6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days.
The flight of the woman into the wilderness echoes many such instances of retreat into the wilderness in the Bible, such as Christ's fast in the wilderness, or the wandering of the Israelites in the desert, or the life of impoverished asceticism chosen by John the Baptist. Some writers say that the woman symbolizes the Israelites, though some other writers say that the woman is in fact a symbol of the Christian Church.
