say. It begins the narrative with Christ’s fleshly conception and depicts the Theotokos for us.
For what does it say? “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun; under her feet the moon.” As was said, this refers to the Mother of the Savior. The vision depicts Her in heaven, not on earth, because She is pure in soul and body, equal to the angels, and a dweller in heaven. She contained God and gave flesh to Him Who rests in heaven, for He said, “Heaven is My throne” (Isa 66:1; Acts 7:49).
She has nothing in common with the earth and its evil, but possesses all majesty and every heavenly glory, although She is of our human nature and essence. For the Virgin is consubstantial with us. Therefore let the corrupt teaching of Eutyches, which babbles that the Virgin differs from us in essence, be cast out beyond the faith of the divine bridal chambers, together with his other dogmas.
What is meant when it is said that She is clothed with the sun and has the moon under Her feet? The divine prophet Habakkuk, prophesying of the Lord, says: “The sun was exalted, and the moon stood still in its order in the light” (Hab 3:11). He calls our Savior Christ the Sun of righteousness (Mal 4:2), or at least the preaching of the Gospel. This means that when the preaching of the Gospel was exalted and glorified, the moon, that is, the law of Moses, stood still and received no increase.
For after the manifestation of Christ, proselytes from the Gentiles were no longer received as before. Rather, there was diminution and disappearance. Therefore you should also observe here that the Holy Virgin is covered by the intelligible Sun. For so the prophet names the Lord when he says of Israel: “Fire fell upon them, and they did not see the sun” (Ps 57:9).
The moon, that is, the sacred rite performed according to the law, and the commonwealth governed by the law, lies under Her feet, as though it had sunk down and become much less than itself. It has been conquered by the light of the Gospel.
He rightly called what belongs to the law the moon, because it is illumined by the sun, that is, by Christ, just as the sensible moon is illumined by the sensible sun. Regarding what has been said, it would be more fitting to say not that the woman was clothed with the sun, but that she clothed the sun which she had in her womb.
Yet in order to make clear from the vision that the Lord, Who was in the womb, was the covering of His Mother and of every creature. The apostle said that “He clothed the woman.” The angel of God said the same thing to the Holy Virgin: “The Holy Spirit will come upon Thee, and the power of the Most High will overshadow Thee” (Lk 1:35). For to overshadow, to cover, and to clothe are expressions identical in meaning.
This is also what is now manifested in the Church: by the action of the Holy Spirit, human nature was united to the Wisdom of God. From the two, one and the same Christ, the Mediator, arose, was proclaimed, and was received in faith.
As He Himself said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:19). The Evangelist adds: “He was speaking of the temple of His body” (Jn 2:21).
“The woman clothed with the sun; under her feet the moon.” It is commonly said that a genus is divided into many species, which are one. Thus what is the heavens is here the temple in heaven, or the woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. This is the Church, clothed in Christ, trampling all passing things for the sake of love.
For she is not seized by these passing things. Being bound to the incorruptible Good, she speaks truly: “But it is good for me to draw near to God” (Ps 72:28).
Hence those acclamations concerning the Church which we read: “fair as the moon, perfect as the sun” (Song 6:10). And again: “like the moon, established forever, and the faithful witness in heaven” (Ps 88:38). Primasius here follows Tyconius.
He rightly says that the Church is a pilgrim. After the human birth of Christ, we saw many false opinions spoken by heretics. Concerning this temple, the heresiarchs invented things according to their own will: Valentinus one thing, Bardaisan another, Apollinarius another, Nestorius another, Eutyches another, and Timothy Aelurus another.
Truth, as it were, sprang up from the earth, and disputes followed. As a result, the Orthodox and faithful acquired a reward, while the heretics, for their evil judgments concerning the Incarnation of Christ, underwent the punishment of eternal condemnation.
By this majestic woman, according to most pious interpreters of the Revelation, one should understand the Church, the company of believers in Christ, Who is the Sun of Righteousness. By the moon is understood the earthly world with all its visible beauties. They are pleasing to the senses, but like the rays of the moon they do not warm the soul or give it life. They are temporary and fleeting, and therefore are under the feet of Christ’s Church.
By the moon one may also understand human wisdom. Like the moon, it reflects light from the sun, illuminating the darkness of human errors only when it borrows its light from the wisdom and truth of God.
St. Gregory the Theologian says: “Nothing can be more just than that the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, poured down from God above, should rule over earthly wisdom.” The crown of twelve stars signifies that the Church is adorned by the twelve apostles.
"A great sign appeared in heaven." With the sound of the seventh trumpet, one part of the struggle against the enemies of Christ's Kingdom ended. Now another, more difficult struggle begins, in which Satan himself, once at the right hand of God, comes forth against the Church. In the first part, interpreters see the struggle of Christianity with Judaism. Now the struggle with paganism begins. Here the Church appears under the image of a woman. The sun in which she is clothed is Jesus Christ. The moon is earthly glory, or the rites of the Old Testament. The stars are the twelve Apostles.
The third vision, described in chapters 12-14, depicts three stages in the struggle of powers hostile to God against the Kingdom of God, the Church of Christ. The Church is portrayed as a woman clothed with the sun, laboring to give birth to believers in Christ, “regenerating the soulish into the spiritual, and transforming them in form and image according to the likeness of Christ” (Methodius’s interpretation, cited by St. Andrew).
She and the believers in Christ born of her are pursued first directly by the devil himself, the great dragon and ancient serpent (chapter 12). Then they are pursued through the antichrist, the beast coming up from the sea (13:1-10), and through his helper, as it were his forerunner and false prophet, the beast coming up from the earth (13:11-18).
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 26 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS