7. Where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent--12:14. In this wilderness, or place prepared of God, where Jesus instructed the disciples who later formed the Jerusalem church to flee, the verse states concerning the woman that she was nourished for a time, times and a half time. This nourishment of the woman in “ her place” compares with the manna by which Israel was fed in the wilderness, upon which event this description is based. In the Old Testament experience it was the result of the flight from Egypt of the church of Moses in the wilderness of Sinai; in the experience of Revelation it was the church of Christ in the flight from Jerusalem to her place in the wilderness of Pella --that place prepared of God, where she was nourished by providential protection. The numerical designation for a time, and times and half a time was equivalent to the forty and two months (of chapter 11:2), and the thousand two hundred and threescore days of chapters 11:3 and 12:6, and they were equal to the same thing. They all refer, as explained in the comments on their mention in the preceding verses, to the mathematically calculated period of twelve hundred and sixty days between Nero’ s order to Vespasian in the declaration of war and the completion of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem which brought an end to the Jewish state and the system of Judaism. The mystically phrased expression of time and times and half a time was related to the ebbing and flowing of the tide of the persecutions and was comparable to the reference in chapter 17:8 “ the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.” The beast was when the persecutor was active; the beast was not when there was an interval of time between the persecutions; and the beast was seen as being reactivated in the last expression yet is. In a similar way the time and the times, of chapter twelve, referred to the period of the persecution in stages, and the expression half a time was the symbolic reference to the shortening of the period of tribulation as indicated in chapter 11:9 in the expression three days and a half, and as foretold by the Lord in Matthew 24:22. It is consistent that the time and times and half a time shall be considered to mean the same shortened period as indicated in the expression three days and an half, in both of which the exact period from the commencement of the siege to the termination of it was certainly designated. (See comments on chapter 11:9) It is said in verse 14 that the woman was nourished for this time from the face of the serpent (verse 14), in a place far from, and safe from, the scene of the siege and its accompanying trials, humiliations and horrors.