⁷ Then Herod secretly called for the magi^[a] and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared.

²¹ Saul thought, “Let me give her to him that she may be a snare for him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” Therefore Saul said to David a second time,^[a] “You shall now be my son-in-law.”^(A)

The Woman and the Dragon

12 A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. ² She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.^{(A) 3} Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and seven diadems on his heads.^{(B) 4} His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to deliver a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.^{(C) 5} And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule^[a] all the nations with a scepter of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne,^(D)

⁵ Because Aram—with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah—has plotted evil against you, saying, ⁶ ‘Let us go up against Judah and terrify it^[a] and conquer it for ourselves and make the son of Tabeel king in it’; ⁷ therefore thus says the Lord God:

¹⁰ Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”