The child's God-assigned task was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.
Those words allude to Psalm 2:1–12. That same psalm had foretold that the Lord laughed at the nations and decreed that his Son would receive the nations as his heritage and break them with an iron rod. By mentioning this task for the newborn child before providing an account of whether the dragon was able to devour him, the writer makes clear what actually was at stake in this critical moment. Would the nations (and the dragon with them) be broken by the newborn’s iron rule or would the newborn be robbed of his God-assigned task from the start? Mentioning his God-assigned task at this point also pre-empts that the dragon’s appetite would somehow not be satisfied.
5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne,