When John first sees the harlot, she is in the wilderness (17:3). The only other references to the wilderness in Revelation are in chapter 12, where the mother of the heavenly King flees to the wilderness to escape from the dragon (12:6, 14).
The mother of Revelation 12, protected and nourished in the wilderness is a Hagar/Israel figure. And that suggests that the other woman in the wilderness, who doesn’t flee the beast but rides on it, is a false Hagar/Israel, the false bride, not Rome but Jerusalem.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Letters
Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…
