The Woman with a Thousand Names
She was beatified as Theotokos at the Council of Ephesus in 431, Greek for the “God-Bearer.” Two centuries later, the Latin church declared her semper virgo, or “always virgin.” The titles gradually became more grandiose. “Queen of Heaven,” “Mother of Divine Grace,” “Vessel of Honor,” “Seat of Wisdom,” “Virgin Most Powerful.” Even the messianic properties of immaculate conception and heavenly assumption were ascribed to her. Two millennia after she prophesied that, “all generations will call me blessed,” the identity of a young Jewish girl named Miriam bat Heli[1] is still shrouded in controversy.
And yet, in our debate regarding Mary’s place in the Church, perhaps we have lost sight of her place amongst her own people. Indeed, at the end of her Magnificat, the young “servant” of God reaffirms Israel’s covenantal peculiarity:
The earliest known image of Mary from the second century, possibly depicting the moment of the Annunciation, discovered by a team of Yale archeologists in the Dura-Europos Church, Syria.
“He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”[2]
The Woman WHO BEARS THE Seed
The Lord stood in the Garden against the nachash, the serpent, declaring that the Seed of the woman would ultimately crush his head.[3] This is the first and only time in the Hebrew Scriptures that the zerah, or seed (i.e. offspring), is ever attributed to a woman. It’s a subtle clue, the kernel of a mystery, hinting at the identity of the Seed, and how He would be conceived and born. The Deliverer would not come from the seed of a man, whereby the sin of Adam would have been imputed to Him.[4] Rather, the Deliverer would be born from the seed of the woman, through the Spirit. In the greatest sense of the Apostle Paul’s words, the woman “will be saved through childbirth.”[5]
As the Hebrew prophets wrote through the centuries, the figure of Messiah grew clearer. Especially in the dark season of Jerusalem’s capture and Jewish exile, popular anticipation grew for the One whom the Prophet Daniel called hemdat nashim, or “the desire of women,”[6] as Hebrew wives desired to be the mother of the Offspring who would deliver them from the empires of the serpent, and reverse the curse on their mother Eve.
Annunciation, Fra Angelico (c. 1440), Convent of San Marco, Florence, Italy.
Therefore, when Mary received the angelic announcement that she would carry the King who would sit on the throne of His father David forever,[7] it was not just a personal fulfillment. The desire and dream of generations of Israelites were suddenly realized in her, in her very body. And so Mary’s song was not just a personal expression of how her “soul magnifies” and “spirit rejoices” in the Lord, nor simply a testimony of God’s recognition of the “humble estate of His servant,” or the “great things” that He had done for her. It was also an age-spanning, earth-covering doxology, in which “good things” are granted to all those of “humble estate,” and in which both the “servant” Mary, and “His servant Israel,” are “helped” by the Good News of Great Joy.[8]
The Woman Servant
It is notable that both Mary and Israel are described in the Magnificat as the Lord’s “servant,” suggesting that, as the prophesied woman who would bring forth Messiah, the young Jewish maiden is a type of her nation. The theological implications of this are profound, as the depictions of Israel throughout the Hebrew Scriptures are anything but virginal. Through the prophets, the Lord had accused Israel of “playing the whore” on multiple occasions.[9] Widespread spiritual adultery had been normative for the covenant people. Like Gomer, the prostitute wife of Hosea, Israel had “gone after her lovers,” and “acted shamefully.” Her “children of whoredom” were named “no mercy” and “not my people.”[10]
Mary’s character stood in stark contrast. Instead of “children of whoredom,” she was told that the “child to be born will be called holy.”[11] Instead of “no mercy,” she declared that the Lord would help His servant “in remembrance of His mercy.”[12] Instead of “not my people,” she was reassured “the Lord is with you.”[13] Mary is the anti-Gomer, a picture of the nation transformed by the Messiah who was born from her. Therefore, she does not only represent Israel, but a different Israel, a future Israel, a redeemed Israel, “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” Mary represents an eschatological Israel, which must flee to the wilderness to be refined and purified, just as she fled to Egypt with the Child in her arms.
The Woman Who Wears the Sun
In the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John is given foresight into the judgments of God towards the serpent’s final empire. In the midst of beasts and trumpets of judgement, he sees the “great sign” of a woman standing in the sky.[14] She is clothed in the sun and standing on the moon, with twelve stars in her crown. The recall of the patriarch Joseph’s dream is unavoidable: “Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”[15] First of all, the woman embodies Israel. But there is more.
The Woman Clothed with the Sun Fleeth from the Persecution of the Dragon, Benjamin West (c. 1797), Princeton University
As John looks on, the woman cries out in the pain of childbirth, while a “great red dragon…that ancient serpent”[16] stood before her, waiting to devour her child. But the “Male Child” born to her is “caught up” from him, that He might eventually “rule all the nations with a rod of iron.”[17] In this apocalyptic imagery, the ultimate, age-ending conflict between the Seed of the Woman and the serpent is being portrayed. As the woman whose “seed” was Divinely overshadowed, Mary’s connection to the Woman Israel in Revelation is unmistakable. Miriam bat Hilel is not only an embodiment of Israel, but of the Garden-prophesied woman.
The dragon is unable to prevail against the Male Child when He appears weak and lowly, so the “ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan” instead pursues the woman, who flies to the wilderness “for a time, times and half a time.” In this wilderness, God will “strip her naked”[18] of her government, economy and military, and He will “shatter” her,[19] But He will also love her. The woman is protected and nourished, as Hosea prophesies,
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.”[20]
The chesed, or loving-kindness of God towards Israel in the wilderness will transform her from unfaithful Gomer into a Bride like the Seed-bearing woman who says, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”[21]
Eventually, at the “appointed time,”[22] the Seed of the woman who was “caught up” will return “in power and great glory”[23] to “judge and make war”[24] on the serpent and his seed, casting them into the Lake of Fire forever. The woman who gave birth to Him, both as the corporate nation, and as the individual young, first century Jewish maiden, will rejoice at the sight of it, as they sing baruch haba b’shem adonai. Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.[25]
Maranatha.
Gabe Caligiuri is a regular contributor to the FAI Wire publication and podcast, as well as an occasional contributor to other FAI digital content on the subjects of history and geopolitics as they relate to the Great Commission. Gabe and his family live in California.
[1] Luke 3:23, the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3 is regarded as his physical, matrilineal descent through Mary’s Davidic line. It was common to list the father’s name in place of the mother in ancient matrilineal genealogies.
[2] Luke 1:54-55
[3] Genesis 3:15
[4] Romans 5:12
[5] 1 Timothy 2:15
[6] Daniel 11:37
[7] Luke 1:32-33
[8] Luke 1:46-55
[9] Jeremiah 3:1, Ezekiel 23:3
[10] Hosea 1:2-9, 2:5
[11] Luke 1:35
[12] Luke 1:54
[13] Luke 1:28
[14] Revelation 12:1
[15] Genesis 37:9
[16] Revelation 12:3, 9
[17] Revelation 12:4-5
[18] Hosea 2:3
[19] Daniel 12:7
[20] Hosea 2:14-15
[21] Luke 1:38
[22] Habakkuk 2:3
[23] Matthew 24:30
[24] Revelation 19:11
[25] Psalm 118:26; Matthew 23:39