The Lord reveals that the dragon’s intent is to “devour” the child as soon as it was born. This intent is no surprise, given the Lord’s word in Genesis 3:15. God had set enmity (hatred) between the serpent and the woman (and their respective offspring), together with the promise that the seed of the woman would crush the seed of the serpent. So it is to be expected that the serpent would seek to destroy the woman’s newborn seed before her offspring has the strength to fight back.
4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.