Revelation 12:4Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The great red dragon, manifold, multiform, seven-headed, horned, drawing away a third part of the stars, and lying in wait to devour the infant of the woman giving birth, is the devil. He plots and lies in wait to corrupt the mind of the enlightened, which has been entrusted to Christ, and the image and likeness of the Word reborn in them.

But he does not reach his goal or seize the prey, because the regenerated are caught up on high to the throne of God. That is, the mind of the renewed, who have learned to contemplate the things above and to set them before themselves, is raised upward to the throne of God and to the unshakable foundation of truth. Thus it will not be deceived by the dragon crawling below. For he is not permitted to destroy those who strive and look upward.

When John says that the dragon’s tail drew away a third part of the stars from heaven, this is understood in two ways. Many suppose that he was able to draw away a third part of the faithful. But it should more truly be understood as referring to a third part of the angels, since Satan was already a prince before he fell from the position appointed to him.

The red dragon standing and waiting for the woman to give birth to the infant, in order to devour Him, is the devil. That is, he is the apostate angel who supposed that the destruction of all men would come through bodily death. But He Who was not born of seed owed nothing to death.

Through the most sacred sign of the cross, holy Mother Church received us into her womb, and with great joy she will spiritually bring us forth, as also our brothers. Meanwhile, while such a mother restores the regenerated to the true light through holy baptism, she nourishes in her womb the new future offspring whom she bears with proper food. Filled with joy, she brings those who rejoice to the day of their birth.

This condition does not apply to Eve, who gives birth to sons in sorrow and groaning, not rejoicing, but rather weeping. Mother Church has separated what Eve joined together. The offspring whom Eve rewarded with death for disobedience, Mother Church has restored to life through obedience.

We think this should be understood in two ways. It refers either to the devil’s first fall from heaven, through the final movement of envy, the first being self-exaltation, which dragged down to earth with him the angels of one mind with him. Or it refers, after his head was crushed, to the movement of his tail, which draws away the unstable from heavenly wisdom and from dwelling with the saints. After illumination in holy baptism, such people are figuratively called stars.

The tail is the hostile prophets, that is, the heretics, who through rebaptism cast down to earth the stars of heaven that had joined themselves to them. They are under the feet of the woman. Many people think these are those whom the devil made his companions, sympathetic to him. They are the many angels cast down with him when he fell.

“His tail drew away from heaven a third part of the stars and cast them to the earth.” Satan overthrew a large part of the angels by persuading them to revolt from God. He made the heavenly ones earthly, and those bright as stars he made into darkness.

He did this by his tail, that is, by his last and hindmost transgressions, as it were. For he himself first conceived madness and apostasy, and nourished it sufficiently in the pride of his thought. By this he also brought the rest to destruction.

The text speaks of events in the life of the Lord. Since He Who would destroy his dominion was to be born, Satan watched carefully so that, when the Virgin gave birth, he might destroy the Child. Was it not for this reason that he was not idle, but stirred up Herod to kill the male infants?

Isaiah proclaims the Gospel to us: “Before the child knows how to say, ‘My father’ and ‘My mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria” (Isa 8:4).

By the dragon one should understand the devil. Since the devil is a bodiless spirit, he has no sensible forms. Therefore he is given features that express his most characteristic traits. Here he is depicted as a dragon, showing that, like a serpent, he possesses cunning, treachery, and venom.

He is great because before his fall he was one of the mighty Angels. St. Andrew of Caesarea writes: “He is red because of his love of murder and his rejoicing in blood, or because of the fiery nature of the angelic essence, if he fell from among the Angels.”

The Cherub, deceived and carried away by self-conceit and pride, deceived and carried away with himself a great multitude of angels, among whom many were from the higher ranks. The Apostle mentions fallen principalities and powers among the spirits of wickedness (Eph 6:12).

“And his tail drew away a third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.” So great was the number of the rebel’s followers that Scripture. Likening the angels here to the stars of heaven, acknowledges that a third part of these heavenly luminaries was carried away by the serpent’s tail, that is, by agreement and obedience to him.

"He dragged down a third part of the stars of heaven." The persecutions led many Christians to fall away from the faith. Some were so terrible that they threatened the Church with incomplete destruction. Such, for example, was the persecution under Nero. But with God's help the Church escaped the danger that threatened her.

“And his tail drew away a third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth” (Rev 12:4). The definite and rounded quantity of one third is taken here, as in many other places of Scripture, evidently in place of an indefinite number, to express multitude.

By the stars drawn away by the dragon’s tail one may understand, first, the fallen angels, or demons. One may also understand church leaders and teachers seduced by satanic power, who are also called stars in the Apocalypse (above, Rev 1:16-20). These are teachers puffed up by their wisdom and knowledge, yet foolish and senseless before God.

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).