One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here. I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters,
Parallel Translations
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One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here. I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters,
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And there cam one of the seven angels which had the seven vialles and talked with me sayinge vnto me: come I will shewe the the iudgment of the grett whore that sytteth apon many waters
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Then there came one of the seuen Angels, which had the seuen vials, and talked with me, saying vnto me, Come: I will shewe thee the damnation of the great whore that sitteth vpon many waters,
Cross-references (12)
Passages linked to Revelation 17:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Revelation 19:2 for his judgments are true and righteous. For he has judged the great prostitute, who corrupted the earth with her sexual immorality, and he has avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.”
- Jeremiah 51:13 You who dwell on many waters, abundant in treasures, your end has come, the measure of your covetousness.
- Revelation 17:1-17 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here. I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality. Those who dwell in the earth were made drunken with the wine of her sexual immorality.” He carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet-colored beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of the sexual immorality of the earth. And on her forehead a name was written, “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered with great amazement. The angel said to me, “Why do you wonder? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that you saw was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go into destruction. Those who dwell on the earth and whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel when they see that the beast was, and is not, and shall be present. Here is the mind that has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. They are seven kings. Five have fallen, the one is, the other has not yet come. When he comes, he must continue a little while. The beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goes to destruction. The ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour. These have one mind, and they give their power and authority to the beast. These will war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings, and those who are with him are called chosen and faithful.” He said to me, “The waters which you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages. The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the prostitute, will make her desolate, will strip her naked, will eat her flesh, and will burn her utterly with fire. For God has put in their hearts to do what he has in mind, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be accomplished.
- Revelation 16:19 The great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.
- Revelation 21:9 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls, who were loaded with the seven last plagues came, and he spoke with me, saying, “Come here. I will show you the wife, the Lamb’s bride.”
- Isaiah 1:21 How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She was full of justice. Righteousness lodged in her, but now there are murderers.
- Jeremiah 2:20 “For long ago I broke off your yoke, and burst your bonds. You said, ‘I will not serve;’ for on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed yourself, playing the prostitute.
- Nahum 3:4-5 because of the multitude of the prostitution of the alluring prostitute, the mistress of witchcraft, who sells nations through her prostitution, and families through her witchcraft. “Behold, I am against you,” says Yahweh of Armies, “and I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness, and the kingdoms your shame.
- Isaiah 57:3 “But draw near here, you sons of a sorceress, you offspring of adulterers and prostitutes.
- Revelation 15:1 I saw another great and marvelous sign in the sky: seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them God’s wrath is finished.
- Revelation 18:16-19 saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, she who was dressed in fine linen, purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls! For in an hour such great riches are made desolate.’ Every ship master, and everyone who sails anywhere, and mariners, and as many as gain their living by sea, stood far away, and cried out as they looked at the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What is like the great city?’ They cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and mourning, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had their ships in the sea were made rich by reason of her great wealth!’ For she is made desolate in one hour.
- Revelation 15:6-7 The seven angels who had the seven plagues came out, clothed with pure, bright linen, and wearing golden sashes around their breasts. One of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain The state of the Church militant being declared, now…
The state of the Church militant being declared, now followeth the state of the Church overcoming and getting victory, as I showed before in the beginning of chapter 10. The state is set forth in 4 chapters. As in the place beforegoing I noted, that in that history the order of time was not always exactly observed, so the same is to be understood in this history, that it is distinguished according to the persons of which it treateth, and that in the several stories of the persons is severly observed in the time thereof. For first is delivered the story of Babylon destroyed, in this and the next chap. (for this Babylon out of all doubt shall perish before the 2 beasts and the Dragon). Secondly is delivered the destruction of both the two beasts, chap. 19. And lastly of the Dragon, chap. 20, in the story of the spiritual Babylon are distinctly set forth the state thereof in this chap. and the overthrow done from God, chap. 18. In this verse and that which followeth is a transition or passage unto the first argument, consisting of a particular calling of the Prophet (as often heretofore) and a general proposition.
The sentence that is pronounced against this harlot.
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That is the damnable harlot, by a figure of speech called hypallage. For S. John as yet had not seen her. Although another interpretation may be borne, yet I like this better.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 1 And there came one of the seven angels…
1 And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters:
Ver. 1. And there came] This and the following chapters are set for the explanation of the dark and difficult passages in the former, in the three last vials especially.
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One of the seven] Probably the seventh.
And talked with me] ελαλησε λαλια, familiarly as the Samaritess with her countrymen, Joh 4:42, or as the master with his scholar.
I will show unto thee] Thou shalt not only be an ear but an eye witness.
" Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,
Quam quae sunt oculis commissa fidelibus."
Horat.
The judgment] The damnation of her; the destruction is reserved to the next chapter.
Of the great whore] The whore of Babylon, more infamous and notorious than any Thais, Lais, Phryne, Messalina, Orestilla ( cuius praeter formam nihil unquam bonus laudavit, Sallust), or Pope Joan, of whom Funccius the chronologer speaketh thus; Ego Funccius non dubito quin divinitus ita sit permissum ut femina fieret Pontifex eadem meretrix, &c.; I doubt not but that God therefore permitted a notorious harlot to be advanced to the popedom (and this about the very time when the popes were most busy in subjecting the kings of the earth, and making them their vassals), that he might point out to men this whore here mentioned, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain This whole verse is but a preface to a…
This whole verse is but a preface to a new vision which John had; not new, as to the matter revealed in it; for it plainly revealeth matters relating to antichrist; and the matter of it contemporizeth with the three last vials, about the final ruin of antichrist, who was before described under the notion of a beast, here under the notion of a
great whore. A whore properly signifies one that is married, and is false to her husband’s bed; and so very well suits the Church of Rome, (if they yet deserve that name), whose faith was formerly spoken of throughout the world, Rom 1:8, but is long since turned idolatrous (idolatry, in the prophetic style, being quite through the Scripture called whoredom). She is said to
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sit upon many waters, either because she exerciseth a jurisdiction over much people, or with allusion to old Babylon, (which gave her her name), which was situated near Euphrates, a river in which there was a great collection of waters. John is called to hear the counsels of God concerning her destruction, which though more generally and shortly revealed before, yet God here designs to reveal to John more fully, particularly, and plainly.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Observe here, 1. The angel’s invitation to the subsequent…
Observe here, 1. The angel’s invitation to the subsequent vision, One of the angels, talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee, &c.
Where we see the readiness of those ministering spirits, the holy angels, to do any good office for the saints, and with what cheerfulness they are employed about things for our consolation, and the sweet familiarity that is between them and the saints, evidenced by that expression, He talked with me, saying, Come hither.
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Observe, 2. The promise which the angel makes to St. John, namely, to show him the judgment of the great whore. By the whore, all understand the city of Rome; only some will have it Rome Pagan, others Rome Papal, or the great idolatrous city and church of Rome. Idolatry is often in scripture style called whoredom; and idolaters are said to go a whoring from God. A whore is a person married to an husband, who afterwards proves false to his bed. The Papal present church of Rome deserves this name, having been guilty of the greatest defection and apostasy from the true evangelical doctrine and worship that ever was in the world; and she is deservedly also called the great whore, because of her whoredoms committed with so many under her power and jurisdiction, having many people subject to her, and for that reason is here said to sit upon many waters.
The true church is Christ’s bride and spouse, she is betrothed unto him in righteousness, in loving-kindness, and in tender mercy; and at any time by idolatry to apostatize from him is spiritual whoredom, which shall not pass without deserved punishment.
Learn hence, How hateful idolatry is to God, and how highly it provokes God’s wrath, even as the whoredom of a woman who plays the common harlot provokes the jealousy of her husband. Verily, never was husband more jealous of the chastity of his suspected wife, than God is jealous in point of worship.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain Here we have a new vision, not as to…
Here we have a new vision, not as to the matter of it, for that is contemporary with what came under the three last vials; but as to the manner of description, etc. Observe, 1. The invitation given to the apostle to take a view of what was here to be represented: Come hither, and I will show thee the judgment of the great whore, etc., Rev 17:1. This is a name of great infamy. A whore [in this passage] is one that is married, and has been false to her husband's bed, has forsaken the guide of her youth, and broken the covenant of God. She had been a prostitute to the kings of the earth, whom she had intoxicated with the wine of her fornication. 2. The appearance she made: it was gay and gaudy, like such sort of creatures: She was arrayed in purple, and scarlet colour, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, Rev 17:4. Here were all the allurements of worldly honour and riches, pomp and pride, suited to sensual and worldly minds. 3. Her principal seat and residence - upon the beast that had seven heads and ten horns; that is to say, Rome, the city on seven hills, infamous for idolatry, tyranny, and blasphemy. 4. Her name, which was written on her forehead. It was the custom of impudent harlots to hang out signs, with their names, that all might know what they were. Now in this observe, (1.) She is named from her place of residence - Babylon the great. But, that we might not take it for the old Babylon literally so called, we are told there is a mystery in the name; it is some other great city resembling the old Babylon. (2.) She is named from her infamous way and practice; not only a harlot, but a mother of harlots, breeding up harlots, and nursing and training them up to idolatry, and all sorts of lewdness and wickedness - the parent and nurse of all false religion and filthy conversation. 5. Her diet: she satiated herself with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus. She drank their blood with such greediness that she intoxicated herself with it; it was so pleasant to her that she could not tell when she had had enough of it: she was satiated, but never satisfied.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And there came one of the seven angels that…
And there came one of the seven angels that had the seven vials,.... It may be the first of them, since one of the four beasts designs the first of them, in Rev 6:1 though Brightman thinks the fifth angel is meant, because he poured out his vial on the seat of the beast, who is by this angel described; but rather this is the seventh and last angel, concerned in the utter destruction of antichrist: and therefore proposes to John to show him the judgment of the great whore:
and talked with me, saying unto me, come hither: he conversed with him in a friendly manner, see Zac 1:9 and desires him to come nearer to him, and go along with him, adding,
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I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore; that noted and famous one, known before to John by the names of Jezabel and Babylon, who taught and caused many to commit fornication, Rev 2:20 Rev 14:8 and is no other than Rome Papal; for that a city or state is meant is clear from Rev 17:18 and it is usual for idolatrous or apostate cities to be called whores or harlots, see Isa 1:21 Eze 23:2 and she is called a "great" one, because of the largeness of the Papal see; and because of the multitude of persons, the kings of the earth, and the inhabitants of it, with whom the Romish antichrist has committed spiritual fornication, or idolatry: her "judgment" signifies either her sin and wickedness; in which sense the word is used in Rom 5:16 and which is exposed, Rev 17:5 namely, her idolatry and cruelty; or else her condemnation, and the execution of it, suggested in Rev 17:8 and more largely described in the following chapter:
that sitteth upon many waters; which in Rev 17:15 are interpreted of people, multitudes, nations, and tongues, subject to the jurisdiction of Rome; and so several antichristian states are in the preceding chapter signified by the sea, and by rivers and fountains of water: and this is said in reference to Babylon, an emblem of the Romish harlot, which was situated upon the river Euphrates, and is therefore said to dwell upon many waters, Jer 51:13 her sitting here may be in allusion to the posture of harlots plying of men; or may denote her ease, rest, and grandeur, sitting as a queen; and is chiefly expressive of her power and dominion over the kings and nations of the earth, Rev 17:18.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain And there came one of the seven angels, saying,…
And there came one of the seven angels, saying, Come hither - This relation concerning the great whore, and that concerning the wife of the Lamb, chap. xxi, 9, 10, have the same introduction, in token of the exact opposition between them. I will show thee the judgment of the great whore - Which is now circumstantially described. That sitteth as a queen - In pomp, power, ease, and luxury. Upon many waters - Many people and nations, verse 15. chap. xvii, 15
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain The judgment of the great whore, which sits on…
CHAPTER XVII.
The judgment of the great whore, which sits on many waters,
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1, 2.
Her description, name, and conduct, 3-6.
The angel explains the mystery of the woman, of the beast, c.,
7-18.
This chapter is, on several accounts, very important, and particularly as it appears to explain several of the most remarkable symbols in the book. The same author who has written so largely on the twelfth and thirteenth chapters, has also obliged me with his interpretation of this chapter. Not pretending to explain these things myself, I insert this as the most elaborate and learned exposition I have yet seen, leaving my readers at perfect liberty to reject it, and adopt any other mode of interpretation which they please. God alone knows all the secrets of his own wisdom.
NOTES ON CHAP. XVII., BY J. E. C.
Verse 1. And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters] That idolatrous worship is frequently represented in Scripture under the character of a whore or whoredom, is evident from numerous passages which it is unnecessary to quote. See 1Ch 5:25; Eze 16:1-63; Eze 23:1-49, &c. The woman mentioned here is called a great whore, to denote her excessive depravity, and the artful nature of her idolatry. She is also represented as sitting upon many waters, to show the vast extent of her influence. See Clarke on Re 17:13.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Rev 17:1-2. And there came one of the seven…
Rev 17:1-2. And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials — Most probably this was the seventh angel; for, under the seventh vial, great Babylon came in remembrance before God, and now St. John is called upon to see her condemnation and execution; saying, Come hither, I will show thee the judgment of the great whore — Which is now circumstantially described. This relation concerning the great whore, and that concerning the wife of the Lamb, (Rev 21:9-10,) have the same introduction, in token of the exact opposition between them; that sitteth as a queen, in pomp, power, ease, and luxury, upon many waters — So ancient Babylon, which was seated upon the great river Euphrates, is described by Jeremiah, (Jer 51:13,) as dwelling upon many waters; and from thence the phrase is borrowed, and signifies, according to the angel’s own explanation, (Rev 17:15,) ruling over many peoples and nations. Neither was this an ordinary prostitute; she was the great whore, with whom the kings of the earth, both ancient and modern, have committed fornication — By partaking of her idolatry, and various kinds of wickedness. So Tyre is described, Isa 23:17, as having committed fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth. Nay, not only the kings, but inferior persons, the inhabiters of the earth, the common people, have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication — No wine can more thoroughly intoxicate those who drink it, than false zeal does the followers of the great whore. Thus it was said of ancient Babylon, The nations have drunk of her wine, therefore the nations are mad. Fornication, in the usual style of Scripture, is idolatry; but if it be taken even literally, it is true that modern Rome openly allows the one as well as practises the other. Ancient Rome doth, in no respect, so well answer the character; for she ruled more with a rod of iron than with the wine of her fornication. Her ambition was for extending her empire, and not her religion. She permitted even the conquered nations to continue in the religion of their ancestors, and to worship their own gods after their own rituals. She may be said rather to have been corrupted by the importation of foreign vices and superstitions than to have established her own in other countries.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain And there came one of the seven angels which…
And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials - See the notes on Rev 15:1, Rev 15:7. Reference is again made to these angels in the same manner in Rev 21:9, where one of them says that he would show to John “the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” No particular one is specified. The general idea seems to be, that to those seven angels was entrusted the execution of the last things, or the winding up of affairs introductory to the reign of God, and that the communications respecting those last events were properly made through them. It is clearly quite immaterial by which of these it is done. The expression “which had the seven vials,” would seem to imply that though they had emptied the vials in the manner stated in the previous chapter, they still retained them in their hands.
And talked with me - Spake to me. The word “talk” would imply a more protracted conversation than occurred here.
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Come hither - Greek, δεῦρο deuro - “Here, hither.” This is a word merely calling the attention, as we should say now, “Here.” It does not imply that John was to leave the place where he was.
I will shew unto thee - Partly by symbols, and partly by express statements; for this is the way in which, in fact, he showed him.
The judgment - The condemnation and calamity that will come upon her.
Of the great whore - It is not uncommon in the Scriptures to represent a city under the image of a woman - a pure and holy city under the image of a virgin or chaste female; a corrupt, idolatrous, and wicked city under the image of an abandoned or lewd woman. See the notes on Isa 1:21; “How is the faithful city become an harlot!” Compare the notes on Isa 1:8. In Rev 17:18, it is expressly said that “this woman is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth” - that is, as I suppose, papal Rome; and the design here is to represent it as resembling an abandoned female - fit representative of an apostate, corrupt, unfaithful church. Compare the notes on Rev 9:21.
That sitteth upon many waters - An image drawn either from Babylon, situated on the Euphrates, and encompassed by the many artificial rivers which had been made to irrigate the country, or Rome, situated on the Tiber. In Rev 17:15 these waters are said to represent the peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues over which the government symbolized by the woman ruled. See the notes on that verse. Waters are often used to symbolize nations.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain I must repeat what I have already taken notice…
I must repeat what I have already taken notice of, both in the preface to the Apocalypse, and sometimes in the annotations, that there are three ways of expounding all the visions of this revelation, from the end of chap. iii. to the end of ver. 10. chap. xx. all of which seem grounded on the opinions of the ancient Fathers. According to the first, all these visions are only to be fulfilled in antichrist’s time, a little before the end of the world. According to the second, the visions may be applied to particular events, which happened in the first three or four ages [centuries], under the persecuting heathens, till by Constantine, and the succeeding Christian emperors, idolatry by degrees was extirpated, and the faith of Christ triumphed over all its enemies, whether Jews or pagans. According to the third, by the great city of Babylon, is mystically and metaphorically signified all wicked great cities in the world, all the multitude of the wicked dispersed in all nations, their short and vain happiness, their persecutions and oppressions of the good and faithful servants of God, who live piously in this world, and who are called to be citizens of the celestial Jerusalem in the kingdom of God, where he reigneth for ever with his Angels and saints, and where they all reign with him, happy in his sight and enjoyment. I am more and more inclined to this third exposition, by reading this 17th chapter, with the contents of the 18th, 19th, and 20th chapters, till the 11th verse, and by reading what St. Jerome says in general terms, in his epistle to Marcella, tom. 4, part 1, p. 166, Nov. edit. "that all this book (of the Apocalypse) is either to be expounded spiritually, or if we follow a carnal interpretation, we must content ourselves with Jewish fables. And especially by reading what St. Augustine has delivered us upon the chief difficulties of the Apocalypse, in his 20th book de Civ. Dei [The City of God], from chap. vi. to chap. xvi. and from p. 578. to p. 594. tom. 7. Nov. edit. To expound then these chapters together according to this third interpretation. (Witham) --- Of the great harlot. Nothing can be better applied than this epithet to ancient Rome, which had conquered almost all the kingdoms of the known world, as it is said in ver. 18. she is the great city, a kingdom, which hath dominion over the kings of the earth; ver. 9. it was built upon seven mountains; ver. 6. was watered with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus Christ; and in fine, ver. 5. it was the great Babylon, as St. Peter, in his first epistle, pleases to call it. (Calmet) --- Come, I will show thee the condemnation of the great harlot,...Babylon....the mother of the fornications. By this harlot, and this Babylon, is signified the multitude of all the wicked of all times and places, who have abandoned themselves to sensual pleasures, and sought for their happiness in riches and worldly grandeur; for this reason she is said to carry on her forehead this inscription, a mystery; that is, to be understood in a mystical sense of all the wicked, who make up as it were one city, as St. Augustine observes, which may be called Babylon, the city of confusion, the city of idolatry, and of all manner of vices. --- The beast, that is, the devil, carries her, whose suggestions the wicked follow. He comes out from the bottomless pit. He was, i.e. had a much greater and more extensive power over the wicked world before Christ’s coming and incarnation; and he is not, i.e. according to St. Augustine, his power hath been much extenuated and lessened since that time. He is bound or chained up for a thousand years, as it is said, chap. xx. 2. By which may be understood all the time from Christ’s coming, and the establishing of his Christian Church, till the last and severest persecution under antichrist. See St. Augustine, lib. xx. de Civ. Dei. chap. vii. And when he shall come again, and be let loose, as it were, in antichrist’s time, he must continue a short while: for all the ancient fathers agree, by the interpretations they give to the Scripture, that antichrist, and consequently the devil with antichrist, must reign but a short time. The scarlet coloured beast, the devil, called the prince of this world, on whom the harlot gilded with gold sat; that is, all the wicked, and particularly all wicked kings and princes, with their worldly greatness, who were drunk with the wine of her prostitution; that is, who abandoned themselves and indulged their passions with all sensual pleasures, and contented themselves with the vain and deceitful happiness of this life; to be convinced of which, the Angel is said to have taken St. John in spirit into a wilderness from the company of the wicked world, the better to see and contemplate the vanity of their short and false happiness. This woman, the harlot, this Babylon, this multitude of the wicked, especially the heathen persecuting emperors at Rome, and in all other places, (and they who acted against the Christians under them) are said to be drunk with the blood of the saints, and the blood of the martyrs, by putting the Christians, the Catholics and the servants of God to death, from the foundation of the world to its consummation, by the instigation of the beast, the devil. The beast, the devil, is represented with seven heads and ten horns; that is, with many heads and many horns, signified by the numbers seven and ten. See St. Augustine, chap. xxiii. p. 606. --- The seven heads, as it is said, ver. 9, are seven mountains and seven kings, i.e. a great many. And also the ten horns, (ver. 12.) are ten kings. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain Revelation Chapter 17
Revelation Chapter 17
The characters of Babylon are first portrayed. Like the beast, she is only one thing in the judgment but morally she is more important than all the rest. The general character is the great active idolatress that has gained influence over the mass of the nations; next, that the kings of the earth have lived in guilty intimacy with her, seeking her favors, while those that dwell on the earth have lost their senses through her pernicious and inebriating influence. This is the general idea first given, a character plain enough to mark the Roman or Papal system.
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But more details follow. There was a woman, a religious system, sitting on an imperial beast full of names of blasphemy, having the form which marked it Roman. The woman was gorgeously and imperially arrayed, had every human glory and ornament on her, and a rich cup of prostituting yet gross idolatries in her hand. “Abominations are simply idols; “filthiness of her fornication,” all the horrible corruption that accompanies it. Her cup was full of them. She was in the desert; no springs of God were there. It was not, so to speak, God’s land, no heavenly country. To spiritual understanding she bore on her forehead her character (yet one known only when spiritually known), of the great city of corruption, source of all seduction to men and of all idolatry in the earth: such was Popery. But this was not all. All the blood of the saints was found in her: she was the persecuting murderess of those God delighted in, and who bore witness to Jesus. [16] The prophet was astonished-for it was what the church had come to.
The angel then describes the beast on which she rode. It had been, ceased to exist, and then it comes up again from direct diabolical sources-comes up out of the abyss. The renewed Roman Empire, which had disappeared, is blasphemous and diabolical in nature, and in this character goes to destruction: yet all but the elect on the earth will be in admiration of it when they see the beast that was, is not, and shall be present. Of itself this marks the Roman or Latin Empire, only that it will reappear more formally. But Rome is more distinctly marked. It is the city of the seven hills. Nor was this even all. It was the existing authority in the time of the prophecy: five of its governing powers had fallen; one was there; there was then one yet to come for a short space, and then the beast out of the abyss, the last diabolical state of the empire, would appear, and it would be destroyed. The last however is not a new form; it is one of the seven, though an eighth. My impression is, that the first Napoleon and his brief empire is the seventh, and we have now to wait for the development of the last. The beast, though imperial, has ten horns, ten distinct kingdoms. They have their power, and for the same period, with the beast. But they all give their power to the beast, and make war against Christ, the rejected One on earth; but He shall overcome them. For, despised as He may be, supreme authority is His, and there are others coming with Him, not merely angels but called ones, His saints.
Details are then added. The waters are explained as peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues-masses of populations in their diverse divisions. Next the ten horns, the kingdoms which are associated with the beast, and the beast (for so it is to be read) hate the whore and eat her flesh and burn her with fire (first, take all her substance and fatness, and then destroy her); for they are to give their kingdom to the blasphemous beast until God’s words are fulfilled. And then we are expressly to]d that the woman (not “the whore “-the last is her corrupt idolatrous character-but the “woman”), who as riding the beast was to be such, is Rome. All this chapter 17 is description.
Footnotes for Revelation Chapter 17
16: It is important to remark that formal religion, which rests on ancient claims as established, and which is left behind as to the truth by others who have received it, is the regular habitual instigator of persecution, though others may be the persecutors. So it was with the Jews, so in the Imperial history of the world. It always becomes false as regards truth, though it may retain some and important truths. The truths which test theheart and its obedience are not there.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain (Second Division.)
SECTION SIXTH
(Second Division.)
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The Seventh Vial of Anger, or the Three Great End-Judgments
Rev_17:1 to Rev_20:10
I.–FIRST SPECIAL END-JUDGMENT. JUDGMENT UPON BABYLON
Revelation 17-18
A.—THE JUDGEMENT UPON BABYLON AS A HEAVEN-PICTURE, OR THE HEAVENLY PROPHECY OF THE FALL OF BABYLON
Rev_17:1-18
1And there came one of the seven angels which [who] had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me [om. unto me]1, Come [om. Come] Hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore [harlot] that sitteth upon [or ins. the]2 many waters; 2with whom the kings of the earth have [om. have] committed fornication, and the inhabitants of [they who inhabit] the earth have been [were]3made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So [And] he carried me away in the [om. the] spirit into the [a] wilderness: and I saw a woman sit [sitting] upon a scarlet colored [om. colored] beast [wild-beast], full of [or ins. the]3 names ofblasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4And the woman was arrayed [clothed] in purple and scarlet color [om. color], and4 decked [gilded] with gold and precious stones [stone] and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness [the uncleannesses]5 of her fornication6: 5And upon her forehead was [om. was] a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF [ins. THE] HARLOTS AND [ins. OF THE] ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. 6And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs [witnesses] of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration [wonder]. 7And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel [wonder]? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast [wild-beast] that carrieth [beareth] her, which [that] 8hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast [wild-beast] that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall [is about to (μέλλει)] ascend out of the bottomless [om. bottomless] pit [abyss] and [ins. to] go7 into perdition (ὰπώλειαν): and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were [of whom the name is] not written in [upon] the book [scroll] of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold [see] the beast [wild-beast] that [ins. he] was, and is not, and yet is [om. 9yet is—ins. shall be present]8. And [om. And] Here is the mind which [that] hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth 10[or where the woman sitteth upon them], [,] and there [om. there—ins. they] are seven kings: [ins. the] five are fallen, and [om. and—ins. the]9 one is, and [om. and] the other is not yet come; and when he cometh [is come], he must continue a short space [little while]. 11And the beast [wild-beast] that was, and is not, even he10 is the [an] eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition. 12And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which [who] have [ins. not yet]11 received no [om. no—ins. a] kingdom as yet [om. as yet]; but [ins. they] receive power [authority] as kings one hour [ins. together] with the beast [wild-beast]. 13These have one mind (γνώμη), and shall [om. shall] give their power and strength [authority] unto the beast [wild-beast]. 14These shall make [om. make] war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome [conquer] them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are [om. are] called, and chosen, and faithful. 15And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore [harlot] sitteth,are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. 16And the ten horns which thou sawest upon [om. upon—ins. and]12 the beast [wild-beast], these shall hate the whore [harlot], and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn [consume] her with [or in]13 fire. 17For God hath [om. hath] put in [gave into] their hearts to fulfill [perform] his will [mind (γνώμη)], and to agree [perform one mind (ποιῆσαι μίαν γνώμην)]14, and [ins. to] give their kingdom unto the beast 18[wild-beast], until the words15 of God shall be fulfilled [finished]. And the woman which [that] thou sawest is that [the] great city, which [that] reigneth [hath kingdom] over the kings of the earth.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
SYNOPTICAL VIEW
When we say: the fall of Babylon as a Heaven-picture, we mean, the fall of Babylon sub specie æterni, or, in other words, the phenomenon of Antichristianity in the Church, in all its historical bearings, illuminated by the light of revelation and designated for judgment by the rule of Divine Providence.
We must, above all, keep fast hold of the following points: 1. That the Babylon here spoken of, the Harlot, is to be distinguished from the general Babylon (Rev_16:19), and yet that it coincides with the latter as its first [last?]16 historical culmination. 2. That the Beast which bears the Harlot is identical with the Beast out of the sea (Revelation 13), as the peculiar antitheocratic and Antichristian organ of Satan; that, however, it here comes under consideration provisionally in a special aspect only, as bearing the Woman for a time, and, finally, judging her. Hence, also, the history of the Beast is more special here than in Revelation 13. In the latter passage, Rev_17:3, one of his heads is mortally wounded; here, the whole Beast disappears for a time (Rev_17:8).17 3. That the heads and horns of the Beast here resolve themselves into a special history consisting of two parts—a history which must by no means be confounded with the history of the Beast presented in Revelation 13.
That we are still in the sphere of the seventh Vial of anger is manifest, in the first place, from the bare fact that one of the seven Angels who had the Vials, shows the Seer the judgment of the great Harlot. The latter is preliminarily signalized by two marks: 1. She sits upon many waters; she is an authority based upon many nationalities, many national dispositions, peculiarities and currents. 2. With her the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and they who inhabit the earth have become drunk with the wine of her fornication. She herself has become for the kings of the earth, of earthly states and seats of culture, an idol, a subject of idolatry which has seduced them to a thousand-fold apostasy from the laws of religion, humanity, truth and righteousness; and not only have they departed from the true God and served false gods in company and connection with her, but they have also done the same independently, as her followers and imitators. They have, however, in many respects been swept along in this direction by those who inhabit the earth—by absolute hangers-on of the soil and of authority, who have become intoxicated in the fanatical enthusiasm of the bigotry of the world.
The Angel takes the Seer in spirit into a wilderness. Here, it seems, we a while ago left the Woman, once clothed with the sun (Revelation 12). And such is indeed the fact: it is the same wilderness, and not the same; the same Woman, and not the same. History sufficiently instructs us concerning the fact that the holy wilderness of world-renunciation, of asceticism, which so long guarded the integrity of the Woman, became in course of time a wilderness of spiritual and intellectual moral corruption—that the heavenly flight from the world was changed into a demonic seeking of the world, embodied in the wild career of false monks—that a wilderness of hypocrisy, pia fraus, fanatical terrorism and demoralizing dogmas of all kinds was gradually developed. But the Woman—is she, indeed, the same? Those who cannot understand how the one Woman (Revelation 12) can in the course of time have divided into the two figures of the Harlot and the Bride, should consider the fact that the wheat and the chaff grow on the same ear; that the same Theocracy which, in respect of its internal essence, bore Christ, also crucified Him, in respect of its external hierarchical figuration; and that thus the development of the Harlot and the Bride has not been effected in two separate lines, but in an original organic unity, in which the contrast has been continually maturing (see the foot-note on p. 25).
The following considerations now successively demand our attention:
1. The Woman and her relation to the Beast.
2. The Beast in his relation to the seven Heads.
3. The seven Heads in relation to the ten Horns.
1. The Woman and her relation to the Beast.
That the Woman here depicted is significant of the fallen Church there can be no doubt, when we consider the import of the Woman (the congregation of God) and of womanhood (religiosity)—(see Rink, p. 238 sqq.). The exclusive reference of this figure to pagan Rome fails to recognize, in the first place, the broad scope of the eschatological vision; secondly, the fact that even in the time of Domitian, and far more in the time of Nero, it would have been impossible for the Apocalyptist to speak of Roma as cherishing a true Antichristian thirst for the blood of the saints. Thirdly, such a reference misapprehends the idea of Antichristianity, which takes its rise only in corrupt Christianity. From these considerations it will also be evident, first, that not simply the fallen Romish Church, Rome, is here intended;—this is the further from being the fact since imperial Rome has been transferred to Byzantium and its centre of gravity has been thence removed to Moscow and St. Petersburg; moreover, the hierarchical principle radiates far and wide throughout the Church. It is also further evident, however, that nothing but Christian Rome can constitute the symbolical and historical apex of this whole body of the fallen Church. The Muscovite hierarchism is too rude to be this apex; sporadic hierarchism too theoristic; the mean lies where hierarchism is in its whole demonic depth. Nevertheless, we regard the seven mountains whereon the Woman sits, as but an allusion to terrestrial Rome, it being agreeable to the consistency of the Book to take the seven mountains as a symbolical figure, of which we must speak further on. The Seer declares that he wondered much to see the Woman as he saw her. We apprehend this utterance in the same sense with those expositors who have assigned the contrast of this figure with the appearance in Revelation 12 as the ground of the Seer’s wonderment. In the earlier passage, we behold a celestial Woman, clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, adorned with a garland of chosen stars, equipped with eagle’s wings. Here we have a Harlot, riding or sitting upon a scarlet Beast, a Beast signalized with the hue of blood and blood-thirstiness (into which the fiery hue of the Dragon has darkened), and thus herself founded upon the Beast and its blood-thirstiness, i. e., upon an Antichristian world-power and bloody violence. The Beast is full of the names of blasphemy—there is no form of irreligion which is not comprehended in the absolute Machiavelism of world-monarchy: religious persecution, contempt of humanity, despotism over consciences, breach of promise, a doctrinal system of faithlessness—and the like—are some of the first articles. The incongruence of the seven Heads and ten Horns is brought into view here likewise, in order to the signalizing of the power indicated, as possessing the semblance, and but the semblance, of holiness. On this demonic Beast the poor Woman has prepared her a sort of throne for her exaltation; no longer is the moon beneath her feet—vanished are the stars of elect spirits, and the eagle-wings. She herself is clothed with a party-colored double red—with the royal hue of purple and the scarlet of blood—and over this is spread the sheen of gold brocade, of precious stones and pearls, the richest worldly adornment of every sort. In her band the Woman holds the magical means of her dominion and glory, the golden cup, the symbolical vessel of consecrate and holy communion, solace and refreshment—but full of abominations; and, together with the cup, the uncleannesses of the fornication, i. e., the idolatry, of the earth—i. e., all those iniquities that follow in the train of idolatry. The abominations denote all manner of unnaturalnesses; the uncleannesses of the fornication of the earth are all those immoralities which are the consequential issues of the earth’s departure from the true God and its service of false divinities. On her forehead she has a name written as a mystery; i. e., whoever is able to read the name, will read the following inscription: Babylon the Great, the Mother of the Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth. She herself knows not that her proper escutcheon—absolute sovereignty over the consciences of earth—means only this, and can mean nothing else. Most repulsive is her appearance: A drunken woman! Through fanaticism intoxicated to the verge of frenzy! Drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus! Blood-guiltiness produces excitement, confusion of the mind; and this remark applies in the fullest sense to that blood-guiltiness whose measure is filled up in the persecution and destruction of the holiest witnesses of God and Christ. Grotius depicts this phenomenon with drastic vividness, like a Dutch genre-picture: Vidit eam ore rabido, despumante et evomente sanguinem, ut ebrii solent.—But now arises the question—how can the Beast lend himself to bear the Woman, when it is declared that the ten Horns and the Beast shall hate the Harlot and make her desolate (Rev_17:16)? The weight of the future tense must be observed here. At first the Beast is subject to the Woman, for it is the Woman who helped the Beast out of his apparent annihilation. The absolutism of the hierarchy has promoted the growth of the absolutism of despotism. Finally, however, there is a reversal of the relation, the Beast having made a pupil of the Woman’s, the False Prophet, subservient to himself; and in the end it is the deep-lying antagonism between the demonic ground-forms of the two [the Woman and the Beast] which gives occasion to the full outbreak of hostility and the destruction of the Woman—possibly in a conflict in which the Beast will prove himself more human than the Harlot.
The Seer marvels to see the Woman in this situation—or, let us rather say, to see her again. According to the speech of the Angel, that which most surprises John is her fellowship with the Beast, her riding upon him—this most horrible Amazon-equipment. Hence the answer of the Angel [to John’s wonderment] has in view an explanation of the origin of this mystery of the fellowship of the Woman and the Beast. The utterance runs thus: The Beast was, and is not, and shall ascend out of the abyss, in order to go speedily into damnation.18 This declaration [of the Beast’s vanishment and re-appearance] is, certainly, a parallel to the mortal wounding of a head of the Beast (Rev_13:3), but it must be distinguished from the declaration concerning the king who “is not yet come” (Rev_17:10). The wounding of the Beast’s head is the cause, the disappearance of the Beast the result; the return of the Beast is the transition from the seventh to the eighth head. For at that very moment of the vision [not the moment depicted by the vision, but the time at which the vision was vouchsafed.—Tr.], the Beast was not—he seemed to have vanished—whilst the sixth king was in being. We, therefore, understand the declaration of the Angel as of the following import: The Antichristian world-power was in being before Christ; it then seemed, for a period reaching to the time of the vision, to be annihilated by the victory of Christ—as indeed it was principially annihilated; it however was to return later as an external apparent power. And it was as the returned Beast that the Beast carried the Woman, for in that interval of his vanishment it was only in the saintly seeming of subserviency to the Woman that he could make his appearance again. But, again, it was also his wonderful re-appearance which induced the Woman to trust herself to him. From the wonder of all people dwelling upon the earth at the apparent invincibility of the Beast—that is, from the renewed belief in the irresistible power of evil—the complete fall of the Woman resulted—the vain fancy that with the help of the Beast, with the help of ungodly and God-opposed state-maxims, she might attain to greatness and ever-increasing glory. Hence this unblest concordat in which, for a long time, the Woman seems to rule the Beast, until she is finally deposed and destroyed by him.
2. The Beast in his relation to the seven Heads.
Hither [let] understanding [come]. The mystery which the Angel here pronounces can be solved only through the union of worldly understanding [or an understanding of the world—Weltverstand] and spiritual wisdom. In the application of this problem to the Nero tradition, there would certainly have been no wisdom; at most, it could only have contained such an understanding as the Apocalyptist would have declared to be devoid of wisdom. To proceed, the seven Heads of the Beast are seven mountains, on which the Woman sits, and are seven kings. Here our task is, to abide by the laws of symbolism and not take a leap into geography, although we assume that there is an allusion to the City of the Seven Hills. Neither is it advisable to regard the sentence, and are seven kings, as tautological. As in the Book of Daniel, the world-monarchies (Revelation 2) are, in respect of their bright side, represented in the human image of metal, and (Revelation 7) in respect of their dark side, in the four beasts, so there is also here, doubtless, an antithesis to be taken for granted. The seven mountains are seven forms of empire—in the sacred number, because the State, taken in the abstract, is subservient to the purposes of the Divine Kingdom. The kings, however, seem here, in accordance with chs. Rev_17:2 and Rev_18:3, as despots, to represent the dark side of the world-monarchy, its God and Christ-opposed conduct—hence, pre-eminently, its bestial nature. The reference is not to individual kings; such a reference is impossible on this account, if for no other reason, viz.: because the kings must be in exact correspondence with the seven mountains. Otherwise the Apocalyptist must necessarily have seen fourteen heads, for, in accordance with the laws of allegory, the heads cannot denote two entirely different groups—the seven mountains as diverse from the seven kings. We reckon once more, therefore, the four world-monarchies of Daniel and add to them the Roman-Herodian government as the fifth monarchy. The sixth king is the Roman Empire at the time of the vision, and the Seer proleptically beholds the coming of a seventh, a world-monarchy, on which the Woman can ride for a short time. Then the Beast that was, and is not, again undisguisedly appears. In the seventh king it was, to a greater or less extent, the still anonymous bearer of the Woman; in the eighth, which issues from all the seven, as their evil extract, it will become the open enemy and destroyer of the Woman, and then, when it has fulfilled its judicial mission, it will go into perdition.
3. The Seven Heads and the Ten Horns.
The ten horns are distinct from the seven heads; they seem finally, however, to be comprehended together above the eighth head (eight is the number of the world), in which the Beast manifests himself again openly. The number ten is the number of the ripe development of the world, in antithesis to the number seven as the number of complete Divine order. And so, also, the horns denote bare power or force, in antithesis to the heads which symbolize the government of intelligence. They, therefore, together with the eighth king-picture from the life of the Beast, issue forth as ten kings of abstract power, as absolute radicalism. They had hitherto not yet received a kingdom; now they obtain, for one hour, complete imperial power in the world together with the Beast. This hour is, again, the great and fear-inspiring hour of the decisive conflict between open Antichristianity and the hypocritically disguised Antichristianity of the Woman. The ten kings rule, not successively, but conjointly; they are also not real kings, but mock-kings (ὠς βασιλεῖς),19 and if they have one mind, it is but the spirit of Antichristian coalition. By the declaration: They shall war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall conquer them, etc., the finale is indicated—the judgment upon the Beast (Rev_19:19). But to what purpose this interruption here? It explains that hatred of the Woman which finally bursts forth in completeness. A bold change of allegorical images is visible in the first and third verses, where the same Woman is spoken of as sitting upon many waters, and as sitting in the wilderness. Here [Rev_17:15] the reference is again to the waters on which the Harlot sits (and when we read: the waters which thou sawest, this inaccuracy reminds us of similar expressions in the Johannean Gospel). The sovereignty of the Harlot is based not only upon the wilderness and the Beast, but also, through these, upon the peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And she becomes in the end, by means of the semblance of Christocracy that clings to her, an object of hatred to the ten Horns and the Beast. She is destroyed by four principal strokes. In the first place, she is wasted, desolated: an allusion to the Harlot as a city, or to her false eremite estate. Secondly, she is stripped, exposed in her nakedness, a frequently cited punishment of courtesans, whose meretricious adornment has been a means of seduction. Thirdly, she is, while still living, robbed of her flesh, which her enemies devour: her goods, her territories, all her possessions become the prey of the foe. And fourthly, she is, in a sarcastic auto da fé, suggestive of so many like proceedings, burned with fire; amid the wrath-fire of open, bold Antichristianity, hypocritical Antichristianity meets its end.—For God gave into their hearts. As, in accordance with the grand view of the Seer, in the wrath of the heathen, the wrath of God is manifest in an ironical mode of judgment, so in the one mind and unanimity of these kings, the purpose of God is visible, and in the surrender of their kingdom to the Beast, the consummation of the prophetic words of God may be seen, as in that dark hour when Caiaphas and Pilate were made to subserve His Providence (Joh_11:51; Joh_19:11). The Angel at the close comprehends the characteristics of the Woman in one expression: The Woman that thou sawest is the great city that hath kingdom over the kings of the earth. In the Woman, Great Babylon shall be judged specially as Babylon.
[ABSTRACT OF VIEWS, ETC.]
By the American Editor.
[Elliott:20 This chapter contains a vision (Rev_17:3-6), and a descriptive statement by the Angel (Rev_17:7-18); both the vision and statement are introductory to the judgment upon Babylon, and explanatory of its causes and reasonableness. In the Vision, the Woman represents Papal Rome; the Beast, the Roman Empire under its last or Papal head (see p. 259); the desert, the Roman Campagna. The period of time contemplated in the vision is the 1260 years of the Beast’s life under his last head (p. 260).—In the description, the Angel contemplates the entire history of both the Woman and the Beast—the former representing Rome, Imperial and Papal (see Rev_17:18); the latter (identical with the Beast from the sea of Revelation 13), the Roman Empire under all its heads or forms. (It is on the ground of the general nature of this description that Elliott denies that the burning of Rev_17:16 is the final burning foretold in Rev_18:8. He explains the destruction referred to in the former instance as preceding the vision—as that effected by the ten Gothic powers in the Fifth and Sixth centuries. These horns of the Beast (p. 260) then spoiled and burned the City, and so desolated the surrounding Campagna as to produce the ἕπημος or desert, in the midst of which Papal Rome arose, and in which (Rev_17:3) the vision was located).—The riding of the Woman on the Beast (Rev_17:3) symbolizes that the Western Papal Empire, as a whole, with the power of its ten secular kingdoms and many peoples, should uphold and be ruled by Papal Rome.—The double character of the Woman, as a Harlot with the ten kings and a tavern-hostess vending drugged wines to the common people (Rev_17:1-2; Rev_17:4), symbolizes her unholy alliance with the former, and her unholy and corrupting traffic (in indulgences, relics, transubstantiation-cup, etc.) with the latter.—The adornment of the Harlot (Rev_17:4) presents, “as applied to the Romish Church, a picture characteristic and from the life; the dress coloring specified being distinctively that of the Romish ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the ornaments those with which it has been bedecked beyond any Church called Christian.”—The word Mystery, Rev_17:5 (allusive to the mystery of iniquity, 2Th_2:7-8), “was once, if we may repose credit on no vulgar authority, written on the Pope’s tiara.”21—The title “Mother of harlots, etc.,” is a parody of the title, “Rome, Mother and Mistress.”—The drunkenness with the blood of saints, Rev_17:6, symbolizes the martyr blood shed by Rome throughout the 1260 years of her prosperity.
Barnes: This chapter commences a more detailed description of the judgment inflicted on the Antichristian power referred to in Revelation 16; it contains a description of the sequel of the seventh Vial, which is continued (in various forms) to the close of Revelation 19; it embraces the following: 1. Introduction, Rev_17:1-3; Revelation 2. A particular description of this Antichristian power, Rev_17:3-6; Revelation 3. An explanation of what is meant by the Woman, and of the design of the representation, which comprises (1), a promise of the Angel that he would explain; (2) an enigmatical representation of the design of the vision (containing a description of the Beast, etc.), Rev_17:8-14; (3) a more literal statement of what is meant by this, Rev_17:15-18.—The Harlot symbolizes Papal Rome; her adornment, fornication, cup, drunkenness, many waters, substantially as Elliott; her inscription, see Expl. in Detail, Rev_17:6.—The Beast is identical with that of Rev_13:1, and designates the Roman power (see p. 260)—the period of the vision being that of the Eighth or Papal head and the ten horns, or ten subordinate kingdoms22—viz.: the 1260 years of Papal supremacy.—The destruction of Rev_17:16-17, is the final destruction of Rev_18:8, to be effected by the instrumentality of the ten secular powers who now uphold and are governed by the Harlot.—The ἕρημος, Rev_17:3, is the Roman Campagna.23
Stuart: Ch. 17 is wholly occupied with an explanatory vision designed for the purpose of making the reader understand whose destruction is going on.—The Woman symbolizes the City of Rome, “altogether in the manner of the Old Testament prophets, who everywhere personify great cities by women.”—“The Beast means the Roman Emperors, specifically Nero, of whom the report spread throughout the empire is (was) that he will revive, after being apparently slain, and will come as it were from the abyss or Hades; but he will still perish, and that speedily. The Beast symbolizes him of whom it is said, that all the world will wonder at and worship him, when they see him thus returned, as they suppose from the under-world” (see also p. 261).—The ten horns denote the subordinate and tributary kings of the empire, who unite with the Beast in persecuting the Church.
Rev_17:16 indicates “that tyrants like Nero, and persecutors such as his confederates, would occasion wasting and desolation to Rome, even like that already inflicted by Nero, who had set Rome on fire and consumed a large portion of it. In a description so highly figurative as the one before us, nothing more seems to be necessarily meant.”—The ἕρημος of Rev_17:3, is “appropriate to symbolize the future condition of the Beast.”
Wordsworth. The views of this commentator concerning the Woman and her session upon the Beast, coincide generally with those of Elliott and Barnes.—For his interpretation of the Beast and the heads, see p. 261.—By the horns he understands “the kingdoms growing out of the Roman Empire at its dismemberment.”—The ἕρημος, he declares, may indicate the Campagna, pagna, or the moral wilderness in which Rome is situate, or both.—The destruction of Rev_17:16 he interprets as Barnes.
Alford. This commentator also adopts the generally accepted Protestant hypothesis (that advocated by Elliott and Barnes) concerning the Woman, her adornment, fornication, session upon the Beast, etc.—For his interpretation of the Beast and the seven heads, see pp. 261 sq.—Concerning the eighth head he writes: “This eighth, the last and worst phase of the Beast, is not represented as any one of his heads, but as being the Beast himself in actual embodiment. He is ἐκ τῶν ἑπτά, not ‘one of the seven,’ but the successor and result of the seven, following and springing out of them. And he εἰς ἀπώλειαν ὑπάγει—does not fall like the others, but goes on and meets his own destruction at the hand of the Lord Himself. There can be little doubt in the mind of the student of prophecy, who is thus described; that it is the ultimate Antichristian power, prefigured by the little horn in Daniel, and expressly announced by St. Paul, 2Th_2:3 sqq.”—He interprets the ten horns as “ten European powers, which, in the last time, in concert with and subjection to the Antichristian power, shall make war against Christ. In the precise number and form here indicated, they have not yet arisen.”—He regards the destruction as the final destruction mentioned Revelation 18.
Lord: It is apparent from Rev_17:1-2, that the Woman had been beheld in a previous but unrecorded vision, sitting where there were seven mountains and many waters. The scene was the site of Rome; the seven mountains were the seven hills of that city, and were symbols of the seven kinds of rulers who had exercised the government of the ancient empire; the waters were symbols of the peoples, etc., of the empire; the Woman symbolized the nationalized hierarchies of the Apostate Church, and the actions ascribed to her show that the kings of the earth united with her in her idolatry.—The vision exhibited (Rev_17:3-6) and the explanation (Rev_17:7-18) represent the Woman in her relations to the rulers, first as her supporters, and finally as her destroyers.—The Beast on which the Woman was borne, was, and is not, and yet is: it was, as the successions of rulers of the ancient empire, which its heads symbolize, had been; it is not, as a government of a head is no longer exercised over the empire as anterior to its fall; and yet it still is, in an eighth form, inasmuch as the cotemporaneous kings who now reign over the kingdom into which it is divided exert a sway essentially the same—they are a combination of rulers and under their several governments one, by exercising their authority on the same principles and on the same authority as the seventh head, and in that respect they are an eighth appropriately symbolized by the same monster under the horns.24—The names of blasphemy symbolize the arrogation by the rulers of the rights of God, in assuming to dictate the faith and worship of their subjects, legislating over Divine laws, making their will the reason that they are to offer worship, etc.—The session of the Woman on the Beast denotes that the combination of hierarchies whom she symbolizes is nationalized and established by the civil rulers.—The destruction of Rev_17:16 has already begun in the disallowance and scorn of the claims of the Established Church in most of the European States, the confiscation of her property in France, the conquest of the Papal States, etc.; and these judgments are to be carried on to a greater severity
Glasgow. This writer adopts the generally accepted Protestant view that the Woman symbolizes Rome ecclesiastical.—The Beast he identifies with the Beast of Rev_13:1, and the Dragon of Revelation 12 (see p. 263), and regards it as symbolizing, in its entirety, the world-power, and at the period contemplated by the vision, the Roman Empire in and after the fall of the Western Empire, A. D., 493.—The heads have here a double symbolization; they are: 1. Seven mountains, i. e., the seven forms of government through which the Beast (since his emergence from the sea, Rev_13:1) has passed, viz.: (1) the state of ten horns represented in Italy for a time by Odoacer and Theodoric, (2) the government of Justinian in the West, (3) the Kingdom of the Lombards, (4) that of Pepin and Charlemagne, (5) that of Otho the Great, (6) that of Charles V., (7) that of the Emperors after Protestantism obtained political equality, A. D. 1555; 2. Seven kings, i. e., the original kingdoms out of which the Roman power rose, as on p. 242.—The horns he interprets as Elliott, see p. 259.—The session on the Beast he interprets as Elliott and Protestant interpreters generally.—The period of the vision he places in the latter part of the effusion of the seventh Vial; the Woman “is revealed to view in the same condition in which she has existed for a long period.”
Rev_17:16 foretells the assaults that have from the era of the Emperors been made, from time to time, upon the Romish Church, to result in a complete destruction.
Auberlen: This chapter describes the Harlot and the Beast, ripe for judgment. (For the views of this writer concerning the Woman and the Beast, generically considered, and the wilderness, see pp. 243 sq., and 263 sq.). The Harlot is identical with the Woman of Revelation 12, who symbolizes the Church of God in the world; she is the Church conforming to the world. The identity is established by, 1. The place where she is seen, the wilderness, comp. Rev_12:6; Rev_12:14; Rev_17:3. 2. The fact that the same expressions are used in chs. 12 and 17 for wilderness and Woman (ἔρημος and γυνή). 3. The fact that the Beast in the two chapters is identical;—but Beast and Woman are in both placed in immediate connection; if the identity of the one is conceded, how is it possible to doubt that of the other?25 4. The expression used by the Seer: “When I saw her I wondered:”—the wonder finds its only explanation in the extraordinary change which had passed over the Woman; the impression made on John may be expressed by the words of Isaiah (Isa_1:21): “How is the faithful city become a harlot!” 5. The reason which lies in the expressions: Harlot (Rev_17:1; Rev_17:5; Rev_17:15-16; Rev_19:2), to commit fornication (Rev_17:2; Rev_18:3; Rev_18:9), fornication (Rev_14:8; Rev_17:2; Rev_17:4; Rev_18:3; Rev_19:2); Woman means the Church (see on p. 243); Harlot throughout both Testaments the Apostate Church, comp. Jeremiah 2, 3; Ezekiel 16, 23; Hosea 1-3; Mat_12:39; Mat_16:4; Mar_8:38; Rev_2:21. 6. The objective parallelism between Babylon and New Jerusalem; both are cities—the one a harlot, the other a bride (Rev_17:1; Rev_17:3; Rev_17:5; Rev_21:9); but as the latter is acknowledged to mean the transfigured Church, it follows that Babylon means the Church in its worldliness. 7. The contrast in Rev_19:2; Rev_19:9, between the Harlot and the Wife of the Lamb. 8. The word Mystery on the forehead of the Harlot (Rev_17:5); this word warns us not to adopt a literal, but to look for a spiritual interpretation of those which follow, an interpretation to which we may be guided by Eph_5:31-32.—The word Harlot describes the essential character of the false Church; she retains her human form, remains a woman, does not become a beast—she has a form of godliness, but denies the power thereof (2Ti_3:8). Her adultery “appears in its proper form when she wishes herself to be a worldly power, uses politics and diplomacy, makes flesh her arm, uses unholy means for holy ends, spreads her dominions by sword or money, fascinates the hearts of men by sensual ritualism, allows herself to become ‘Mistress of ceremonies’ to dignitaries of this world, flatters prince or people, the living or the dead—in short, when she, like Israel of old, seeks the help of one worldly power against the danger threatening from another;” it appears in a less gross form (comp. Mat_5:28) “whenever she forgets that she is in the world, even as Christ was in the world, as a bearer of the cross and pilgrim, that the world is crucified to her and judged, whenever she regards the world as a reality and lusts after its power and pleasures.” “Herein consists the essence of whoredom, in leaning and listening, and conforming to, and relying on the world. Hence, there could not be a better description of it than that given, Rev_17:3; Rev_17:7; Rev_17:9; the Woman sits on the Beast.”26 (See also below). —The Harlot cannot be found exclusively either in the Romish Church, or in the Established State Churches. Christendom (the Church) as a whole, in all its manifold manifestation of sects, is the Harlot; the boundaries between Woman and Harlot are not denominational—true believers are hidden and dispersed, the invisible Church is within the visible, as the kernel within the shell;27 nevertheless it is true that the Roman and Greek Churches are in a more peculiar sense the Harlot, than the evangelical Protestant. “The Roman Catholic Church is not only accidentally and de facto, but in virtue of its very principle, a harlot, … whereas the Evangelical (Protesta ***) Church is, according to her principle and fundamental creed, a chaste woman; the Reformation was a protest of the Woman against the Harlot.”—As yet the mystery of Babylon is not fully developed. Bengel was probably correct in his expectation that Rome will once more rise to power; it is probable that the Greco-Russian Catholicism will likewise become of importance; the adulterous, worldly elements, in all churches and sects, lean towards that false Catholicism, and pave the way for its progress;—and thus may it attain again to power.—In like manner as the Woman, the Beast also appears in this chapter in a shape other than before; the deadly wound (Rev_13:3) is healed (see Extracts from Auberlen in foot-notes, pp. 263 sq.)—he recovers life and returns, but now not only from the sea (Rev_13:3), but out of the abyss (Rev_17:8), whence he has drawn new Anti-christian strength of Hell; he is now scarlet-colored, a symbol of his blood-guiltiness; the names of blasphemy formerly on his heads (Rev_13:1) now cover his whole body, as a sign that his opposition to God is now to manifest itself perfectly; the crowns which were formerly on the horns (Rev_17:3) have now disappeared.28 In such manner the Antichristian Kingdom comes into existence;—“a new kingdom in which all the Beast’s opposition to God is concentrated, and raised to a power such as it had had never before; therefore we read of an eighth, which proceeds from the seven (Rev_17:11), and is the full manifestation of the beast-nature.” The final apostasy will consist in the union of the pseudo-Christian and Antichristian elements, which the Apocalypse expresses by the Harlot sitting on the Beast;29 this alliance likewise appeared in the concluding period of the Old Testament—apostate Israel, which was then the Harlot, formed an alliance with the heathen world-power against Jesus and His Apostles, see Luk_23:12; Act_17:5; Act_17:9.—The abominations committed by the Jews, drew down the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, that is the judgment of the Harlot by the Beast (Dan_9:26-27)—an exact parallel to the future judgment set forth in Rev_17:16-17.—The judgment on the Harlot has already begun; see extract in foot-note (first column), p. 264.—E. R. C.]
EXPLANATIONS IN DETAIL
Rev_17:1-2. One of the seven, etc.—Which, is not to be determined, though the judgment upon Babylon in the narrower sense is indicated under the fourth Vial of anger.—Hither, δεῦρο (comp. Rev_21:3).—The reference is not to a local motion, but to a certain direction of the contemplation in accordance with the guidance of the Angel.— I will show unto thee the judgment.—“The fulfillment of the promise is not found immediately in Rev_17:3 (contrary to the opinion of Hengstenberg), nor is it contained at all in Revelation 17” (Düsterdieck). It is doubtless, however, the idea of the Angel that John must already be able to see the judgment in this appearance of this Woman—ch. 17 being the judgment in a Heaven-picture, and Revelation 18 the same in an Earth-picture.—Of the great harlot.—Pagan Rome, according to Düsterdieck. The following description is simply inappropriate to this conception.—That sitteth [Lange: is enthroned] upon many waters.—Pagan Rome did indeed reign over many peoples, but its throne did not rest upon the superstition of those peoples (Jer_51:13 does not apply here). Still more forcibly does the following pronounce against the application of the passage to pagan Rome.—[Rev_17:2]. With whom the kings of the earth committed fornication.—Pagan Rome did not allure the kings of the earth by blandishments; she destroyed them. There is one case—that of Antony and Cleopatra—which might be recommended, as a make-shift, to the “historical interpretation,” but even there the genders would have to be reversed before it could properly be regarded as applicable.—And they who inhabit the earth were made drunk, etc.—Not even this could be said, with reference to pagan Rome, either of the Spaniards, or of the Britons, or of the Germans, or of the Parthians, or of the Jews.
Rev_17:3. And he carried me away in spirit.—This is to be understood only of a change effected in the ecstatic direction of the spirit [of the Seer]. “The confounding of this wilderness with that mentioned in Rev_12:6; Rev_12:14—a proceeding which, on account of the lack of the article is, even from a mere formal point of view, properly impossible—is in Auberlen’s case connected with his view of the identity of the Harlot of Revelation 17 and the Woman of Revelation 12”30 Duesterdieck. Most certainly, the ascetic wilderness in which Jesuitism has its being is, spiritually, utterly diverse from the wilderness of Saint Anthony, and yet the two stand in the relation of historic continuity, and, hence, external unity. In like manner, the relation of the Harlot to the Woman is determined. According to Düsterdieck, et al., the Woman is seen in the wilderness because of the desolation imminent upon her in accordance with Rev_17:16! The symbolical interpretation of the wilderness is abundantly illustrated both by the Old and the New Testaments (Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, etc.); we must, therefore, wonder at the perverted interpretations of it (Bengel: Europe, especially Italy; other interpretations, see in Düsterdieck, p. 506). The fact that the same Woman who here sits in the wilderness, is subsequently represented as sitting on many waters, must necessarily give trouble to the “historical interpretation.”—And I saw a Woman sitting upon a scarlet Beast.—De Wette and Züllig embellish the Beast with a scarlet covering. The Beast must wear the color of blood (Andr., Lyra, et al.), just as the Dragon wears the color of flame, which is allied to blood-color. The Woman’s attire is variegated; together with the blood-color, the honorable hue of purple appears. In general, the Beast of the present passage is identical with that of Revelation 13; observe, however, the formal distinction that in the latter passage the Beast is spoken of in its general, world-historical shape, whilst here the primary and special reference is to it in its re-appearance after its vanishment, as the bearer, at first, of the Harlot.—Full of the names of blasphemy.—The γέμον31 with the accusative is remarkable. Hebraizing: An emphatic expression: now filled up with writing; all the names of blasphemy. [“The names of blasphemy, which were found before on the heads of the Beast only (Rev_13:1), have now spread over its whole surface. As ridden and guided by the Harlot, it is tenfold more blasphemous in its titles and assumptions than before. The heathen world had but its Divi in the Cæsars as in other deified men of note; but Christendom has its ‘Most Faithful’ and ‘Most Christian’ kings, such as Louis XIV. and Philip II.; its ‘Defenders of the Faith,’ such as Charles II. and James II.; its society of unprincipled intriguers called after the sacred name of our Lord, and working Satan’s work ‘ad majorem Dei gloriam;’ its ‘holy office’ of the Inquisition, with its dens of darkest cruelty; finally its ‘Patrimony of St. Peter,’ and its ‘Holy Roman Empire;’ all of them, and many more, new names of blasphemy, with which the Woman has invested the Beast. Go where we will, and look where we will in Papal Christendom, names of blasphemy meet us. The taverns, the shops, the titles of men and places, the very insurance badges on the houses are full of them.” Alford.—E. R. C.]
Rev_17:4. And gilded with gold and precious stone and pearls.—“The κεχρυσωμένη is zeugmatical” (Düsterdieck). Both precious stones and pearls, however, must have been set in gold. As a decoration of the Church, such an apparel rudely anticipates the adornment of the celestial congregation.—A golden cup.—Even the cup [Kelch=chalice] or goblet [Becher=beaker] would look very strange in the hand of pagan Rome. The cup is, apart from the symbolism of measure, here the symbol of fellowship; the golden cup symbolizes the holiest fellowship—the fellowship of salvation. But, filled with abominations, it is certainly akin to hypocrisy, as in accordance with Bede—a strange equivalent for the “poculum missaticum” (Calov.). According to Düsterdieck, the golden cup means merely a cup that is golden, agreeably to the “historical interpretation.” The accusative καὶ τὰ ἀκάθαρτα is remarkable. The most plausible construction of this is, apparently, that of Düsterdieck, who maintains that ἀκάθαρτα should be taken as parallel with the accusative ποτήριον. It contributes to the characterism of the Woman when it is intimated that together with the cup she has all sorts of other things in her hand—things which the Spirit of truth designates as uncleannesses, and which are the issue of the fornication, i.e., idolatry, of the earth. [“This language is probably taken from Jer_51:7, ‘Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand, that made all the earth drunken; the nations have drunken of the wine, therefore the nations are mad.’ ” Barnes on Rev_14:8.—E. R. C.]
Rev_17:5-6. A name written.—The μυστήριον does not belong to the inscription, but it characterizes it—i. e., it is declaratory that the name Babylon and the rest of the title—the mother of the harlots and the abominations, etc.—is to be symbolically understood. [So also Barnes, Stuart, et al. On the other hand, Hengstenb., Wordsworth, Alf., et al. Lillie thus powerfully combats the former, and advocates the latter view: “1. While the Apocalypse is full of μυστήριον, in no other instance does the narrator herald one as such. 2. Supposing the inscription to have included Μυστήριον, an explanation was thus formally invited which is furnished in Rev_17:7; and the interpreting Angel is then to be considered as taking up the very word, and as personally (ἐγώ) confronting the difficulty which it announced. 3. As the Angel uses it the term is attached not to the name, but to the Woman herself and her equipment. 4. In that reference it might very well characterize her origin, nature, history, and destination; graciously to know the evil—‘the depths of Satan’ (Rev_2:24)—‘the mystery of iniquity’ (2Th_2:7)—this, not less than the knowledge of the good, requires heavenly teaching and ‘an unction from the Holy One’ (1Jn_2:20). 5. Even if not intended thus to be itself descriptive of the Woman, Μυστήριον might yet stand in the inscription as a sort of prelude or index to her name, somewhat like̔Ωδε ἡ σοφία ἐστίν in Rev_13:18.”—E. R. C.]
BABYLON THE GREAT.—This symbolism is introduced as early as in Genesis, with the history of the building of the tower, and carried on especially by Isaiah and Jeremiah; this special Babylon, however, must not be identified with the general Babylon (Rev_14:8 and Rev_16:19), as is ordinarily done.—The MOTHER OF HARLOTS has also a more special import; the mother is reflected in spiritually, or rather fleshly, kindred daughters, some of whom compete with the mother in magical power. Grotius is correct in supposing that the aspect of the Woman must proclaim her drunkenness—and that a drunkenness with the blood of the saints, even the witnesses of Jesus (see Syn. View). Prelusive examples of blood-thirstiness and its augmentations are to be found in the old pagan world; this blood-thirstiness, however, is fulfilled in the specific lusting of the Woman after the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, prefigured, it is true, by the death of Abel (see Matthew 23). [“The phraseology is derived from the barbarous custom (still extant among many pagan nations) of drinking the blood of enemies slain in the way of revenge. Here, then, the fury of the persecutors is depicted in a most graphic manner. Blood is drunk by them even to intoxication, i. e., copiously, in great quantities. The effect of drinking blood is said to be, to exasperate, and to intoxicate with passion and a desire of vengeance. But the copiousness of the draught, and so the extent and bitterness of persecution, is particularly marked by the expression here.” Stuart.—E. R. C.]—And I wondered.—The Seer could hardly have expressed so great astonishment at the blood-thirstiness of pagan Rome—a quality long notorious and, proportionably, not so extraordinary. Bat this Woman! The Jewish hierarchy had, certainly, already nailed Christ to the cross. But that such a Woman could finally be the product of the historical development of the Church of faith then existent, must appear even to the Seer, with his knowledge of the world, a thing unheard of. Düsterdieck here reverts to Auberlen, stating that it is the opinion of the latter that the Seer marvels at recognizing in the Harlot the degenerate Woman of Rev_12:1. Düsterdieck calls this assumption an “egregious mistake.” Not even Auberlen, however, could have looked upon the Woman herself as the Harlot; that which he so regards, is but the Woman’s last historical representation—in antithesis to her internal essence, the finally emergent Bride.32 Similar utterances of amazement at the degeneracy of the Church are to be found even in the Old Testament, Isa_5:1 [sqq.], Jer_2:1 [sqq.], Revelation 18, Ezekiel 16; Mat_24:37, 1 Timothy 4., etc. According to Bengel, the Seer wondered at the phenomenon of so powerful a Beast being constrained to carry the Woman; according to Züllig, Düsterdieck, et al., he marvelled because he knew not the import of the phenomenon; according to Ebrard, his astonishment was occasioned by the change in the Beast which he had seen in Revelation 13. According to Hengstenberg, who frequently makes a point, of discovering moral failings even in the visional moods of the Seer, the wonderment of John is censured as foolish. The object of astonishment is, doubtless, intelligible to the Seer—it is the contrast between the Woman and the Harlot; in regard to the origin and development of this contrast, however, he stands in need of enlightenment from the Angel. [The object of wonder is doubtless the complex mystery (the mysteries, for each object is in itself a mystery) concerning which the Angel gives an explanation, viz.: the Woman, the Beast, and their relation to each other. This is evident from the words of the Angel (Rev_17:7): Wherefore didst thou wonder? I will tell (explain to) thee the mystery, etc. The explanation extends through Rev_17:18.—E. R. C.] According to Düsterdieck, the Beast denotes the world-kingdom, and the Woman the world-city.
Rev_17:7. I will tell thee the mystery.—The mystery which he is to know, is the relationship betwixt the Woman and the Beast [see above]. How has it come to pass that the Woman could seat herself upon this terrible Beast? Or how is it that the wild-Beast suffered itself to be mounted by the Woman, like a gentle palfrey? In this query lies the key to the dark words that follow. The first explanation is contained in the history of the Beast.
Rev_17:8. The Beast … was, and is not, and is about to ascend out of the abyss.—The historic re-emergence of the world-power, spiritually wounded to death by Christianity—an event proleptically beheld by the Seer at a time when the Beast seemed to be really destroyed—serves as an occasion of offence and fall to the world and, consequently, to the majority of the men in whom the external and visible form of the Woman consists. The earthly-minded dwellers on the earth, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world—who, therefore, do not belong to the selection of the sealed—shall wonder when they see this apparent revival and gain of dominion on the part of the Beast. This is the history of the waning faith in the world-overcoming victory of Christ and the simultaneously waxing faith in the omnipotence of the world-power. It is the history of all who can see the Kingdom of God only in a tangible Church, a tangible salvation, a tangible Head of the Church—in a word, in external things. All of these have lost all heart for the powers of the world to come; through them, the Beast rises and the Woman descends, in a spiritual sense, or, in respect of outward appearance, the Woman is elevated on the back of the Beast—by means of a compromise between the two. [For an exposition of the Abyss, see Excursus, pp. 364 sqq—E. R. C.]
Rev_17:9. Herewith is connected the history of the Woman. It becomes intelligible only for the mind [Lange: understanding] that hath wisdom, the cultivated connoisseur of world-history, who views the same in the light of the Kingdom of God. The seven heads (of the Beast) are, primarily, seven mountains, on which the Woman sits. The fact that the Woman sits upon the seven mountains is, considered in and for itself, perfectly natural, for mountains are Divine political world-ordinances (see Romans 13), and the seven mountains constitute the totality of the ground-forms of the political order of the world. But this natural conditionality of the Church upon worldly state ordinances becomes fatal from the fact that the seven mountains are at the same time seven kings, i. e., here, despotic powers; in other words, that the noble human image of metal (Daniel 2) has a reverse side, in accordance with which it is composed of four rapacious beasts. Through the despotism of the world-monarchies, the Woman is continually drawn more and more into the parallel path of hierarchism, and her character becomes more and more corrupt. [See Add. Note, p. 317.—E. R. C.]
Rev_17:10. After the general history of the Beast and the Woman, the Angel gives the Seer a world-historical exposition of his stand-point in time. Five kings, i. e., world-monarchies, from a theocratic point of view, are fallen. The one is now subsisting—the sixth king, i. e., the sixth world-monarchy, behind which the Beast seems, for the instant, to be annihilated by young Christianity. This view was, assuredly, more entertainable by the Seer at the time of Nerva or even Domitian than at the time of Nero. The other king is the seventh world-monarchy, the future historico-Christian world-monarchy in a general apprehension, in so far as it, as Beast, bears the Woman upon its back. The Seer, from his distance, beholds, in perspective, the time of the seventh king on a reduced scale; he must continue a little while. Then, however, the whole Beast reappears in the eighth king in his true and undisguised nature. As Satan has embodied himself in the Beast, so the whole Beast, as the sum of all world-historic enormities, embodies itself in the eighth monarchy. Hence the Angel speaks of the eighth king as proceeding from the seven, as, in a sense, the unitous evil genius who was present in separate forms in all his seven predecessors. But because world-historical wickedness is, so to speak, concentrated and sublimated in this monarchy, finally being, as it were, embodied in the personal Antichrist (though the latter may branch into ten mock-kings), the stay of this eighth king is not long; he appears, he becomes an instrument of judgment upon the Woman, he goes into perdition. [See Add. Notes, pp. 272 sq., 304 and 317 sq.—E. R. C.]
Hengstenberg correctly regards the seven mountains as symbols of seven kingdoms; Düsterdieck, on the other hand, with others, understands by them Rome, the City of the Seven Hills. Irrespective of our admission of an allusion to Rome, we consider the symbolic apprehension of the mountains as, indubitably, the true one, though, notwithstanding this, a number of other features are decidedly suggestive of the City of the Seven Hills. On the literal interpretation of the seven kings, or world-monarchies, as referring to seven persons, see p. 26, and the exegesis of Revelation 13; comp. Düsterd., p. 512 sqq.—Seven kings, this “historical,” i. e., literal, exposition [of Düst.] declares, are merely seven kings and nothing more. Why then may not the Beast be a real beast and nothing more? The different modes of enumerating the kingdoms, see in Düsterd., ibid.—The five are fallen.—This, it is maintained, means that they are dead—in total contradiction, to the use of terms. It maybe queried: why is the successor of the fifth king not called the sixth, and the seventh, the seventh? Probably because both these numbers are in an eminent sense symbolical; here, however, this symbolism must lie dormant. The sixth is, contrary to the nature of six, the better, behind whom the Beast seems to have vanished; and the seventh is the tame one [der Zahme, with reference to the taming of the wild Beast into a palfrey, so to speak, of the Woman.—Tr.], in whom the Beast again appears. The expression, and is of the seven [Rev_17:11] is differently interpreted, as: the returning Nero (De Wette, et al.); the returning Antiochus Epiphanes (Hofmann); a descendant of the seven (Primas., et al.). Düsterdieck, rightly, makes the eighth proceed from the totality of the seven. This conception is, truly, very difficult in connection with that view of the kings which regards them as significant of so many individuals. A thorough understanding of the subject, in general, is impossible on the basis of this latter view, as is demonstrated by the following note of Düsterdieck: “All interpretations are false, by which the concrete historic reference to the circumstances of the Roman Empire is discarded; thus, for instance, Andreas, who by the θηρίον (Rev_17:8) understands Satan, explains that by the appearance and, especially, the death of Christ, the Beast was brought to a state of not-being. Comp. Bede, C. à-Lap., Zeger, et al. Marlorat and other Protestants explain: Pagan Rome has passed away; Papal Rome is in present existence, but its world-dominion is in itself nought (οὐκ ἔστιν).” Various enumerations of the kings, in accordance with the synchrono-historical conception, see in Düsterdieck, p. 516. According to this expositor, the Seer did prophesy a little, after first prophesying ex post facto concerning kings already known to history; he fore-announced that Vespasian should be succeeded by his two sons: “Titus as the seventh, Domitian as the eighth—that Titus should continue for a short time, and that Domitian should appear as a personification of the whole Beast.” Nevertheless, “John was mistaken in the expectation that the Roman world-kingdom would perish with Domitian.” Still, Düsterdieck admits that a minimum of prophecy remains notwithstanding this mistake: “The singular error manifests, undoubtedly, a certain imperfectness of the prophetic essence in the Apocalyptist, but by no means entirely (!) abrogates that essence.”
Rev_17:12 sqq. Now follows the future history of the ten horns, in respect of their relation to the Beast and the Woman. For although their war with the Lamb is mentioned here, the principal point of view is the war with the Woman. The war with the Lamb, considered in and for itself, is not announced until Revelation 19; it is introduced here, in this earlier passage [ch. Rev_17:14], because the hostility of the radical Antichristian powers against the Woman is directed against the last traces, reminiscences and tokens of Christianity in her nature.
Rev_17:12. The ten horns are ten kings.—The number ten is the number of the completed course of the world, the completed development of the world. In the ten kings, therefore, the political organization of the last phase of world-history is represented. They are all anarchical upstarts, who, thitherto, had not received the kingdom. They all cotemporaneously attain to dominion together. They are all, in reality, mock-kings, or, symbolically defined, mock-governments and mock-powers, sporadically diffused over the earth, and for one hour only, i. e., for one unitous, great, final, terrible, but short decision-time, do they obtain the government with the Beast. This is the specific Antichristian evening of the world, which precedes the Parousia. The fact that they are but quasi-kings, is based not upon the shortness of the time of their supremacy (in accordance with Bengel and Düsterdieck), but upon the anarchical relations of the times. It is the period when the theocratic element in Church and State is laid dead, in accordance with Revelation 11; when the image and mark of the Beast prevail, in accordance with Revelation 13 [See on p. 308.—E. R. C.]
Rev_17:13. These have one mind.—Not, simply, a common cause, but also a common theory [“one and the same view and intent and consent.” Alford.—E. R. C.], the system of positive contempt and blasphemy of the name and tabernacle of God, and the dwellers in the Heaven (Rev_13:6), based upon a threefold perversion of the truth into strong falsehood (the absolute nameless Divine, the absolute religion of this world, and the absolute blessedness of this world). Hence, they stand, from the outset, in connection with the Beast and make themselves, with their masses of peoples, their power and authority, completely its organs.
Rev_17:14. These shall war with the Lamb. [Together with the Beast, see Rev_19:19.—E. R. C.]—This announcement has a place here not independently, but as serving as an explanation of their hatred of the Harlot. Because they are enemies of the Lamb, even the dead, despiritualized symbolism, by which the Woman is still suggestive of the Lamb, is a subject of hatred. The Bride they scarcely see, because she is thoroughly internal, living, and human; she incurs their excommunication only in her individual members; the Harlot, however, they see, because she is thoroughly external, hindering life with her dead forms and denying humanity with her anti-humane statutes.33 Hence we here receive, in reference to the Lamb, only the precursory tranquillizing assurance that He shall conquer them because He is Lord of lords and King of kings. In His conflict and victory His people shall participate; they shall take part therein as truly called ones, who, in respect of their eternal ground-trait, are elect, and in respect of their character, in its temporal development,34 faithful. For the description of them is not divisible into three characteristics, but into two—elect and faithful, jointly bearing the signature of the truly called. This companionship may be predicated of the sealed in this world, who are progressing toward the Parousia, as well as of the trans-mundane retinue of the Lord on Mount Sion, that is to appear with Him in accordance with Revelation 19 [14].
[“Here is the ground and reason for the victory assigned, and that is taken, 1. From the character of the Lamb; He is King of kings and lord of lords. He has, both by nature and by office, power over all things; all the powers of earth and hell are subject to His check and control. 2. From the character of His followers; they are called, and chosen, and faithful; they are called out by commission to this warfare; they are chosen and fitted for it; and they will be faithful in it.—Such an army, under such a Commander, will at length carry all the world before them.” M. Henry.—E. R. C.]
Rev_17:15. And he saith unto me, The waters, etc.—These waters serve as an introduction to the judgment upon the Harlot. The Woman has a threefold foundation. Her safest position was in the wilderness, in so far as she was spiritually at home there. Pure renunciation of the world is identical with heavenly security. But even the seat upon the seven mountains, the seven kingdom-powers of political order, gave her, still, a royal firmness. She is, however, also founded upon the many waters of surging popular life, and this foundation has become infinitely fluctuating, since popular life has been set in motion from its very depths, and is sundering into peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues, and since the Woman has lost the foundations of genuine asceticism in the wilderness and of the protection of the seven mountains. Hence it is incorrect to say, “in spite of her wide dominion and all her glory, she shall be destroyed” (Duesterdieck), for whence should the ten horns have their power if they did not establish themselves upon those very masses of peoples that have apostatized from the Woman?
Rev_17:16. And the ten horns….. and the Beast, these shall hate the Harlot.—This hatred manifests itself in two negative and two positive forms. They make her desolate, not in the sense of devastation, but they leave her to herself, they take her at her word, and make her a perfect eremitess; moreover, they deprive her of all worldly fullness and covering [Fülle und Hülle], so that she appears in all her nakedness. To these indignities are added positive damages; they eat her flesh, i. e., they wrest all her goods from her, and she herself is destroyed by the fire of negative fanaticism, after having so long raged with the fire of positive fanaticism. In all this the Beast, of course, acts through the horns or kings, hence οὖτοι. Düsterdieck refers the flesh-eating to the figure of the Woman, and the burning to the figure of the City, of course maintaining that Rome is intended.
Rev_17:17. For God gave into their hearts. Namely, to destroy the Woman. This judicial decree resolves itself into three parts: first, they must, blindly and against their will, execute the counsel of God; secondly, they must, in thus doing, accomplish one purpose; thirdly, they must, in order to this end, surrender their whole power to the Beast until the latter, in like manner as an instrument of judgment, has accomplished all those words of God with which the Apostate Church has been threatened. Here, therefore, as in the crucifixion of Christ, Divine, human, and devilish counsels materially coincide in one, whilst they are formally, in their motives, thoroughly diverse and even opposed to each other. We, with Hengstenberg and others, refer the αὐτοῦ after τὴν γνωμήν to God, and not, with Bengel, Düsterd and others, to the Beast, because this latter idea would then be tautologically expressed—the alliance between the kings and the Beast having previously been intimated. At the close of this chapter, Düsterd. vainly reiterates his assurance that nothing save pagan Rome can possibly be intended (p. 520).35
[Rev_17:18. And the Woman that thou sawest, etc.—This verse concludes the Angel’s explanation of the mystery (see Rev_17:7), and unmistakably presents to us as one and the same, the Harlot, the Great City, and Babylon the Great (comp. Rev_17:3; Rev_17:5; Rev_17:7; Rev_17:18).—E. R. C.]
[ADDITIONAL NOTE ON CH. 17.]
By the American Editor.
[This chapter contains a section supplemental to the pouring out of the seventh Vial. It contains: 1. An introduction to the vision, Rev_17:1-2; Revelation 2. The description of the vision, Rev_17:3-6; Revelation 3. The explanatory remarks of the Angel, Rev_17:7-18.
In his interpretation of the symbols, the writer agrees in the main with Auberlen, but with variations, as will appear. For his exposition of the Beast, see p. 272. In this chapter the Apostate Church, which, in Revelation 16, was figured by Babylon (i. e., the Great City=Rome), is presented under the symbol of a Harlot. These symbols represent the Church from different stand-points;—the former in her earthly relations as a great, populous, wealthy, powerful world-city; the latter in her relations to Christ, as a once chaste Bride now faithless to her husband;—each of these symbols represents an important truth which is not set forth by the other. In this chapter a portion of the imagery of the city-symbolization is preserved. This, indeed, may be regarded as detracting from the artistic unity of the respective symbols; but upon reflection it will be seen not only to unite the two symbols, but to give to each an instructive force that could not otherwise have been given. The mountains, the waters, and the wilderness are taken from the city-symbolization;—the mountains relate primarily to the mountains on which Rome is situate, which symbolize the seven great world-kingdoms; the waters, probably to the Mediterranean—that great sea which Rome once dominated, symbolizing the peoples and multitudes subject to the Church; the wilderness relates to the present and future Roman Campagna, an ἔρημος which aptly symbolizes the moral world-waste around the Church at the period contemplated in the vision—a waste which it was her duty to reclaim and cultivate, but which she has left uncared-for.
The Vision, Rev_17:3-6, is a scene beheld under the seventh Vial; it represents the Church in the last time, in completed unholy alliance with the world-power, and ready for the destruction about to be visited upon her through the instrumentality of the Beast and the ten horns. The Introduction, Rev_17:1-2, and the Explanation, Rev_17:7-18, sweep through the entire period of the Church’s history; they represent her as sitting on the seven mountains (Rev_17:9-10), i. e., as having formed in every epoch of her history an adulterous connection with the then existing world-power—a connection prefiguring, and consummated in, the alliance symbolized in the vision. The parallelism between the adultery and the destruction foretold in this chapter, and those set forth Hos_2:1-13, is manifest upon comparison. Is there not also a parallelism between the deliverance of Hos_2:14-23 and that alluded to Rev_18:4? In the latter case, as in the former, is there not an allusion to the eduction of a life-germ, in the day of destruction, from the corrupt mass, to be the seed of a new organism? The valley of Achor has ever been to the true Church a door of hope, comp. Hos_2:15; Jos_7:26; Isa_65:10.36—E. R. C.]
Footnotes:
[1]Rev_17:1. [Crit. Eds. omit μοι withאand A.—E. R. C.]
[2]Rev_17:2. [Tisch. inserts τῶν twice with B*.; Lach. and Treg. omit with א. A. P.; Alf. brackets.—E. R. C.]
[3]Rev_17:3. Tisch. [1859, also Treg.] gives γέμον τὰ ὀνόματα, with Cod. A., etc. [Lach., Tisch. (8th Ed.), Alf. read γέμοντα ὀνόματα; Tisch. (8th Ed.) declares that P. requires this division. The reading of the participle in the following clause, which, were it certain, would settle the question, is also disputed: Alf., Tisch. (8th Ed.) read ἔχοντα with א. P.; Lach., Tisch. (1859), and Treg., ἔχον with B*. 1, etc.—E. R. C.]
[4]Rev_17:4. Lach. gives καί in acc. with A., etc. [So also Treg. and Tisch. (8th Ed.) with א. A., 1, 7, Vulg., etc.; Tisch. (1859) omits with B*. P.; Alf. brackets.—E. R. C.]
[5]Rev_17:4. Codd. א. A. B*. give τα ἀκάθαρτα.
[6]Rev_17:4. Codd. A. [?] B*., etc., give τῆς γῆς. [So Tisch. (1859) with B*. (not A.); Alf., Treg., Tisch. (8th Ed.) give αὐτῆς with A. 1, 7, Vulg., etc.; א. reads αὐτῆς καὶ τῆς γῆς.—E. R. C.]
[7]Rev_17:8. Codd. A., etc., give ὑπάγει. [So Lach., Alf., and Tisch. (1859); Treg. and Tisch. (8th Ed.) give ὑπάγειν with א. B*. P.—E. R. C.]
[8]Rev_17:8. [The “and yet is” is an attempted translation of the printed text of Erasmus, καίπερ ἔστι. This reading, as is now generally conceded, is “an error of Erasmus’ copyist” or of the press; it is not found in the original MS. of Erasmus. On this subject Dr. Conant writes (in his article on the Greek Text of the Apocalypse in T e Baptist Quarterly): “The MS. reads, καὶ πάρ εστι, with εστι slightly removed from the preceding syllable (as often happens in manuscript), but with a distinctly written α in the syllable παρ, and with the accentuation, unquestionably, of καὶ πάρεστι. The copyist, mistaking α for ε in the syllable παρ, and making a wrong division of syllables, wrote καίπερ ἔστι, contrary both to the letters and the accentuation of the MS. There can be no doubt that the true reading is that of the ancient MSS., namely, the Sinaitic (παρεστε=παρεσται), the Alex. (Cod. Eph. is defective here), B. of the Apoc., and the Porphyrian palimpsest, all of which have παρεσται.” The reading thus indicated is universally adopted.—E. R. C.]
[9]Rev_17:10. [Crit. Eds. read ὁ εἶσ without καὶ. in acc. with א. A. B*. P., Vulg., etc.—E. R. C.]
[10]Rev_17:11. [Lach., Alf., Tisch. read αὐτός with A. P. 1, Vulg., etc.; Treg. gives οὖτος with א. B*.—E. R. C.]
[11]Rev_17:12. The reading οὔπω in acc. with B*. [אc, P., Vulg.], etc. [So Alf., Treg., and Tisch.; Lach. reads οὐκ with A., Fuld.—E. R. C.]
[12]Rev_17:16. [Crit. Eds. read καί with א. A. B*. P. 1, Am., Fuld., Demid., Tol.; Clem. and Lips.4 6 require ἐπί.—E. R. C.]
[13]Rev_17:16. [Tisch. (8th Ed.) reads πυρί, without ἐν, with א. B*. P.; Lach., Tisch. (1859), Treg. prefix ἐν with A.; Alf. brackets.—E. R. C.]
[14]Rev_17:17. [This clause is omitted by Lachm., and bracketed by Alf., in accord, with A. 79, Vulg., etc.; it (or γνώμην μίαν) is given by Treg. and Tisch., with א. B*. P. 1, 7, 14, etc.—E. R. C.]
[15]Rev_17:17. Codd. A. B*. [א. P.] give οἱ λόγοι.
[16][It is probable that the erste of the German edition is a misprint for letzte, as it is only in the latter form that the proposition of our Author can be accepted. It may be remarked that even with this correction the truth of the first part of the proposition is questionable. Is it not probable that by “Babylon the Great” of Rev_16:19, the Seer contemplated the entire Babylon as “headed up” in the Babylon of the last days; or, in other words, as identical with “Babylon the Great” of Rev_17:5?—E. R. C.]
[17][Is not one and the same event set forth by the figures, “as slain” (Rev_13:3), and “is not” (Rev_17:3)—viz.: the apparent ceasing of the Beast to exist as Beast?—E. R. C.]
[18][So Lange here freely renders.—E. R. C.]
[19][When the Apostle Paul refers to the fact that the Thessalonians treated him as (ὡς) an Apostle, does he imply that he was a mock-apostle? The well-known force of ὡς is to indicate not mere similarity to an individual or a class, but inclusion in a class specified—thus it is declared. Mat_21:26, that the people held John as a prophet; see also 1Co_4:1; 1Co_4:14; 1Co_10:15; 2Co_6:4, etc. And further: “To receive authority as a king,” is to be a king, de facto if not de jure.—E. R. C.]
[20][Elliott is at this point exceedingly obscure. The above is believed to be a fair presentation of the views be designed to express.—E. R. C.]
[21][“Scaliger, on the authority of an informant of the Duke of Montmorency whilst at Rome. And so again Francis Le Moyne and Brocardus, on ocular evidence, they assure us; saying that Julius III. removed it. See Daubuz, Vitringa, and Bishop Newton, ad loc.” Foot-note by Elliott.—E. R. C.]
[22][Barnes agrees with Elliott as to the general interpretation of the heads and horns, as on p. 259. He understands, however, by the sixth head, not the diademed emperors whom he includes under the fifth, but the Dukedom under the Exarchate of Ravenna, continuing from A. D. 566 to 727.—E R. C.]
[23][Barnes agrees with Elliott as to the place indicated by the ἔρημος, but not as to the fact that it was produced by the destruction of Rev_17:16. The following extract which he makes from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, Rev 45, deserves consideration: “Rome had reached, about the close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the provinces, the sources of private and public opulence were exhausted; the lofty tree under whose shade the nations of the earth bad reposed, was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk left to wither on the ground. The ministers of command and the messengers of victory no longer met on the Appian or Flaminian way; and the hostile approach of the Lombards was often felt and continually feared. The inhabitants of a potent and peaceful capital, who visit without an anxious thought the garden of the adjacent country, will faintly picture in their fancy the distress of the Romans; they shut or opened their gates with a trembling hand, beheld from the walls the flames of their houses, and heard the lamentations of their brethren who were coupled together like dogs, and dragged away into distant slavery beyond the sea and the mountains. Such incessant alarms must annihilate the pleasures and interrupt the labors of rural life; and the Campagna of Rome was speedily reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness, in which the land is barren, the waters are impure, and the air infectious. Curiosity and ambition no longer attracted the nations to the capital of the world; but if chance or necessity directed the steps of a wandering; stranger, he contemplated with horror the vacancy and solitude of the city; and might be tempted to ask, where is the Senate, and where are the people? In a season of excessive rains, the Tiber swelled above its banks, and rushed with irresistible violence into the valleys of the seven hills. A pestilential disease arose from the stagnation of the deluge, and so rapid was the contagion that fourscore persons expired in an hour in the midst of a solemn procession which implored the mercy of heaven. A society in which marriage is encouraged, and industry prevails, soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war; but as the far greater part of the Romans was condemned to hopeless indigence and celibacy, the depopulation was constant and visible, and the gloomy enthusiasts might expect the approaching failure of the human race. Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence; their precarious food was supplied from the harvest of Sicily and Egypt; and the frequent repetition of famine betrays the inattention of the emperor to a distant province. The edifices of Rome were exposed to the same ruin and decay; the mouldering fabrics were easily overthrown by inundations, tempests and earthquakes, and the monks who had occupied the most advantagous stations, exulted in their base triumph over the ruins of antiquity … Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the name of Rome might have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital principle which again restored her to honor and dominion..… The power as well as the virtue of the Apostles revived with living energy in the breasts of their successors; and the chair of St. Peter, under the reign of Maurice, was occupied by the first and greatest of the name of Gregory..… The sword of the enemy was suspended over Rome; it was averted by the mild eloquence and seasonable gifts of the Pontiff, who commanded the respect of heretics and barbarians.”—E. R. C.]
[24][Lord regards the Beast as identical with that of Rev_13:1. At the time of the emergence from the sea (Revelation 13), the horns were diademed, which, in his judgment, indicates that then all the heads should have fallen, although at the time of the Apocalyptist but five had fallen. At the time of the emergence, and in the passage before us, the Beast represents “the Gothic rulers who established governments in the Western Empire during the Fifth century, and their successors and subjects to the present time” (see p. 262). The Beast in its entirety symbolizes the Roman Empire in all its forms both before and after the disruption;—the heads representing the different forms of government before the disruption, viz.: kings, consuls, dictators, decemvirs, tribunes, Pagan emperors, Christian emperors; the horns as above.—E. R. C.]
[25][“It must strike the reader at a first glance that all three expressions, wilderness, Woman, Beast (Rev_17:3), are without the article, which would be naturally expected here as expressions known from their previous occurrence. But the omission of the article has its good reason. The three expressions are identical and yet in a sense not identical with the former; the heathen world, the Church, and the world-power, have undergone, as we shall see subsequently, great changes, so much so, that John can scarcely recognize them, and sees a beast, a woman, and a wilderness.” Auberlen.—E. R. C.]
[26][Auberlen precedes the statements of which this section is an abstract, with a résumé of New Testament prophecy concerning the corruption of the Church. He writes: “Our Lord Himself has given no obscure intimations in the parables which refer to the history of the Church (Matthew 13), that when once the gospel, according to its destination, shall have the whole world for its field, … the Church would not be pure, but mixed, consisting of good and evil. The 24 ch. of Matthew, Christ’s eschatological words, in which He views simultaneously the destruction of Israel and His Parousia, and hence judgment upon Israel and Christendom,—is based upon the fundamental view that the New Testament Church will become as much a wicked and adulterous generation as the Old Testament congregation; and the Lord dwells upon some symptoms and characteristics of this adultery, as distrust and suspicion, hatred, treachery (Rev_17:10-12), division into parties (23–26), false doctrine (24). In the light of this chapter the Apostles looked into the future of the Church, see 1Ti_4:1 sqq; 2Ti_3:1 sqq.; Rev_4:3-4; 2Pe_2:1-3; 2Pe_3:3; 1Jn_2:18.” Comp. also Luk_18:8.—E. R. C.]
[27][Auberlen quotes as follows from John Michael Hahn (Briefe u. Lieder über die Offenbarung, vol. v., sect. 6): “The Harlot is not the city of Rome alone, neither is it only the Roman Catholic Church, to the exclusion of another, but all Churches and every Church, ours included, viz.: all Christendom that is without the Spirit and life of our Lord Jesus, which calls itself Christian, and has neither Christ’s mind nor Spirit. It is called Babylon, that is, confusion, for false Christendom, divided into very many churches and sects, is truly and strictly a confuser. However, in all churches, parties and sects of Christendom, the true Jesus-congregation, the Woman clothed with the sun, lives and is hidden. Corrupt, lifeless Christendom is the Harlot, whose great aim and rule of life is the pleasure of the flesh, the welfare of the beast-like, sensual humanity, who is open to the influence of all false spirits and teachers, and is governed by the spirit of nature and the world.”—E. R. C.]
[28][“Is this circumstance intended as an indication that the ten kingdoms into which the Germanic-Sclavonic world is to be divided, will lose their monarchical form in the end? The expression (Rev_17:2), ‘receive power as kings,’ speaking of the power which they are to receive along with the Beast in the last time (μίαν ὥραν), seems to be in favor of such a supposition.” Auberlen.—E. R. C.]
[29][In a preceding paragraph, Auberlen speaks of the session of the Woman upon the Beast as symbolizing her adultery (see above), but here as indicating the final apostasy. Although the former of these is the beginning of, and results in the latter, yet are they distinct as bud and fruit. Is it not more correct to say that the session indicates the completed and public alliance of the Church with the world, or world-power!—E. R. C.]
[30][For the view of Auberlen, see foot-note (*), p. 311.—E. R. C.]
[31][See Text. and Gram., Note 3.—E. R. C.]
[32][For the view of Auberlen, see p. 311.—E. R. C.]
[33][The parallel passage in Rev_19:18, seems to indicate that the attack upon the Lamb and His followers shall be personal and direct.—E. R. C.]
[34][Nach ihrem zeitlich ausgeprägten Charakter. The idea of the German is not that of an outward character, or form, imposed by the external application of a stamp, but one produced by internal out-pressing—by development.—E. R. C.]
[35][Elliott also contends that the destruction effected by the horns cannot be the final destruction set forth in Rev_18:8, since the kings of the earth (the horns) are, Rev_19:9, spoken of as mourning over the burning. He therefore refers the spoiling here mentioned to the destruction of Rome by the Gothic Kings in the Fifth and Sixth centuries (see p. 309). It must be admitted that he brings a weighty consideration in support of his opinion, one that may not be carelessly dismissed. It may be negatived by the fact, however, that men in their wrath often accomplish that over which they mourn in the subsequent hours of reflection. The Roman army destroyed the Temple at the capture of Jerusalem, and this fulfilled the purposes of Jehovah (Josephus speaks of the soldier who applied the torch as “being hurried by a certain Divine fury”), and yet that destruction was mourned over by Titus and the army as a calamity.—E. R. C.]
[36][The study of this chapter has induced the questions: Is not the range of the seven heads, given on p. 272, too narrow? May not the reference be to the world-powers of the seven great epochs of the Church’s history? These are, I. The Antediluvian, ending with the apostasy set forth Gen_6:2; Gen_6:12, and the Deluge. II. The Noachic, terminating in the spiritual adultery alluded to Jos_24:2, and followed by the call of Abraham. III. The Patriarchal, terminating in the idolatry of Israel in Egypt and the Egyptian oppression; (although not directly stated, it is probable that the spiritual adulteries in Egypt, mentioned Jos_24:14; Eze_20:8; Eze_23:3; Eze_23:8, occurred in the days of Israel’s prosperity, Exo_1:7, before her oppression by the Egyptians commenced). IV. The Mosaic, ending in the idolatry mentioned, 1Sa_2:3, and the overthrow and subjection of Israel preceding the day of Mizpeh, 1Sa_4:10-11; 1Sa_7:3-14. V. The Samuelic or Kingly, terminating in the adultery that was followed by the Babylonish captivity. VI. The Restoration, terminating in the alliance between the High Priest and Herod on the one hand and Pilate on the other, and the destruction of Jerusalem. VII. The existing epoch. At the close of each of the first six of these epochs there was on the part of the visible Church an apostasy from God and a completed alliance with the world, followed by a destruction more or less complete of the extant form of the Church and the bringing forth from the corrupt mass of a new life-germ. The prophecy under consideration foretells a similar adulterous alliance, a similar destruction of the visible body, and a similar eduction of the vital germ of a new organism, Rev_18:4.—E. R. C.]
SPECIAL DOCTRINO-ETHICAL AND HOMILETICAL NOTES (ADDENDUM)
Section Fourteenth
First Special End-Judgment: The Judgment upon Babylon, as a Heaven-picture. (Ch. 17)
General.—Babylon, in the wider sense of the term, is the entire anti-Godly world, conceived of in its concentration; Babylon, in the narrower sense of the term, is the secularized, ungodly and anti-Godly, external Church; a birth-place of Antichristianity, in which the Antichristian essence often appears very undisguisedly, though the Beast, Antichrist himself, does not manifest himself therein. Here, the reference is to Babylon in the narrower sense, and primarily in respect of the heavenly appearance of her judgment.
According to this Heaven-picture of the judgment, the horrible appearance of the Woman is itself the judgment. Conformably to her general appearance, she is the great Harlot (Rev_17:1-2), i. e. the object and subject of idolatry, the patroness of, and seducer to, apostasy from the living God. Her appearance is presented in abominable contradictions: 1. A Woman in the wilderness of a seemingly holy renunciation of the world and asceticism, and yet riding, like an Amazon, upon a royally decorated Beast, a many-headed monster, marked with names of blasphemy. 2. The Woman in magnificent princely attire, with the golden cup in her hand—and yet in, and together with, the cup, abominations and uncleannesses of idolatry, and even bearing on her forehead, for all who are acquainted with spiritual characters, the following title: Babylon the Great, the mother of the fornications and abominations of the earth. 3. The Woman, claiming the purest womanliness, in the religious sense of the term (see Revelation 12), drunken—with the blood of the saints; with the blood, even, of the martyrs of Jesus—of Jesus, Whose mother, sister, bride, she would fain be called.
The Beast on which she rides has also great contradictions attaching to it. 1. It was and is not. The ungodly world-power was and is not—is in principle annihilated by Christianity. 2. It is not, and it will ascend out of the abyss, to a new development of ungodly worldly glory in face of Christianity. 3. It will ascend, to the end that it may go down into perdition. 4. It is the hardest riddle to all the pious, the admiration of all the earthly-minded. 5. Its seven heads are seven mountains, which, however, are in reality identical with many ebbing and flowing waters. 6. It goes to destruction in the consecrated septenary of its kings, only to revive again in the profane decenary of kings. 7. It has long borne the Woman on its colossal body, and will at last destroy her with its ten horns. 8. The monstrous dividedness of the Beast is transformed into perfect unitedness in the warfare against the Harlot. 9. The Woman goes to destruction through the contradiction of her similarity to the Lamb and her affinity to the Beast.
Special.—[Rev_17:1.] Come, I will show thee the judgment of the great Harlot. Her appearance itself, therefore, is, primarily, her judgment. We are not to shun speaking of this judgment; but we must not interpret it rudely, in a manner offensive to the legal system of faith and worship. We have, therefore, to distinguish (1) between the Woman and the Beast which bears her; (2) between the symbolic form of the Woman, which embraces a symbolic Babylon, and her historic and most prominent organs and central points; (3) at the same time we are to recognize the fact that the corruption of the Church converges, more or less, to historic nodes, and is therein consummated. Babylon is everywhere in the Church, and yet is nowhere perfectly palpable; it, however, has its historic zenith-points. (Who, for instance, could refuse to reckon consummate Byzantinism, Mormonism and other sects based upon a pretension to inspiration, as forming portions of Babylon?)—As many Antichrists appear in the fore-ground of Antichristianity (1Jn_2:18), so in the foreground of the consummate Babylon of the last time there are many Babylons, especially predominantly spiritual and predominantly secular figures of Babylon.—A leading mark of Babylon is the universal ruinous effect which proceeds from the very city which pretends to be and once was a teacher and educator of the nations; this effect is two-fold and in many respects antithetic: the seduction of kings to fanatical worldliness, and of nations to fanatical mock-holiness.—[Rev_17:2.] With whom the kings of the earth committed fornication. An old and yet in many respects new story. History points to a whole series of dynasties which have been ruined by fanaticism, or have at least been brought to the very verge of ruin.—History tells us of nations that have been made drunk, and that have, more or less, sunk into national ruin. Fallen or sunken Christian kingdoms in the East and West.—[Rev_17:3-4.] The similarity and the difference between the picture of Revelation 12 and that of the present chapter: 1. Between the phases of the Woman; 2. Between the phases of the wilderness; 3. Between the relative positions of the Woman and the Beast.—Contrast between the wilderness abode of the Woman and her luxury.—Contrast between her perilous equestrian seat, figuring a taming of the Beast, and her festal attire. (There is also a distinction between warboots—Eph_6:15—and slippers.)—Contrast between the golden cup and the abominations contained in it.—[Rev_17:5.] The name on the forehead—manifest and yet a mystery.—The old antithesis: Babylon and Zion.—[Rev_17:6.] Amazement of John (see Exeg. Notes).—Horror of the holy mind at a caricature of the holy.—Strange manifestation of unnaturalness in the corruptions of the Church.
Rev_17:8. How the earthly-minded are, by the terrible aspect of the Beast, kept in a state of dependence upon the Woman, as long as the latter sits upon the Beast.
Rev_17:9. Hither an understanding that hath wisdom. Profane learning can only misinterpret this enigmatical phenomenon.—The world-monarchies, see Exeg. Notes.—Waverings of unredeemed humanity between the false unity of the world-monarchy and a dissipation into heathenism, barbarism, savageness.—Continuance of this wavering in the antithesis of the Hierarchy and separatism, absolutism and radicalism.—[Rev_17:12 ] The ten horns: Or the fall of religious absolutism is followed by the rule of an irreligious radicalism.—[Rev_17:13.] Demonic union of the ten horns. The principle of this union is to be found in their hatred of the Lamb, whose shadow they still persecute in the Woman.
Rev_17:14. The Lamb shall conquer them. Find the agreement between this and Rev_13:7. Of a conquest through [seeming] defeat, and a defeat through [seeming] conquest. What contrasts between the inner and the outer world, between the passing moment and the future, between seeming and being, are contained in the preceding paragraph.—The Beast as the conqueror of the Harlot, conquered by the Lamb.—Comp. the Old Testament prophecies against Babylon, especially Jeremiah 51.—Fearful mission of the ten kings (Rev_17:17).—[Rev_17:16.] Threefold judgment upon the Woman.—[Rev_17:12.] The Antichristian power lasts but one hour, i. e., a short time; but it is an hour in the theocratico-religious sense, a sore and painful hour of temptation [trial]. The union of the wicked occurs only in special moments of judgment and never, through an abolition of their inner egoistical division, attains to the oneness of the saints.
Rev_17:18. in relation to Rev_17:7. In Heaven, the unnatural appearance of the Woman is itself, already, “the judgment of the great Harlot.”
Starke: Application of the judgment upon Babylon to the “idolatrous Church of the Papacy.” Reasons for this application: “the great magnificence and ostentation of this Church in the external worship of God; the blandishments and flatteries which it employs to draw people to itself, etc.” Fornication is interpreted as spiritual adultery, apostasy from Christ, the Husband of the Church. It is easy to learn who this Harlot is, from the description of her, and from her antithesis, the Bride of the Lamb. Her equestrian posture indicates that she derives her might and authority from the Beast and that she rules over it;—that she has arbitrarily subjected the Roman Empire to herself, has placed herself above emperors and kings, and has instated and deposed them. The crimson and bloody hue [of the Beast] is indicative of the bloodthirstiness excited in it by the persuasions of the Harlot.—[Rev_17:4.] Arrayed in purple and scarlet: purple, to indicate her usurped royal exaltation and pre-eminence above all potentates; and scarlet, to indicate her thirst for the blood of the saints. The true Church is resplendent only in the robe of Christ. There is nothing so abominable and unclean that it cannot be disguised and decorated with a tinsel of this world.
Rev_17:5. The whole essence of false religion is a mystery, but a mystery of iniquity and all godlessness (2Th_2:7). As the mystery of Christ passes all understanding and incites to godliness, so the mystery of iniquity is conceived by pure serpent-cunning and contains nothing but deception; note, e.g., the miraculous power resident, as the Church of Rome pretends, in certain pictures and images, etc.—[Rev_17:6.] A leading mark of the false Church: pagan Rome, in the three centuries [of her existence subsequent to the Christian era], shed less blood, by far, than so-called Christian Rome. (Starke adduces the example of France, in particular.)
Rev_17:8. And yet is: This is not to be understood as referring to Antiochus himself or to such Antichristian regents as stood in the fiercest spirit of Antiochus (Hoffmann’s view?).
Rev_17:9. Understanding and wisdom are two different things. There may be understanding without wisdom, but there can be no wisdom without understanding.—(Starke mentions the seven mountains of Rome; he remarks, however, that the Apocalyptic seven mountains have also been interpreted as seven famous Popes.)
Rev_17:12. Marginal gloss, (Luther): These are the other kings,—for instance, of Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, France (!).—Quesnel: The Lamb suffers and succumbs in His members, and the members, whilst they are oppressed, conquer in the Lamb (Rom_8:37).
Rev_17:16. This verse is entirely subversive of the opinion that the Beast denotes the Pope.—Great cities, great sins; and by the example of such cities, whole countries are seduced (Jer_23:15).
Auberlen (p. 317 [Eng. Trans.]): The fact that the Harlot is judged first, is not only in harmony with the general principle, that judgment must begin at the house of God (Jer_25:29; Eze_9:6; 1Pe_4:17), but a restoration of actual truth is also designed. The object which, in effect, alone continues to exist—is recognized as existing—at the time indicated [the time of the judgment of the Harlot], is the world; for even the Church now courts only its favor, even for the Church it is the only reality. Against such a Church, the world must carry the day; and therefore the Harlot is not judged by the Lord Himself, but by the Beast and its kings.
Graeber: [Rev_17:5.] A mother of harlots is one who brings up others to harlotry.
Rev_17:6. It must needs be a subject of highest amazement that Christians, or those who pretend to be Christians, can reach such a pass.—[Rev_17:16.] The Catholic States will in great part themselves accomplish the work of the destruction of the papacy.
Laemmert (Das Thier und der falsche Prophet, p. 36): “The origin of Babel [Babylon] is related, Genesis 11. (comp. with Rev_10:8-11). This [Genesis 11.] is the same chapter which, in its second part, gives the genealogy of the chosen Shemite, Abraham, and closes by describing the exode of Terah and his family from Chaldea and their entrance into Canaan. Here, therefore, we already have the foundation and beginnings of that grand dualism which runs through the whole of the Sacred Writings and the entire history of mankind down to the consummation. The founder of Babel was a grandson of him who scoffed at his father, and his name was Nimrod, i. e., rebel. Human arrogance built the city and the tower, to make itself a name—not to the honor of God’s name; of its own strength and will—not at the behest of God. The inner motives were thoughts of arrogance, of the deification of man and of self.”
Chantepie de la Saussaye, De Toekomst, p. 117. Man kann zeggen, dat de grand der tegenstelling der beide rijken reeds ligt in de paradijs-belofte. Doch wat daar nog slechts in het allgemeen gen?md wordt het zaad der slang, etc., verkrijgt immer meer kleur en gestalte.
[From The Comprehensive Commentary.—The Lord takes pleasure in satisfying His people concerning the reason and equity of His judgments on His enemies; that they may not be intimidated by the severity of them, or fail to adore and praise Him on that account.—Great prosperity, pomp and splendor, commonly feed the pride and lusts of the human heart; yet they form no security against Divine vengeance.—Those who allure or tempt others to sin, must expect more aggravated punishment, in proportion to the degree of the mischief done by them. (Scott.)]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 1. Picture of the harlot mounted on the beast,…
SECOND OVERTHROW—OF ANTICHRIST’S HARLOT.
1. Picture of the harlot mounted on the beast, Rev_17:1-6.
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1. And—Antichrist’s capital has fallen; but antichrist himself is not dead nor imprisoned until Rev_19:20; and his harlot still lives, and her destiny is not revealed until Rev_17:16.
One of the seven angels—For, doubtless, one of the destroyers is one of the best expounders of the destruction. Which of the seven is not clear, but perhaps the seventh, as the last and greatest.
The judgment—John first shows the character and the sentence of judgment in Rev_17:15-16.
Great whore— On the question whether the harlot represents pagan Rome or the papal Church, Alford forcibly says: “The figure here used, of a harlot who has committed fornication with secular kings and peoples, is frequent in the prophets, and has one principal meaning and application, namely, to God’s Church and people, that had forsaken him, and had attached herself to others. In eighteen places out of twenty-one, where the figure occurs, such is its import, namely, in Isa_1:21; Jer_2:20; Jer_3:1; Jer_3:6; Jer_3:8; Eze_16:15-16; Eze_16:28; Eze_16:31; Eze_16:35; Eze_16:41; Eze_23:5; Eze_23:19; Eze_23:44; Hos_2:5; Hos_3:3-4, [Mic_1:7.] In three places only is the word applied to heathen cities, namely, in Isa_23:15-16, to Tyre, where, Rev_17:17, it is also said, ‘She shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth;’ and in Nah_3:4, to Nineveh, which is called the ‘well favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.’”
And here, we note, it appears that Israel, though a corrupt Church, was still a true Church, and the truly pious within her limits were heirs of salvation. She was, at her worst, better than heathendom. And so of Rome. And in regard to the better side of Rome, see our note 2Th_2:9. There is no fair doubt that the Christian Church appears as a woman in Rev_12:1. And the antithesis between the harlot of antichrist and the bride of Christ is very decisive. Note on Rev_11:1.
Sitteth upon many waters—Rome on the Tiber was not seated on many waters. It was more true of Babylon on the Euphrates. But Rome as a commercial power, especially with those nations subject to her power, was based upon many waters.
Fornication, the latter more deeply have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. Such was not a true picture of the relation of Rome to the kings and peoples of the world. She conquered them by force, and ruled them by equitable civilizing force, save when her own domination required injustice. In religious matters she stood aloof, and allowed each nation its own national superstition. She was no seducer or fornicator. These qualities belong to a later than pagan Rome.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain The Judgement of the Great Whore. Her Pomp. Chap.…
The Judgement of the Great Whore. Her Pomp. Chap. 17 Rev_17:1-6
1. one of the angels] So Rev_21:9 : cf. Rev_5:5.
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I will shew unto thee the judgement &c.] Which had been exhibited, and described in general terms, in Rev_16:19 : but the seer is now to have a nearer view of it, and describe it in detail.
the great whore] The image of the harlot is taken from the Old Testament description, not of Babylon, which when personified is a virgin (Isa_47:1), but of Tyre (Isa_23:15 sqq.) and Nineveh (Nah_3:4). The truth is, the Antichristian Empire is conceived as embodying the various forms of evil that existed in previous earthly empires. They have existed and become great, in virtue of what was good in them: (see St Augustine’s City of God, V. xii. 3, 5, xv. &c.; Epist. cxxxviii. 17: cf. Plat. Rep. I. xxiii. pp. 351–2); they are the divinely appointed protectors of God’s people (Jer_29:7; Rom_13:1-7; 1Ti_2:2) though their possible persecutors: and so they at once hinder (2Th_2:6-7) the coming of Antichrist, and foreshadow his coming by acting in his spirit. The Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar had (as no one can read the Book of Daniel without seeing) something nobler in it than mere conquering pride, and to this nobler element Isaiah does justice: but St John sees (it does not follow that the natural man will see) that in the New Babylon the baser element is supreme.
But another interpretation has been suggested. In Rev_12:6; Rev_12:14 we found that the Woman, the City of God and the Mother of His Son, fled into the wilderness, and there was concealed through the time of the Beast’s reign: and some have thought that the Woman in the Wilderness whom we meet with here is actually the same as the one we then parted with—the faithful City become an harlot (Isa_1:21.)
This view is an unpleasant one, and seems out of harmony with the tone either of chap. 12 or of this chapter. But it is supported by the argument, that the image of a harlot is most frequently, in the O. T. used of the unfaithful City of God: Isa_1:21; Jer_2:20, Jer_3:1 sqq., Jer_3:6 sqq.; Eze_16:23; Hosea 1-3; Hos_4:15; Mic_1:7 : while it is applied to heathen cities only in Isaiah 23 fin.; Nah_3:4, already quoted.
On the other hand, in almost all those passages it is insisted on, more or less expressly, that the whoredoms of unfaithful Israel have the special guilt of adultery: and of that there is no hint here, the Lord does not say of Babylon as of Aholibah that she was “Mine.” This seems to destroy the parallel with the former nine cases, which moreover is less close, as regards the details of language, than that with the two latter.
And further, the identification of the two Women is only possible on the assumption, that the Mother of chap. 12 is the true Christian Church, and the Harlot of this chapter the apostate Christian Church of Rome. Now we have seen reason to reject the former view: nor does the latter appear any more tenable. This subject is discussed in the Introduction: it may be enough to refer to St John’s own words in I Eph_4:2-3, as proving that the spirit of the theology (whatever may be said of the political attitude) of the existing Roman Church is, on the whole, of God—that it certainly is not the spirit of Antichrist.
Yet it is hardly necessary, if it be possible, to restrict the application of this chapter to the Pagan Rome of the past. ‘The kings of the earth have committed fornication’ with other cities since. Nor did Rome, like Nineveh and Babylon (Nah_3:4, Eze_23:5; Eze_23:12; Eze_23:14), conquer as much by the fascinations of her splendour as by her arms, though the royal vassals of the Cæsars were dazzled as well as awed.
on many waters] Jer_51:13. Literally true of the old Babylon, it is explained of the new in Rev_17:15.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) And there came . . .—One of the…
(1) And there came . . .—One of the vial-bearing angels summons the seer, saying, Hither I will show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters (or, the many waters—comp. Rev_17:15). The kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and they who inhabit the earth were made drunken (lost their reason and self-control) from the wine, the delicious and delirious draught of her fornication. Before we go further, it is well to make sure of our ground. Babylon was the great city, whose splendour dazzled, and whose power destroyed Jerusalem (Isa_39:1-8; Isa_13:19; Isa_14:4; Isa_14:13-14; Isa_47:5-8). Against Babylon the voices of the prophets were lifted up (Isa_21:9; Jer_51:25); she seemed to them the embodiment of splendid vice and resistless power; “the glory of kingdoms,” “the golden city,” “who exalted her throne above the stars of God,” “who sat as a lady given to pleasures, and flattering herself that she would see no sorrow.” In her greatness and her hostility to Jerusalem she became a type of later world-powers; and, in St. John’s vision, Babylon, in her purple and her pomp, in her luxurious ness and her tyranny, takes her place. And it is explained in the vision that Babylon is no longer the literal Babylon, but the power which has taken her place of pride and empire. That power was Rome. Rome was in St. John’s day just what Babylon had been in the days of the prophets—“the hammer of the whole earth,” the “golden cup that made all the earth drunken” (Jer_50:23; Jer_51:7; comp. Rev_17:2 of this chapter). At the same time, the way in which the Evangelist transfers to the Rome of his day the prophetic language which earlier prophets applied to ancient Babylon (compare these chapters, Revelation 17, 18, with Isaiah 47, Jer_51:6-14) ought to be sufficient to warn us against limited and local interpretations, even if the seven-headed wild beast did not show us that the world-power, like the moral principles of which Babylon and Rome were examples, is not confined to one age. If we remember this, we shall see that the Babylon of the Apocalypse, while, undoubtedly, Pagan Rome, cannot be limited to it. Is it, then, the question must be asked, Papal Rome? The answer is: In so far as Papal Rome has wielded tyrant power, turned persecutor, stood between the spirits of men and Christ, depraved men’s consciences, withheld the truth, connived at viciousness, sought aggrandisement, and been a political engine rather than a witness for the righteous King, she has inherited the features of Babylon. The recognition of these features led Dante to apply this very passage in the Apocalypse to Rome under the rule of worldly and tyrant popes, when he exclaimed to the shade of Nicholas III. (Il compiuto):—
“Of shepherds like to you the Evangelist
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Was ware, when her who sits upon the waves
With kings in filthy whoredom he beheld:
She who with seven heads tower’d at her birth,
And from ten horns her proof of glory drew
Long as her spouse in virtue took delight.
Of gold and silver ye have made your god,
Differing wherein from the idolater,
But that he worships one, a hundred ye!”
—Inferno, Cant, xix., 109-117.
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The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And there came one of the seven angels which…
And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me; and spake with me, saying. Omit "unto me." This and the following chapters (to Rev_19:21) consist of visions which are really included under the seventh vial, but which, on account of their length and elaboration, may be considered apart from the other judgments of that vial. In the preceding chapters we have had placed before us a conspectus of three classes of ungodly people, and the three principles of evil in their abstract form, as represented by the world (the first beast), the flesh (the second beast), and the devil (the dragon). The personal final overthrow of the devil is described in Rev_20:10 Re 17 and Re 18, are devoted to the description of the judgments of the two former the world, in its character of the openly hostile persecutor of the Church of God; and the other portion of the ungodly who, while still professing Christianity, find excuses for conforming to the worship of the image of the beast. The first beast is, therefore, identical with Babylon, and represents, as we have seen, the openly hostile and persecuting world power of all ages, of which, in St. John"s time, Rome was the foremost embodiment. The second beast is identical with the harlot, and represents faithless Christians, the apostate portion of the Church. The very raison d"etre of the Apocalypse is to deal with these two forms of evil; to declare the overthrow of the one, and to warn and, if possible, reclaim those under the influence of the other. In the latter case, the warning consists in setting forth the judgment in store for faithless Christians; and as this is the course pursued with the former also, the two merge into one, and indeed are declared to be one. The apostle in substance declares that, though there is a prima facie difference between the two forms of ungodliness, there is in reality no distinction to be made, but both are involved in one common final judgment. He thus twice solemnly asserts that the harlot is Babylon (vers. 5 and 18). The comments upon the following chapters will be based upon this hypothesis, the reasons for which will be brought out more clearly as we proceed. The opening words of this chapter leave no doubt that the visions which follow are connected with the vial judgments. The "one of the seven angels" may be the seventh angel, to whom it pertained to unfold the circumstances connected with the last judgment. Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment. Hither, deuro , without the verb, as in Rev_21:9 and Joh_11:43. Though this particular narration necessarily takes place after the account of the vials, yet we are not to understand that the events here related are subsequent to these related in the concluding verses of the previous chapter. Note the remarkable similarity between these words and these of Rev_21:9, and the contrast between the bride, the wife of the Lamb, and the harlot who is connected with the beast. Wordsworth carries the comparison even to the form of words, thus The harlot and the beast. H pornh kai to yhrion, H numfh kai to arnion The bride and the Lamb.
Of the great whore; harlot (Revised Version). There seems no doubt that this figure describes the degenerate portion of the Church of God.
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(1) As we have already seen, this symbolism is made use of by St. John to portray the faithlessness of those who are professedly servants of God, (see Rev_2:20 Rev_14:4) and in this sense it is applied in the great majority of passages of Scripture where it occurs. (cf. Isa_1:21 Jer_2:20 Eze 16 Eze 23 Hos_2:5 Hos_3:3 Hos_4:15 Mic_1:7) In Isa 23, and Nah_3:14 the term refers to Tyre and Nineveh respectively.
(2) There is an intended contrast between the bride and the Lamb, and the harlot who allies herself with the beast (vide supra).
(3) A contrast is also probably intended between the woman clothed with the sun, (Re 12) bringing forth the man child, Christ Jesus the Saviour the representation of the pure Church and the harlot clothed in scarlet, the mother of harlots and abominations the representation of the faithless part of the Church.
(4) Both the woman of Re 12 and the harlot of this chapter reside in the wilderness, that is, this world; (see on Rev_12:14) indeed, they are to men sometimes indistinguishable (cf. the parable of the wheat and tares).
(5) The faithful Church, the bride, is called a city; (Rev_21:2, Rev_21:9, Rev_21:10) so the faithless portion of tile Church, the harlot, is identified with the city Babylon. (Rev_11:8 Rev_17:4, Rev_17:5) Other coincidences will be noted as we proceed. But it seems equally impossible to accept the view that this faithless portion of the Church refers to papal Rome, and none other. We must include all the faithless of God"s Church in all time. If the fulfilment is to be limited at all, it seems more reasonable to suppose that the first reference of St. John was to the faithless members of the seven Churches to which he addresses the Apocalypse. But we are, no doubt, intended to see here a picture of the position of the unfaithful part of the Church wherever it exists, at any time, and which men are certainly not able always to specify and judge. On this point see Professor Milligan"s "Baird Lectures" for 1885, on "The Revelation of St. John." In lect. 5. he says, "But Babylon is not the Church of Rome in particular. Deeply, no doubt, that Church has sinned... Yet the interpretation is false... Babylon cannot be Christian Rome; and nothing has been more injurious to the Protestant Churches than the impression that the two were identical, and that, by withdrawing from communion with the pope, they wholly freed themselves from alliance with the spiritual harlot. Babylon embraces much more than Rome, and illustrations of what she is lie nearer our own door. Wherever professedly Christian men have thought the world"s favour better than its reproach; wherever they have esteemed its honours a more desirable possession than its shame; wherever they have courted ease rather than welcomed suffering, have loved self indulgence rather than self sacrifice, and have substituted covetousness in grasping for generosity in distributing what they had, there the spirit of Babylon has been manifested. In short, we have in the great harlot city neither the Christian Church as a whole, nor the Romish Church in particular, but all who anywhere within the Church profess to be Christ"s "little flock" and are not, denying in their lives the main characteristic by which they ought to be distinguished that they "follow" Christ." (For the distinction between the harlot and Babylon, see above.) That sitteth upon many waters. "The" is inserted in B and other manuscripts, probably on account of the reference in ver. 15, but is omitted in a, A, P, and others. This is the description of Babylon in Jer_51:13, whence, doubtless, the expression is derived. In the place quoted, the sentence refers to the many canals of Babylon; but the interpretation of this passage is given in ver. 15, where the waters are stated to be "peoples." This fact sufficiently demonstrates that, though the imagery of the Apocalypse be taken from the Old Testament, it is not always safe to insist on an exactly similar interpretation; the symbols employed may be applied in an independent manner. That the harlot sits on many waters therefore shows us that the faithless portion of the Church is to be found distributed amongst "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
Vers. 1-18. "Babylon the great.
Our aim in this homily will be to show to what form of evil the name "Babylon the great" specially seems to point. The complexity and difficulty which have gathered round this chapter seem to the writer to arise rather from the enormous incubus of human interpretation which has pressed it down. In this passage we are shown rather a twisted rope than a tangled web. If we untwist the threads and lay them side by side, we shall not have much difficulty, specially if we exercise all that reverent and painstaking care which is due to the examination of every part of the Word of God. The main figure in the symbolism of the chapter is an infamous woman.
Those who are familiar with Old Testament prophecy will know how often the terms "fornication," "adultery," etc., are used. As in Isa_1:21 Jer_2:20 Jer_3:1, Jer_3:6, Jer_3:8, and in many other places, such terms are used of an apostate Church. In Isa_23:15-17 the like terms are used of Tyre; in Nah_3:4, of Nineveh. So that, so far as the use of such terms in Scripture is concerned, they may mean apostasy from God under the form either of secular rule or of religious corruption (cf. Porter, p. 292). Nor can we have any difficulty in seeing the propriety of such figures. As fornication and adultery are forms of false affection, and are the prostitution of the most sacred part of our nature to alien purposes, so the alienation of the heart from God, and the departure of a Church from fidelity to him, is a violation of the most sacred ties, and is the leaguing of the heart in a false alliance, which is odious to our God. Where is THIS harlot seen? There is a triple combination of expressions here.
(1) She is seen seated on the beast with seven heads and ten horns;
(2) seated on seven hills;
(3) seated on many waters, which are peoples, nations, and tongues.
Her being seated on the beast, or resting on the civil world power, is one form of expressing her alliance with state authority. The seven heads of the beast are so many forms of worldly dominion five of which had passed away, viz. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Greece. The sixth existed at the time of the apostle. This was Rome. The seventh was another which, when Rome was no more Rome, would rise up, and would be manifest in ten forms. The number ten may be a definite expression for an indefinite number, or it may be that the world powers may yet be resolvable into ten before Babylon"s fall. And the beast himself being an eighth is also doomed to perdition. That the woman is also spoken of as seated on seven hills, and (in ver. 18) as "that great city," again indicates a very precise reference to Rome. That she was seated on many waters indicates her sway being as wide as that of the great world power with which she was in base alliance. Seated on this earthly power, and yet controlling it, as a rider is seated on a horse and yet controls the beast. This is the harlot, Babylon the great, which made all nations to drink of the wine of her fornication. Nor must we fail to notice the several descriptive features of the harlot.
She is:
(1) Clad in gorgeous aray. (Rev_17:4)
(2) Holding out an enticing cup (ver. 4).
(3) Mother of harlots and abominations (ver. 5).
(4) Drunk with the blood of the holy (ver. 6).
(5) Poisoning the inhabitants of the earth. (Rev_18:3)
(6) Bearing names of blasphemy (ver. 3).
(7) Yet in a wilderness (ver. 3).
(8) Ruling over the kings of the earth (ver. 18).
(9) One by whom the merchants grow rich. (Rev_18:3)
(10) Presumptuous in her self security. (Rev_18:7)
(11) Hated by the very powers whom she has ruled (ver. 16).
Hence we are bidden, by the very terms of the symbolism, to look out for some form of evil, which manifests a glaring alienation and apostasy from God while yet putting on a form like that of the faithful Church; which at once relies on worldly power, and yet assumes its direction; which invests itself in gorgeous array, assumes pompous titles, even such as are names of blasphemy against our Lord and against his Christ; which should exert a most baneful influence on the inhabitants of the earth, and fill the air with the miasma of her pollutions and her crimes; which should be at ease in her self security, as it no power could disturb her; which should shed the blood of the saints without measure; and which should be in itself the very filth and scum of wickedness. The apostle is astonished with a great astonishment at the symbols of such an incarnation of evil. And a voice is heard crying aloud, "Come out of her, my people... that ye receive not of her plagues." Can we now point to any form or forms of evil that answer to this symbolism? We have no hesitation in sayingYes. In so doing, let us observe that there really is not room for any great diversity in applying such symbolism as we have here, for surely there are few forms of evil so gigantic as to suit the words, "She hath made all nations drink," etc. It is, however, clear that whatever form of evil there may be, known or unknown to us, which presents all the features named here, or even the greater part of them, there is a great Babylon which is doomed to a fall that will be utter and irretrievable. Therefore observe
I One form of Babylon the great is seen in that terrible, awful, universal departure from God which has corrupted all nations, perverted politics, poisoned commerce, and marred social life; by which, as manifested in the iniquitous pursuit of gain, many have grown rich; which has manifested itself in "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life;" which has assumed a domineering air, commanding men to bow down to it, under pain of social ostracism or petty persecution. This spirit of exaltation, against God has often puffed men up in false security. It hath been the curse of mankind; for when men are unfaithful to God, they are untrue to themselves. The cup of iniquity becomes fuller and fuller. Often the land mourneth because there is no truth nor justice, nor knowledge of God, therein. Yea, in legion forms this worldwide poison of sin, which works out in blasphemy towards God and ruin towards man, is a great Babylon, which will be smitten, and reel, and fall. And in so far as any so called Church puts itself between man and God, and usurps his rights, it is akin to Babylon the great.
II At the same time, we cannot fail to see that there is one special form of evil which more than anything else in the world is pointed out in the symbolism of this chapter, and that is THE APOSTASY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. Not that we can agree with those who think papal Rome the sole enemy of God here referred to. For we shall find in the lamentation over Babylon"s fall much that leads us to think not only of a huge ecclesiastical Babylon, but also of a huge commercial one. But that papal Rome is one form of this mystic Babylon we can entertain no doubt whatever. The student of history can follow out at leisure thirteen or fourteen lines of inquiry, on which we can but give a few illustrative remarks.
1. The woman was seated on the beast as if supported by it (ver. 3). Rome has relied on the worldly power to put her decrees into execution by brute force; both in using temporal powers, and in herself claiming temporal power as well as spiritual.
2. She yet rides the beast as if to govern it (ver. 3). We know but too well how Rome has aimed at, and does still aim at, controlling the power on which she relies; claiming even to regulate allegiance to earthly princes.
3. She is seated on many waters (ver. 1). In every quarter of the world her emissaries are sent. And in many a land where the pure gospel of Christ has been preached, she sends her emissaries to undo the holy work by sowing tares among the wheat.
4. She rules over the kings of the earth (ver. 18). Kings are but the "sons ofthe Church," to do the bidding of their "holy"(?) mother; otherwise she may absolve subjects from allegiance to their sovereign.
5. She holds out a golden cup full of abominations (ver. 4). Papal Rome makes large offers of indulgences and absolutions, and positively lures men into sin.
6. The merchants grow rich by her. (Rev_18:3) Many are enriched by the ungodly traffic to which she consents in making the house of prayer a den of thieves; for her indulgences and absolutions will cover any kind and degree of sin, whether in the getting of wealth or otherwise.
7. She is presumptuous in her self security. (Rev_18:7) Papal Rome acknowledges no other Church, and looks for the time when all will be absorbed in her, while she is to be "a lady forever.
8. She is adorned with pompous array in gold (ver. 4), purple, scarlet, and precious stones. Anyone who has watched the working of papal Rome at Rome will need no words to convince him of her gorgeous display and dazzling sheen.
9. She is drunk with the blood of the holy (ver. 6). What tales does history unfold! A hundred and fifty thousand persons perished under the Inquisition in thirty years; and from the beginning of the Order of Jesuits, in 1540, it is supposed that nine hundred thousand persons perished through papal cruelty. While, although it is impossible to estimate the exact number, yet it is supposed that during the papal persecutions of the Waldenses, Albigenses, Bohemian Brethren, Wickliffites, and other Protestants, those who perished are counted by the million. The same spirit exists still. In Ireland the priests keep the people in terror, and if Rome does not persecute us, it is because she dare not.
10. She is the mother of abominations (ver. 5). Students of history and tourists in papal districts know that this is literally true. Indulgences for an indefinite number of years may be purchased with money. No viler looking set of faces could ever be beheld than the present writer has seen surrounding the confessional boxes in St. Peter"s at Rome.
11. The beast she rides is full of names of blasphemy (ver. 3). The proclamation of infallibility is the one fulfilment of this that surpasses all others.
12. The inhabitants of the earth are led by her into sin. (Rev_18:3) The papal Church notoriously leads people into the sin of idolatry. The worship of Rome is largely the adoration of a great goddess. Papists pronounce accursed those who do not "honour, worship, and adore the adorable images.
13. The several kings or kingdoms into which the civil power of the beast is to be divided shall "hate the whore, and make her desolate," etc. (ver. 16). How true! If there is an object of imperial hatred, it is papal Rome, which is hated most of all. She is regarded as the disturber of states everywhere.
14. Yet within this great Babylon there will be to the last some saints of God, who will be called on to come out of her. (Rev_18:4) Even so. Fearfully apostate and adulterous as is papal Rome, there are in her pale many holy ones who are profoundly ignorant of the abominations, done by her in religion"s name. The Lord will know his own in the day when he maketh up his jewels. But this great Babylon of harlotry, pomp, pride, and all abominations, is doomed to fall terribly, suddenly, completely, and forever! Earnestly do we press on the student carefully to follow up each of these fourteen lines on which history will be found to confirm the prophecy here couched in symbolic form. The identification is such that not one point seems lacking. How this great mystery of iniquity is to fall we have yet to consider.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN Ver.1-Rev_14:8) the figure of fornication is repeatedly used to describe faithlessness towards God. The verse, therefore, declares that this faithless portion of the Church has chosen rather to render to the world that love which is due to God, and to be connected rather with the powers of this world than to have its treasure in heaven. The expression, "wine of her fornication," is a repetition of that in Rev_14:8, and is derived from Jer_2:7. (cf. also Rev_16:19 and Rev_18:3)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain The Judgment of the great whore.
Rev_17:1-6
The Judgment of the great whore.
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A corrupt Christianity
The description here given of this harlot suggests and illustrates three great evils ever conspicuous in corrupt Christianity.
I. Political subserviency. With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication. Essentially Christianity is the absolute queen of life. Although her kingdom is not of this world, her demand is that the world should bow to her. In yielding to worldly influence she lost her pristine purity and primitive power, she got corrupted, and became more and more the servant of rulers and the instrument of states.
II. Worldly proclivity. And the woman was arrayed in purple anal scarlet colour, and decked with gold, etc. Genuine Christianity is essentially unworldly.
III. Religious intolerance. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, etc. (David Thomas, D. D.)
Babylon and Anti-Christ
I. The woman.
1. Her position, which was indicative of power. John saw her seated upon a beast, dreadful, and terrible, and strong exceedingly; for so, in the book of Daniel, we find him described. Again, it was a position indicative of hostility to God. For the beast on which the woman sat was full of names of blasphemy. Then it was a position indicative of the unsightliness of vice. What a hideous monster was this beast, having seven heads and ten horns; and how strange was the picture presented to the apostles view of the great whore, as seated upon him. Here, too, was a position indicative of cruelty towards men, as well as of hostility towards God. The beast on which she sat was scarlet-coloured, betokening war and bloodshed. It was a position, nevertheless, of allurement and seduction. For she was seen as one who had in her hand a golden cup, too successfully held forth to the inhabitants of the earth, who are represented as having been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. Her position once more was that of a deceiver and destroyer. The cup held forth was golden. But its contents, as seen by the apostle--what were they? It was full of abominations, etc.
2. Her attire. The woman was arrayed in purple, and scarlet-coloured, indicative of her real dignity; and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls--illustrative of her vast wealth. How many, beholding a female thus adorned, would at once wish to occupy her place! Yet such might be arrayed on earth in purple, and fail of being hereafter arrayed in white in heaven. Instead of wishing to be decked with gold and precious stones, such as John saw glittering on the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, let the heart go after that redemption of the soul which is precious, and ceaseth for ever.
3. Her names.
(1) Mystery. Such she would have been to John but for the angels explanation. Such, even with that explanation, she to certain extent remained to him. And such she was destined to remain to the Church of God through a long succession of ages. Let it be observed, however, that inquiry into the import of the vision was, as it were, challenged by the angel who showed this woman to John. We do not, therefore, act unbecomingly in endeavouring to ascertain what this woman was destined to represent to the apostle.
(2) Babylon the Great. In having this name inscribed upon her forehead, she was exhibited to the apostle in a vaunting attitude, and as under the influence of a spirit, similar to that of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan_4:30). Elsewhere, too, in this book we find her displaying a boastful and vainglorious temper of mind (Rev_18:7). This should be a lesson to us not to be high-minded, as the possessors of either worldly or religious distinctions.
(3) The mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth. This was indeed to have a whores forehead, and to be, as the Jewish nation was once charged with being, one that refused to be ashamed. Behold the woman with unblushing effrontery proclaiming to the world her character and misdoings; and see, m her, the foreshowing of those latter times, in which doctrines of devils shall be promulgated, and men, giving heed to seducing spirits, shall depart from the faith; times when there shall be a forbidding to marry. It would seem that in this way Babylon the Great is destined to become the mother of harlots--namely, by an authoritative prohibition of the nuptial tie; a doing away with marriage throughout the wide extent of her dominion, and a consequent abandonment of society to general dissoluteness.
4. Her condition. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, etc. What spectacle was this! fitted to awaken in his bosom feelings at once of disgust and horror. How fearful an amount of persecuting rage against the Church of God, as destined to become apparent in the days of the ascendency of Babylon the Great, was thus prophetically indicated to him! And of what an amount of suffering, on the part of the saints, and of the witnesses for Jesus, was he thus made aware beforehand.
II. The beast.
1. His colour. A scarlet-coloured beast. What did this indicate? Perhaps, his regal character. We are forewarned that he will be a king of widely-extended rule. In another vision John saw power given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. We conclude, then, that in being foreshown to John as a scarlet-coloured beast, the regal character of the Man of sin may have been prophetically indicated, and in particular his character, as vicegerent on earth, of the great red dragon (Rev_12:3). But it is more probable that, in presenting him thus to the view of the apostle, the Divine purpose may have been to foreshow to the Christian world the character of antichrist, as a warrior and persecutor of the Church of God. Such he most certainly will be. As a scarlet-coloured beast he might be very fitly presented to view--a monster dyed, as it were, in blood--when it is considered that the time of his ascendency will be a time of trouble such as never was, since there was a nation to that same time (compare Rev_12:12; Dan_12:1), and except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved. Power was given to him to make war forty-and-two months--no longer. Then he was, as foreshown to John, cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
2. His names. He was full of names of blasphemy, which make us, as they made the apostle, aware that antichrist, when he shall come, besides wearing out the saints, will speak great words against the Most High--marvellous things against the God of gods. In times long gone he was foreshown to the prophet Daniel as one who would act thus. It will be one special end of his mission, as Satans prime minister in the world, to blaspheme.
3. His figure. He had seven heads and ten horns, and must, hence, have presented to the apostle an aspect at once singular, hideous, and terrible--indicative, however, of large intelligence and vast power.
4. His manifestation, contemporaneously with that of Babylon the Great. Together they will flourish--together they will fall. The day of power to both will be one and the same. The day of doom also.
5. His subservience to her exaltation and advancement. She is seated on him. He carrieth her. Her prosperity, glory, and dominion will be consequent on, and commensurate with, his own.
III. The apostles wonder at the spectacle. And when I saw her I wondered with great admiration. But John was rebuked on account of the great admiration with which he wondered at the woman on whom he was looking. He writes, And the angel said unto me, wherefore didst thou marvel? What you have now before you is not, in itself, a spectacle that ought to be wondered at, as it now is, by you. And, even if the world will wonder at it, should you do so? They shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life, from the foundation of the world (verse 8). But wherefore shouldst thou marvel?
IV. The angels promise to John. I will tell thee the mystery of the woman. This vision was granted to the apostle for the purpose of instruction, not of mere entertainment. The angel will unfold the mystery to him. The promised revelation, however, of all to him, a holy man of God and a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, is in accordance with what we read elsewhere (Psa_25:14). (H. Edwards.)
The martyrs of Jesus.
The noble army of martyrs
I. What do the Martyrs of Jesus teach us about themselves?
1. Their heroic faith. They had unswerving reliance in Christ, and knew they were not following cunningly devised fables. These martyrs had not simply an opinion or impression, but a deep belief; they were resting upon evidence which they felt to be sufficient and immovable. They believed in living, risen, and reigning Lord.
2. Their sublime hope. All they could see seemed to be against them, all their surroundings were calculated to depress them; but they looked not at things seen and temporal, but for aa inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.
3. Their ardent love. They loved their country, home, and friends; but they loved their Master more, and they were prepared to relinquish all for the love they bore to Him.
4. Their complete obedience. They had their marching orders, and they marched on under the Great Captain of their salvation, to do and dare and die. They reciprocated His love.
5. Their transparent sincerity.
6. Their restful satisfaction. They felt they had not only sufficient, but satisfactory evidence of the truth as it is in Jesus. They found in Him all they needed to satisfy the wishes and wants of their spirits, so nothing could move them or shake their steadfastness.
II. What do the martyrs of Jesus teach us respecting Him?
1. He could have been no myth. These martyrs were--as the word literally means--witnesses, not inventors, or historians merely, they had the evidence of their senses as well as the experience of their hearts. From what we know of human nature, we feel it would have been impossible for the early Christians to have died for a myth or phantom: they were in a position to test most fully the historic claims of Christ, and to prove His personality and identity at the various points of His mission and ministry.
2. He could not have been a deceiver. Men may submit to be deluded when they have much to gain and nothing to lose; but when it is the reverse they will exercise the utmost vigilance and practise the strictest caution.
3. How faithful Christ was to His promise never to leave nor forsake them, and they witness to the victorious power of His religion to sustain the soul in the most trying circumstances, in torturing pain, and the dying hour.
4. The impotence of error and the omnipotence of truth. Truth is mighty, and must prevail; more is for it than all that can be against it. Error, in its rage and cowardice, has drawn the sword and gone forth to win its way, and strike terror into the hearts of the true. But the prospect of massacre and martyrdom could not deter the true followers of the Lamb: they have gone forth feeling that the Lord of hosts was with them, and that the mighty God of Jacob was their refuge. The King Immortal, Invisible, steers and guards His own ark, and all shall ultimately and utterly fail and fall who lay their unholy alien hands upon it. The noble army of martyrs praise God, and they preach to us. (F. W. Brown.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain
CHAPTER X I I I
THE BEAST AND BABYLOST.
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Rev_17:1-18
AT the close of chap. 16, we reached the end of the three great series of judgments which constitute the chief contents of the Revelation of St. John, - the series of the Seals, the Trumpets, and the Bowls. It cannot surprise us, however, that at this point other visions of judgment are to follow. Already we had reached the end at Rev_6:17, and again at Rev_11:18; yet on both occasions the same general subject was immediately afterwards renewed, and the same truths were again presented to us, though in a different aspect and with heightened coloring. We are pre pared therefore to meet something of the same kind now. Yet it is not the whole history of that "little season" with which the Apocalypse deals that is brought under our notice in fresh and striking vision. One great topic, the greatest that has hitherto been spoken of, is selected for fuller treatment, - the fall of Babylon. Twice before we have heard of Babylon and of her doom, - at Rev_14:8, when the second angel of the first group gathered around the Lord as He came to judgment exclaimed, "Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great, which hath made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication;" and again at Rev_16:19, when under the seventh Bowl we were told that "Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath." So much importance, however, is attached by the Seer to the fortunes of this city that two chapters of his book - the seventeenth and the eighteenth - are devoted to the more detailed descriptions of her and of her fate. These two chapters form one of the most striking, if at the same time one of the most difficult, portions of his book. We have first to listen to the language of St. John; and, long as the passage is, it will be necessary to take the whole of chap. 17 at once: -
"And there came one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls, and spake with me, saying, Come hither; I will show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and they that dwell m the earth were made drunken with the wine of her fornication. And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness: and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stone and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations, even the unclean things of her fornication, and upon her forehead a name written, Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I marveled with a great marveling. And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss: and he goeth into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall marvel, they whose name hath not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall be present. Here is the mind that hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And they are seven kings: the five are (alien, the one is me other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a little while. And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition. And the ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour. These have one mind, and they give their power and authority unto the beast. These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they also shall overcome that are with Him called, and chosen, and faithful. And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire. For God did put in their hearts to do His mind, and to come to one mind, and to give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God should be accomplished. And the woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth (Rev_17:1-18)."
The main questions connected with the interpretation of this chapter are, What are we to understand by the beast spoken of, and what by Babylon? The Seer is summoned by one of the angels that had the seven Bowls to behold a spectacle which fills him with a great marveling. Thus summoned, he obeys; and he is immediately carried away into a wilderness, where he sees a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
1. What is this beast, and what in particular is his relation to the beast of chap. 13?
At first sight the points of difference appear to be neither few nor unimportant The order of the heads and of the horns is different, the horns taking precedence of the heads in the earlier, the heads of the horns in the later, of the two.1 The first is said to have had upon "his heads" names of blasphemy; the second is "full of" such names.2 There are diadems on the horns of the former, but not of the latter.3 Of the first we are told that he comes up "out of the sea," of the second that he is about to come up "out of the abyss."4 In addition to these particulars, it will be observed that several traits of the first beast are not mentioned in connection with the second. These last points of difference may be easily set aside. They create no inconsistency between the descriptions given; and we have already had occasion for the remark, that it is the manner of the Seer to enlarge in one part of his book his account of an object also referred to in another part. His readers are expected to combine the different particulars in order to form a complete conception of the object. (1Comp. Rev_13:1; Rev_17:3; Rev_17:7; 2Comp. Rev_13:1; Rev_17:3; 3Comp. Rev_13:1; Rev_17:3; Rev_17:12; 4Comp. Rev_13:1; Rev_17:8)
The more positive points of difference, again, may be simply and naturally explained. In Rev_13:1 the horns take precedence of the heads because the beast is beheld rising up out of the sea, the horns in this case appearing before the heads. In the second case, when the beast is seen in the wilderness, the order of nature is preserved. The distribution of the names of blasphemy is in all probability to be accounted for in a similar manner. At the moment when the Seer beholds them in chap. 13 his attention has been arrested by the heads of the beast, and he has not yet seen the whole body. When he beholds them in chap. 17, the entire beast is before him, and is "full of" such names. The presence of diadems upon the ten horns in the first, and their absence in the second, beast depends upon the consideration that it is a common method of St. John to dwell upon an object presented to him ideally before he treats it historically. We know that the ten horns are ten kings or kingdoms1; and the diadem is the appropriate symbol of royalty. When therefore we think of the beast in his ideal or ultimate manifestation in the ten kings of whom we are shortly to read, we think of the horns as crowned with diadems; and it is thus accordingly that we see the beast in chap. 13. On the other hand, at the point immediately before us "the ten kings have received no kingdom as yet;"2 and the diadems are wanting. The application of this principle further explains the difference between what are apparently two origins for these beasts, - "the sea" and "the abyss." The former is mentioned in chap. 13, because there we have the beast before us in himself, and in the source from which he springs. The latter is mentioned in chap. 17, because the beast has now reached a definite period of his history to which the coming up out of "the abyss" belongs. The "sea" is his real source; the "abyss" has been only his temporary abode. The monster springs out of the sea, lives, dies, goes into the abyss, rises from the dead, is roused to his last paroxysm of rage, is defeated, and passes into perdition.3 This last is his history in chap. 17, and that history is in perfect harmony with what is stated of him in chap. 13, - that by nature he comes up out of the sea. (1 Rev_17:12; 2 Rev_17:12; 3 Rev_17:11)
While the points of difference between the beasts of chap. 13 and chap. 17 may thus without difficulty be reconciled, the points of agreement are such as to lead directly to the identification of the two. Some of these have already come under our notice in speaking of the differences. Others are still more striking. Thus the beast of chap. 13 is described as the vicegerent of the dragon1; and the object of the dragon is to make war upon the remnant of the womans seed.2 When therefore we find the beast of chap. 17 engaged in the same work, 3 we must either resort, to the most unlikely of all conclusions that the dragon has two vicegerents - or we must admit that the two beasts are one. Again, the characteristic of a rising from the dead is so unexpected and mysterious that it is extremely difficult to assign it to two different agencies; yet we formerly saw that this characteristic belongs to the beast of chap. 13, and we shall immediately see that it belongs also to that of chap. 17. Nay more, it is to be noticed that both in chap. 13 and in chap. 17 the marveling of the world after the beast is connected with his resurrection state. This was undoubtedly the case in chap. 13; and in the present chapter the cause of the worlds astonishment is not less expressly said to be its be holding in the beast how that he was, and is not, and shall be present.4 Let us add to what has been said that the figures of the Apocalypse are the product of so rich and fertile an imagination that, had a difference between the two beasts been intended, it would, we may believe, have been more distinctly marked; and the conclusion is inevitable that the beast before us is that also of the thirteenth chapter. (1 Rev_13:2; 2 Rev_12:17; 3 Rev_17:14; 4 Rev_17:8)
Turning then to the beast as here represented, we have to note one or two particulars regarding him, either new or stated with greater fullness and precision than before; while, at the same time, we have the explanation of the angel to help us in interpreting the vision.
(1) The beast was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss: and he goeth into perdition. The words are a travesty of what we read of the Son of man in chap. 1: "I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I became dead: and, behold, I am alive for evermore."1 An antichrist is before us, who has been slaughtered unto death, and the stroke of whose death shall be healed.2 Still further we seem entitled to infer that when this beast appears he shall have the marks of his death upon him. They that dwell on the earth shall marvel when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall be present. The inference is fair that there must be something visible upon him by which these different states may be distinguished. In other words, the beast exhibits marks which show that he had both died and passed through death. He is the counterpart of "the Lamb standing as though it had been slaughtered."3 (1 Rev_1:18; 2Comp. Rev_13:3; 3 Rev_5:6)
(2) The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And they are seven kings: the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a little while. Notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary by numerous and able expositors, these words cannot be applied directly to any seven emperors of Rome. It may be granted that the Seer had the thought of Rome sitting upon its seven hills in his eye as one of the manifestations of the beast, but the whole tenor of his language is too wide and comprehensive to permit the thought that the beast itself is Rome. Besides this, the heads are spoken of as being also "mountains;" and we cannot say of any five of the seven hills of Rome that they "are fallen," or of any one of them that it is "not yet come." Nor could even any five successive kings of Rome be described as "fallen," for that word denotes passing away, not simply by death, but by violent and conspicuous over throw;1 and no series of five emperors in other respects suitable to the circumstances can be mentioned some of whom at least did not die peaceably in their beds. Finally, the word "kings" in the language of prophecy denotes, not personal kings, but kingdoms.2 These seven "mountains" or seven "kings," therefore, are the manifestations of the beast in successive eras of oppression suffered by the people of God. Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and Greece are the first five; and they are "fallen" - fallen in the open ruin which they brought upon themselves by wickedness. Rome is the sixth, and "it is" in the Apostles days. The seventh will come when Rome, beheld by the Seer as on the brink of destruction, has perished, and when its mighty empire has been rent in pieces. These pieces will then be the ten horns which occupy the place of the seventh head. They will be even more wicked and more oppressive to the true followers of Christ than the great single empires which preceded them. In them the antichristian might of the beast will culminate. They are "ten" in number. They cover the whole "earth." That universality of dominion which was always the beasts ideal will then become his actual possession. They receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour; and together with him they shall rage against the Lamb. Hence. - (1Comp. Rev_6:13; Rev_8:10; Rev_9:1; Rev_11:13; Rev_14:8; Rev_16:19; Rev_18:2; 2Comp. Dan_7:17; Dan_7:23; Rev_18:3)
(3) And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven. The reader will notice that the expression of the eighth verse of the chapter "and is about to come up out of the abyss," as also another expression of the same verse, "and shall be present," are here dropped. We have met with a similar omission in the case of the Lord Himself at Rev_11:17, and the explanation now is the same as then. The beast can no more be thought of as "about to come up out of the abyss," because he is viewed as come, or as about "to be present," because he is present. In other words, the beast has attained the highest point of his history and action. He has reached a position analogous to that of our Lord after His resurrection and exaltation, when all authority was given Him both in heaven and on earth, and when He began the dispensation of the Spirit, founding His Church, strengthening her for the execution of her mission, and perfecting her for her glorious future. In like manner at the time here spoken of the beast is at the summit of his evil influence. In one sense he is the same beast as he was in Egypt, in Assyria, in Babylonia, in Persia, in Greece, and in Rome. In another sense he is not the same, for the wickedness of all these earlier stages has been concentrated into one. He has "great wrath, knowing that he has but a short season."l At the last moment he rages with the keen and determined energy of despair. Thus he may be spoken of as "an eighth;" and thus he is also "of the seven," not one of the seven, but the highest, and fiercest, and most cruel embodiment of them all. Thus also he is identified with the "Little Horn" of Daniel, which has "eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things."2 That Little Horn takes the place of three out of the ten horns which are plucked up by the roots; that is, of the eighth, ninth, and tenth horns. It is thus itself an eighth; and we have already had occasion to notice that in the science of numbers the number eight marks the beginning of a new life, with quickened and heightened powers. Thus also fresh light is thrown upon the statement which so closely follows the description of the beast, that he goeth into perdition. As in the case of Belshazzar, of Nebuchadnezzar, and of the traitor Judas, the instant when he reaches the summit of his guilty ambition is also the instant of his fall. (1 Rev_12:12; 2 Dan_7:7-8)
Before proceeding to consider the meaning of the "Babylon" spoken of in this chapter, it may be well to recall for a moment the principle lying at the bottom of the exposition now given of the " beast." That principle is that St. John sees in the world-power, or power of the world, the contrast, or travesty, or mocking counterpart of the true Christ, of the worlds rightful King. The latter lived, died, was buried, rose from the grave, and returned to His Father to work with quickened energy and to enjoy everlasting glory; the former lived, was brought to nought by Christ, was plunged into the abyss, came up out of the abyss, reached his highest point of influence, and went into perdition. Such is the form in which the Seers visions take possession of his mind; and it will be seen that the mould of thought is precisely the same as that of chap. 20. The fact that it is so may be regarded as a proof that the interpretation yet to be offered of that chapter is correct.
It may be further noticed that the beast s being brought to nought and being sent into the abyss takes place under the sixth, or Roman, head. We know that this was actually the case, because it was under the Roman government that our Lord gained His victory. The history of the beast, however, does not close with this defeat. He must rise again; and he does this as the seventh head, which is associated with the ten horns. In them and "with" them he assumes a greater power than ever, gaining all the additional force which is connected with a resurrection life. The objection may indeed be made that such an exposition is not in correspondence either with the view taken in this commentary that the beast is active from the very beginning of the Christian era, or with those facts of history which show that, instead of falling, Rome continued to exist for a lengthened period after the completion of the Redeemers victory.
But, as to the first of these difficulties, it is not necessary to think that the beast rages in his highest and ultimate form from the very instant when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to His Father. That was rather the moment of the beasts destruction, the moment when, under the sixth head, he "is and is not;" and a certain extent of time must be interposed before he rises in his new, or seventh, head. The Seer, too, deals largely in climax; and, although in doing so he is always occupied with the climactic idea rather than with the time needed for its manifestation, the element of time, if our attention is called to it, must be allowed its place. Now in the development of the beast there is climax. In Rev_11:7 it is said that "the beast that cometh up out of the abyss shall make war with" the two faithful witnesses "when they shall have finished their testimony," and this finishing of their testimony implies time. Again, in Rev_12:17 the increased wrath of the dragon against the remnant of the womans seed appears to be subsequent to the persecution of the woman in the same chapter (Rev_12:13). No doubt the thought of the increased wrath of the dragon is the main point, but it may be quite truly said that some time at least is needed for the increase. The view, therefore, that the beast rages from the beginning of the Christian era, from the moment when he rises after his fall, or, in other words, is loosed after having been shut up into the abyss, is not inconsistent with the view that his rage goes on augmenting until it attains its culminating point.
The answer to the second difficulty is to be found in the consideration that to the Seer the whole Christian era appears no more than "a little season," in which events must follow closely on one another, so closely that the time required for their evolution passes almost entirely, if not indeed entirely, out of his field of vision. He has no thought that Rome will last for centuries. "The times or the seasons the Father hath set within His own authority."* The guilt of Rome is so dark and frightful that the Seer can fix his mind upon nothing but that overthrow which shall be the just punishment of her crimes. She is not to be doomed; she is doomed. She is not to perish; she is perishing. Divine vengeance has already overtaken her. Her last hour is come; and the ten kings who are to follow her are already upon their thrones. Thus these kings come into immediate juxtaposition with the beast in that last stage of his history which had begun, but had not reached its greatest intensity, before Rome is supposed to fall. (* Act_1:7)
2. The second figure of this chapter now meets us; and we have to ask, Who is the woman that sits on the beast? or, What is meant by Babylon?
No more important question can be asked in connection with the interpretation of the Apocalypse. The thought of Babylon is evidently one by which the writer is moved to a greater than ordinary degree. Twice already have we had premonitions of her doom, and that in language which shows how deeply it was felt.* In the passage before us he is awed by the contemplation of her splendor and her guilt. And in chap. 18 he describes the lamentation of the world over her fate in language of almost unparalleled sublimity and pathos. What is Babylon? We must make up our minds upon the point, or the effort to interpret one of the most important parts of the Revelation of St. John can result in nothing but defeat. (* Rev_14:8; Rev_16:9)
Very various opinions have been entertained as to the meaning of Babylon, of which the most famous are that the word is a name for papal Rome, pagan Rome, or a great world-city of the future which shall stand to the whole earth in a relation similar to that occupied by Re me towards the world of its day. These opinions cannot be discussed here; and no more can be attempted than to show, with as much brevity as possible, that by Babylon is to be understood the degenerate Church, or that principle of degenerate religion which allies itself with the world, and more than all else brings dishonor upon the name and the cause of Christ.
(1) Babylon is the representative of religious, not civil, degeneracy and wickedness. She is a harlot, and her name is associated with the most reckless and unrestrained fornication. But fornication and adultery are throughout the Old Testament the emblem of religious degeneracy, and not of civil misrule. In numerous passages familiar to every reader of Scripture both terms are employed to describe the departure of Israel from the worship of Jehovah and a holy life to the worship of idols and the degrading sensuality by which such worship was everywhere accompanied. Nor ought we to imagine that adultery, not fornication, is the most suitable expression for religious degeneracy. In some important respects the latter is the more suitable of the two. It brings out more strongly the ideas of playing the harlot with "many lovers"l and of sinning for "hire."2 In this sense then it seems proper to understand the charge of fornication brought in so many passages of the Apocalypse against Babylon. Not in their civil, but in their religious, aspect have the kings of the earth committed fornication with her, and they that dwell on the earth been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. Her sin has been that of leading men astray from the worship of the true God, and of substituting for the purity and unworldliness of Christian living the irreligious and worldly spirit of the "earth." To this it may be added that, had Babylon not been the symbol of religious declension, she could hardly have borne upon her forehead the term MYSTERY. St. John could not have used a word connected only with religious associations to express anything but a religious state awakening the awe, and wonder, and perplexity of a religious mind. Babylon, therefore, represents persons who are not only sinful, but who have fallen into sin by treachery to a high and holy standard formerly acknowledged by them. (1 Jer_3:1 2 Mic_1:7)
(2) We have already had occasion to allude to a fact which must immediately receive further notice, - that to the eye of St. John there is an aspect of Jerusalem different from that in which she is regarded as the holy and beloved city of God. Jerusalem in that aspect and Babylon are one. Each is "the great city," and the same epithet could not be applied to both were they not to be identified. Not only so. The words here used of Babylon lead us directly to what our Lord once said of Jerusalem. "Therefore," said Jesus, "behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: some of them shall ye kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous bloodshed on the earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous unto the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the sanctuary and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation."* Precisely similar to this is the language of the Seer, And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. (* Mat_23:34-36)
It may indeed be thought impossible that under any circumstances whatever St. John could have applied an epithet like that of Babylon, steeped in so many associations of lust, and bloodshed, and oppression, to the metropolis of Israel, the city of God. But in this very book he has illustrated the reverse. He has already spoken of Jerusalem as represented by names felt by a pious Jew to be the most terrible of the Old Testament, - "Sodom and Egypt."1 The prophets before him had employed language no less severe. "Hear the word of the Lord," said Isaiah, addressing the inhabitants of the holy city, "ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah,"2 and again, "How is the faithful city become an harlot, she that was full of judgment! righteousness lodged in her; but now murderers;"3 whilst the degenerate metropolis of Israel is not unfrequently painted by Jeremiah and Ezekiel and other prophets in colors than which none more dark or repulsive can be conceived. (1 Rev_11:8; 2 Isa_1:10; 3 Isa_1:21)
In forming a conclusion upon this point, it is necessary to bear in mind that to the eye of the faithful in Israel, and certainly of St. John, there were two Jerusalems, the one true, the other false, to its heavenly King; and that in exact proportion to the feelings of admiration, love, and devotion with which they turned to the one were those of pain, indignation, and alienation with which they turned from the other. The latter Jerusalem, the city of "the Jews," is that of which the Apocalyptist thinks when he speaks of it as Babylon; and, looking upon the city in this aspect as he did, the whole language of the Old Testament fully justifies him in applying to it the opprobrious name.
(3) The contrast between the new Jerusalem and Babylon leads to the same conclusion. We have already more than once had occasion to allude to the principle of antithesis, or contrast, as affording an important rule of interpretation in many passages of this book. Nowhere is it more distinctly marked or more applicable than in the case before us. The contrast has been drawn out by a recent writer in the following words: -
"These prophecies present two broadly contrasted women, identified with two broadly contrasted cities, one reality being in each case doubly represented: as a woman and as a city. The harlot and Babylon are one; the bride and the heavenly Jerusalem are one.
"The two women are contrasted in every particular that is mentioned about them: the one is pure as purity itself, made ready and fit for heavens unsullied holiness, the other foul as corruption could make her, fit only for the fires of destruction.
"The one belongs to the Lamb, who loves her as the bridegroom loves the bride; the other is associated with a wild beast, and with the kings of the earth, who ultimately hate and destroy her.
"The one is clothed with fine linen, and in another place is said to be clothed with the sun and crowned with a coronet of stars: that is, robed in Divine righteousness and resplendent with heavenly glory; the other is attired in scarlet and gold, in jewels and pearls, gorgeous indeed, but with earthly splendor only. The one is represented as a chaste virgin, espoused to Christ; the other is mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.
"The one is persecuted, pressed hard by the dragon, driven into the wilderness, and well-nigh overwhelmed; the other is drunken with martyr blood, and seated on a beast which has received its power from the persecuting dragon.
"The one sojourns in solitude in the wilderness; the other reigns in the wilderness over peoples, and nations, and kindreds, and tongues.
"The one goes in with the Lamb to the marriage supper, amid the glad hallelujahs; the other is stripped, insulted, torn, and destroyed by her guilty paramours.
"We lose sight of the bride amid the effulgence of heavenly glory and joy, and of the harlot amid the gloom and darkness of the smoke that rose up forever and ever."* (*Guinness, The Approaching End of the Age, p. 143)
A contrast presented in so many striking particulars leaves only one conclusion possible. The two cities are the counterparts of one another. But we know that by the first is represented the bride, the Lambs wife, or the true Church of Christ as, separated from the world, she remains faithful to her Lord, is purified from sin, and is made meet for that eternal home into which there enters nothing that defiles. What can the other be but the representative of a false and degenerate Church, of a Church that has yielded to the temptations of the world, and has turned back in heart from the trials of the wilderness to the flesh-pots of Egypt? Every feature of the description answers, although with the heightened color of ideal portraiture, to what such a professing but degenerate Church becomes, - the pride, the show, the love of luxury, the subordination of the future to the present. Even her very cruelty to the poor saints of God is drawn from actual reality, and has been depicted upon many a page of history. With the meek and lowly followers of Jesus, whose life is a constant protest that the things of time are nothing in comparison with those of eternity, none have less sympathy than those who have a name to live while they are dead. The world may admire, even while it cannot understand, these little ones, these lambs of the flock; but to those who seek the life that now is by the help of the life that is to come they are a perpetual reproach, and they are felt to be so. Therefore they are persecuted in such manner and to such degree as the times will tolerate.
One other remark has to be made upon the identification of Jerusalem and Babylon by the Seer. It has been said that he has one special aspect of the metropolis of Israel in his eye. Yet we are not to suppose that he confines himself to that metropolis. As on so many other occasions, he starts from what is limited and local only to pass in thought to what is unlimited and universal. His Jerusalem, his Babylon, is not the literal city. She is "the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters;" and "the waters which thou sawest," says the angel to the Seer, "are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues."* The fourfold division guides us, as usual, to the thought of dominion over the whole earth. Babylon is not the Jerusalem only of "the Jews." She is the great Church of God throughout the world when that Church becomes faithless to her true Lord and King. (* Rev_17:15)
Babylon then is not pagan Rome. No doubt seven mountains are spoken of on which the woman sitteth. But this was not peculiar to Rome. Both Babylon and Jerusalem are also said to have been situated upon seven hills; and even if we had before us, as we certainly may have, a distinct reference to Rome, it would be only because Rome was one of the manifestations of the beast, and because the city afforded a suitable point of departure for a wider survey. The very closing words of the chapter, upon which so much stress is laid by those who find the harlot in pagan Rome, negative, instead of justifying, the supposition: And the woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. Rome never possessed such universal dominion as is here referred to. She may illustrate, but she cannot exhaust, that subtler, more penetrating, and more widespread spirit which is in the Seers view.
Again, Babylon cannot be papal Rome. As in the last case, there may indeed be a most intimate connection between her and one of the manifestations of Babylon. But it is impossible to speak of the papal Church as the guide, the counselor, and the inspirer of anti-Christian efforts to dethrone the Redeemer, and to substitute the world or the devil in His stead. The papal Church has toiled, and suffered, and died for Christ. Babylon never did so.
Nor, finally, can we think of Babylon as a great city of the future which shall stand to the kings and kingdoms of the earth in a relation similar to that in which ancient Rome stood to the kings and kingdom? of her day. Wholly apart from the impossibility of our forming any clear conception of such a city, the want of the religious or spiritual element is fatal to the theory.
One explanation alone seems to meet the conditions of the case. Babylon is the world in the Church. In whatever section of the Church, or in whatever age of her history, an unspiritual and earthly element prevails, there is Babylon.
We have spoken of the two great figures of this chapter separately. We have still to speak of their relation to one another, and of the manner in which if is brought suddenly and forever to a close.
This relation appears in the words, I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, and in later words of the chapter: the beast that carrieth her. The woman then is not subordinate to the beast, but is rather his controller and guide. And this relation is precisely what we should expect. The beast is before us in his final stage, in that immediately preceding his own destruction. He is no longer in the form of Egypt, or Assyria, or Babylonia, or Persia, or Greece, or Rome. These six forms of his manifestation have passed away. The restrainer has been withdrawn,1 and the beast has stepped forth in the plenitude of his power. He has been revealed as the "ten horns" which occupy the place of the seventh head; and these ten horns are ten kings who, having now received their kingdoms and with their kingdoms their diadems, are the actual manifestation in history of the beast as he had been seen in his ideal form in chap. 13. The beast is therefore the spirit of the world, partly in its secularizing influence, partly in its brute force, in that tyranny and oppression which it exercises against the children of God. The woman, again, is the spirit of false religion and religious zeal, which had shown itself under all previous forms of worldly domination, and which was destined to show itself more than ever under the last To the eye of St. John this spirit was not confined to Christian times. The woman, considered in herself, is not simply the false Christian Church. She is so at the moment when we behold her on the field of history. But St. John did not believe that saving truth, the truth which unites us to Christ, the truth which is "of God," was to be found in Christianity alone. It had existed in Judaism. It had existed even in Heathenism, for in his Gospel he remembers and quotes the words of our Lord in which Jesus says, "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock, one Shepherd."2 As then Divine truth, the light which never ceases to con tend with the darkness, had been present in the world under every one of its successive kingdoms, so also perversions of that truth had never failed to be present by its side. All along the line of past history, in Heathenism as well as in Judaism, the ideal bride of Christ had been putting on her ornaments to meet the Bridegroom; and not less all along the same line had the harlot been arraying herself in purple and scarlet and decking herself with gold and precious stones and jewels, that she might tempt men to resist the influence of their rightful King. The harlot had been always thus superior to the beast. The beast had only the powers of this world at his command; the harlot wielded the powers of another and a higher world. The one dealt only with the seen and temporal, the other with the unseen and eternal, the one with material forces, the other with those spiritual forces which reach the profoundest depths of the human heart and give rise to the greatest movements of human history. The woman is therefore superior to the beast. She inspires and animates him. The beast only lends her the material strength needed for the execution of her plans. In the war, accordingly, which is carried on by the ten kings who have one mind, and who give their power and authority unto the beast, in the war which the beast and they, with their combined power, wage for one hour against the Lamb, it would be a great mistake to suppose that the woman, although she is not mentioned, takes no part and exerts no influence. She is really there, the prime mover in all its horrors. The "one mind" comes from her. The beast can do nothing of himself. The ten kings who are the form in which he appears are not less weak and helpless. They have the outward power, but they cannot regulate it. They want the skill, the subtlety, the wisdom, which are found only in the spiritual domain. But the great harlot, who at this point of history is the perversion of Christian truth, is with them; and they depend on her. Such is the first part of the relation between the beast and the harlot. (1Comp. 2Th_2:7; 2 Joh_10:16)
A second, most unexpected and most startling, follows.
We have seen that in the war between the ten kings and the Lamb the woman is present. That war ends in disaster to her and to those whom she inspires. The Lamb shall overcome them: for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings. The name is the same as that which we shall afterwards meet in Rev_19:16, though the order of the clauses is different. This Lamb, therefore, is here the Conqueror described in Rev_19:11-16; and many particulars of these latter verses take us back to the Son of man as He appeared in chap. 1, or, in other words, to the risen and glorified Redeemer. The thought of the risen Christ is thus in the mind of St. John when he speaks of the Lamb who shall overcome. The leaders of the Jewish Church had believed that they had for ever rid themselves of the Prophet who "tormenteth them that dwell on the earth."* They had sealed the stone, and set a watch, and returned to their homes for joy and merriment. But on the third morning there was a great earthquake, and the stone was rolled away from the door of the sepulchre; and the Crucified came forth, the Conqueror of death and Hades. Then the Lamb overcame. Then He began His victorious progress as King of kings and Lord of lords. Then the power and the wisdom of the world were alike put to shame. Was not this enough? No, for now follow the words which come upon us in a way so wholly unexpected: And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire. (*Comp. Rev_11:10)
What is the meaning of these words? Surely not that Rome was to be attacked and overthrown by the barbaric hordes that burst upon her from the North: for, in the first place, the Roman manifestation of the world-power had passed away before the ten kings came to their kingdom; and, in the second place, when Rome fell, she fell as the beast, not as the harlot. Surely also not that a great world-city, concentrating in itself all the resources of the world-power, is to be hated and burned by its subjects, for we have already seen that this whole notion of a great world-city of the end is groundless; and the resources of the world- power are always in this book concentrated in the beast, and not in the harlot who directs their use. There seems only one method of explaining the words, but it is one in perfect consonance with the method and purpose of the Apocalypse as a whole. As on many other occasions, the fortunes of the Church of Christ are modeled upon the fortunes of her Master. With that Master the Church was one. He had always identified His people with Himself, in life and death, in time and in eternity. Could the beloved disciple do otherwise? He looked round upon the suffering Church of his day. He was a "companion with it in the tribulation, and kingdom, and patience which are in Jesus."* He felt all its wounds and shared all its sorrows, just as he felt and shared the wounds and sorrows of that Lord who lived in him, and in whom he lived. Here, therefore, was the mould in which the fortunes of the Church appeared to him. He went back to well-remembered scenes in the life of Christ; and he beheld these repeating themselves, in principle at least, in the members of His Body. (* Rev_1:9)
Now there was one scene of the past - how well does he remember it, for he was present at the time! - when the Roman power and a degenerate Judaism, the beast and the harlot of the day, combined to make war upon the Lamb. For a moment they seemed to succeed, yet only for a moment. They nailed the Lamb to the cross; but the Lamb overcame them, and rose in triumph from the grave. But the Seer did not pause there. He looked a few more years onward, and what did he next behold? That wicked partnership was dissolved. These companions in crime had turned round upon one another. The harlot had counseled the beast, and the beast had given the harlot power, to execute the darkest deed which had stained the pages of human history. But the alliance did not last The alienation of the two from each other, restrained for a little by co-operation in common crime, burst forth afresh, and deepened with each passing year, until it ended in the march of the Roman armies into Palestine, their investment of the Jewish capital, and that sack and burning of the city which still remain the most awful spectacle of bloodshed and of ruin that the world has seen. Even this is not all. St. John looks still further into the future, and the tragedy is repeated in the darker deeds of the last "hour." There will again be a "beast" in the brute power of the ten kings of the world, and a harlot in a degenerate Jerusalem, animating and controlling it The two will again direct their united energies against the true Church of Christ, the "called, and chosen, and faithful." They may succeed; it will be only for a moment. Again the Lamb will overcome them; and in the hour of defeat the sinful league between them will be broken, and the world-power will hate the harlot, and make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh, and burn her utterly with fire.
This is the prospect set before us in these words, and this the consolation of the Church under the trials that await her at the end of the age. "When the wicked spring as the grass, and all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever: but Thou, O Lord, art on high for evermore. For, lo, Thine enemies, O Lord, for, lo, Thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered."* (* Psa_92:7-9)
Babylon is fallen, not indeed in a strictly chronological narrative, for she will again be spoken of as if she still existed upon earth. But for the time her overthrow has been consummated, her destruction is complete, and all that is good can only rejoice at the spectacle of her fate. Hence the opening verses of the next chapter.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 1–3. There came one of the seven angels. These…
1–3. There came one of the seven angels. These angels had symbolized the overthrow of Babylon by their vials. This one will now show John the events of her overthrow in greater detail. The next three chapters relate to her fate. Sitteth upon many waters. Is supported by many nations. See verse 15, which explains the meaning of “waters” when used as a symbol.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain NOTICE that in the Old Testament, harlotry is the…
THE JUDGMENT ON BABYLON
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
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NOTICE that in the Old Testament, harlotry is the frequent representation of apostasy. Babylon stands for the Apostate Church, which is here figured as a harlot temptress.
Rev_17:4. Golden cup.—Jer_51:7.
Rev_17:5. Upon her forehead was a name.—It is said to have been an ancient custom for harlots to wear their names on their foreheads—tied on as a label. Mystery.—See 2Th_2:7.
Rev_17:7. Carrieth her.—The woman sitting upon the beast may mean the union of the ecclesiastical and secular power. [It is not in the design of this commentary to examine how far the events of St. John’s time, more especially in relation to the persecutions of Imperial Rome, and in relation to doctrinal and moral failures within the Church of Christ, give colour and form to his symbolical representations. It is hardly possible to make any elaborate homiletical use of this portion of the Apocalypse.] Into the controversy as to the relation of ecclesiastical Rome to these Johannine visions and prophecies, it is not either fitting or necessary that this work should enter. It has been the aim of its author and editor carefully to avoid all contentious topics, and keep entirely in the realm of general truths and principles. What wise uses may be made of single passages in these chapters will be found indicated in the homiletic portions, and in the notes and specimen outlines.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Rev_17:3. The Scarlet Harlot.—Who or what is the Scarlet Harlot of Revelation 17? Commentators have given scores of opinions, but the majority have settled upon Rome, either Pagan or papal. “That great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth” (Rev_17:18) to their minds determines the question, and as a collateral proof is the plain declaration (Rev_17:9) that “the seven heads are the seven mountains on which the woman sitteth.” What can these be (they say) but the famous seven hills of Rome? These interpreters find no difficulty in exalting the petty hills of Rome into mountains, and they also fail to see that these seven mountains are (in Rev_17:3) “a scarlet coloured beast,” and (in Rev_17:1; Rev_17:15) “many waters.” How are they going to turn the seven hills of Rome into “many waters,” or “a beast”? The harlot sits on all three equally. The error with most commentators in this remarkable book is their strange mingling of the literal with the symbolic. It is true that when the apostle-prophet himself explains a symbol, we have a literal statement, as in Rev_19:8. “The fine linen is the righteousness of saints,” but in all other cases the symbolism must be adhered to. In this seventeenth chapter we see a scarlet harlot, seated on a scarlet beast, and the beast is full of names of blasphemy, and has seven heads and ten horns. The woman is gorgeously arrayed and is drunk—drunk with the blood of the saints. The beast and the horns (see R.V.) at last destroy the harlot (Rev_17:16). Now, if the woman of chap. 12, clothed with the sun, and yet bitterly persecuted, is God’s true Church, as the whole context seems to demand, what is more likely than that this prosperous harlot is the false church? But what is the false Church? The Church of Rome? But how about the Greek Church? and the Armenian Church? and the Nestorian Church? and the Abyssinian Church? Are not these as false as Rome? I think we shall have to give up the identification of this woman with the Church of Rome. She is the false Church—any Church which puts aught in Christ’s place. In other words, she is the ecclesiastical corrupter of doctrine and practice found in all so-called churches of Christ. Christ has a real, true Church, composed of sincere believers, trusting in Him alone as the Saviour; and side by side with these, under the same external organisations, are thousands and millions who are a false Church, whose faith is in human power and human works, who pervert the truth, and whose lives are not spiritual, but carnal. These form Antichrist. They are not under any one organisation. They are under all nominally Christian organisations. This is the false Church. Do not look for either this or the true Church in one external form. Look for it in life and spirit. This is the scarlet harlot. It seeks this world’s gold and precious stones and pearls (Rev_17:4), and has no eye for eternal realities. It has always been the oppressor of God’s true people, and the suppressor of God’s truth. It is the concreted spirit of persecution toward all that is godly. It is a Christianity that practically denies Christ, and puts human greed or human pride and pleasure in His place. It exhibits itself, not only in superstition, political power, the Inquisition and Jesuitism, but also in rationalism, scepticism and worldliness. This woman—this harlot—this false Church, is called “that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth,” because it is this false style of Christianity that controls the governments of the world, which support the Church as it does the theatre, and which sings The Deums over acts of tyranny and murder. This great city is called Babylon (Rev_17:5), and Sodom, and Egypt, and Jerusalem, which crucified our Lord (Rev_11:8), names indicative of hatred to God’s people and to their Lord and Redeemer. The waters on which the woman sits, we are told, are the nations of the earth (Rev_17:15), for she proudly flourishes wherever the nominal Christian Church is found. These nations in their institutions support her. The waters and mountains also appear as a beast, the beast of chap. 13, the beast of human tyrannical power, selfish and cruel. This human power has had seven grand manifestations in history as connected with God’s people—namely, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome Pagan, Rome Christian. The first five of these had fallen in the prophet-apostle’s time (Rev_17:10); the sixth was in existence; the seventh was still to come, but to continue only a brief period, for the beast itself has to succeed his heads and share his power with the ten horns. That is, the successors of the Roman Empire should unite with the tyranny, now not in an Empire, but in an ecclesiastical human centre. On all these phases of tyranny over man, the scarlet woman sits in her gorgeous pride. Ecclesiastical corruption flourishes on these human institutions of government. The false Church finds her aliment in these human and carnal principles of society and law. But the time will come when God’s judgment will fall on the false Church. The very beast and horns will destroy it. The carnal interests of human authority will be the means of destroying the false Christianity which they formerly supported. The wrath of man will praise God. And then the true Church—God’s faithful ones—will be vindicated and glorified.—Howard Crosby.
Rev_17:14. The Overcoming Lamb.—A great Person is here spoken of, and a great thing, it is declared, He will accomplish.
I. Consider the Person mentioned. He is not a lamb but the Lamb. He is the great, universal Lamb, causing the blood which He shed to spread itself, as it were, all over the world, so that every sinner might touch it, and be saved from his sins. See His personal qualities.
1. His quietness. It is in marked contrast with the lion.
2. Wonderful patience. How much He bore from His enemies!
3. Perfectly innocent.
4. Capable of exercising great wrath.
II. What He shall overcome.—“The Lamb shall overcome them;” which seems to have special reference to organised Antichrist. But He shall overcome all opposers, both nations and individuals.
III. How He shall overcome His opposers.—There are two general methods. One is that of using certain means to persuade rebellious hearts to become reconciled to God. His greatest effort has always been to overcome by the passion of His love. But the second method is that of final banishment from His presence. Oh, what can feeble man do against such an all powerful being as Christ is? How utterly vain have been the threats of infidels, that they would banish Him from the world!—C. H. Wetherbe.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain THIS was one of the angels who had the…
THIS was one of the angels who had the seven vials of wrath. He has already poured out his vial, but is still on hand, and at this time becomes the Lord’s messenger to the apostle. To the harlot of Babylon, who now becomes the most conspicuous character in the scene passing on the prophetic drama, in the statement that “she is sitting upon many waters,” we have a confirmation of what I have frequently told you in this book; i.e., the sea means the people, while the rivers and fountains of water typify the subordinate rulers. The harlot here spoken of is none other than the Roman Catholic Church.
2. “With whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and those dwelling upon the earth were made drunk from the wine of her fornication.” All spiritual deflection from God, and all anti-holiness religions, are denominated “fornication” in the Bible. Here we find it stated that all the people in the world have been made drunk from the wine of her fornication. That is certainly a very strong affirmation; but when we consider the fact that regeneration takes us out of the world, we see that this sweeping implication only applies to the unsaved. An intoxicated man is carried away with dreamy visions, illusory phantoms, and flighty imaginations. So it is with the votaries of a false religion. They vainly flatter themselves that they are saved, when they are lost; that they are traveling up the King’s highway to heaven, when they are in the broad road to hell.
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3. This verse strikingly contrasts with Rev 12:14. where the bride of Christ flies from the bloody dragon and makes her escape into the wilderness. Hence we must return thither to find her again. To John’s Unutterable astonishment, he finds her no longer flying from the ferocious beast, but sitting on his back, arrayed in silk, scarlet, and bedecked with gold, diamonds, and jewelry of every kind. It is abundantly revealed in these prophecies that this is the fallen bride — the harlot of Babylon. The pompous pretensions of the papacy amount to the most horrific blasphemy. The “seven heads” are the kingdom, the consulate, the dictator, the triumvirate, the tribuneship, the empire, and the papacy. The
“ten horns” are the ten kingdoms into which the Roman Empire was disintegrated upon its downfall, A.D. 476.
4, 5. Here Romanism is pronounced the mother of harlots — “the abominations of the earth.” In the preceding verses she is designated a harlot, and now the mother of harlots. The harlotry in the Bible means counterfeit religion; i.e., the devil’s religion. When the people take the Babylonian delusion for religion, this old harlot, who is none other than the devil’s wife, always simultaneously administers the wine of intoxication, so as to utterly hallucinate them with the pertinacious, chimerical dream that they are certainly bona fide Christians. While Romanism is the mother of all spiritual harlotry, we must remember that her prostitute daughters are in all the great Churches of Christendom. In this way the apostasy of all Churches supervenes. “Abominations” means the worship of anything and everything except God, and is synonymous with idolatry. Ecclesiasticism itself is abominable idolatry, growing on indefinitely, and undermining the simplicity of the Apostolic Church. The papacy is the culmination of all ecclesiasticism. It is unmistakably patent that all Churchisms have an inherent papistical trend. The Greek ecclesia means Church. It is from ek (out of), and kaleo (to call). Hence it simply means the called out; i.e., the people whom the Holy Ghost has called out of the world. This is the only Bible definition of Church. The Church is true and orthodox so long as she adheres to this definition. The prophet says God made man upright — i.e., perfect — but he has sought out many inventions. This predilection of fallen humanity to add to God’s institutions has derailed, humanized, despiritualized, degospelized, and ruined the Church in all ages. In this way originated Babylon, the old mother-harlot, and her innumerable family of daughters, belting the globe with their Briarian arms and blighting multiplied millions of souls with the withering siroccos of their pestilential breath. The Methodist Church is already crammed chuck-full of human institutions, and still they are constantly making more. The effect is to crowd God out, leave the people no time to serve Him, and run them all into Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. For this reason the normal tendency of the popular Churches of all denominations nowadays is to cause the people to backslide, dry up spiritually, become servants of the Church rather than God, run into ecclesiasticism (a species of idolatry), get farther and farther from God, and make their bed in hell. God has raised up the Holiness movement to rescue honest souls who have not gone beyond the dead-line into the awful whirlpool of dead Churchism. In this way all the great Protestant Churches of the world are going at race-horse speed headlong into popery.
Since the pope lost his temporal power in 1870, be has been seeking, through a thousand subterranean devices, to regain his lost ground. Leo XIII, in a recent encyclical, kindly invited all the Protestants to come back. To this invitation they all said “No.” But still they come in a way they know not. Satan is the great deceiver. When people fall in with him, they never aim to do it. He is the uncompromising rival of Christ, and the fallen Church — i.e., Babylon, the mother of harlots — is his wife, the implacable enemy of the true Church, the bride of Christ. Antichrist climaxes all opposition to Christ by claiming to be Christ himself. Just so Babylon is the arch enemy of the true Church because she claims to be the true Church.
6. “I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, and seeing her, I was astonished with great astonishment.” The woman — the harlot of Babylon, the fallen Church, the devil’s disciple — is drunk with the blood of God’s saints and martyrs. History bears testimony to the appalling fact that she has murdered two hundred millions of saints. It is a significant fact that the secular powers have never slaughtered God’s people Unless manipulated by the ecclesiastical. The counterfeit bride is the implacable rival of the true, and has done her utmost to destroy her in all ages. The present opposition to holiness is the very venom and rage of the Babylonian hag. Why was John so unutterably astonished? The word “admiration,” in English, is utterly wrong and misleading. John’s ineffable wonder was because he identified this drunken harlot, covered with the blood of God’s saints and riding the cruel beast of Romanism, with the humble bride of Christ he saw fly from the bloody beast in the 12th chapter. The identity was indiscernible, save by the revelation of the Holy Ghost. This confirms most indubitably the apostasy of the Church. In a similar sense, Satan was once a bright archangel in heaven. The devil has no creative power, and God can’t create sin. But the devil has illimitable power of transformation. The fallen Church is a sad monument of this power. This wonderful transformation is so cunningly manipulated by the great deceiver that the victim never knows it till the Holy Ghost shines in. These two hundred millions of God’s humble saints have all been accompanied to the burning stake by a long-faced clergyman, who believed the cruel martyrdom was right and necessary to the glory of God and the good of his Church. Jesus Himself heads our list. When Caiaphas, the high priest of Jerusalem, signed His death-warrant, he assuredly believed he was doing God service. Thus multiplied millions this day serve the devil, thinking they are worshipping God; and belong to the Babylonian apostasy, thinking they belong to the Church of God. What is the remedy? God’s word, Spirit, and providence. This triple dance is infallible. Civil government is the only present preventive of martyrdom. Blood and torture would belt the globe if gunboats and bayonets did not intimidate the votaries of Babylon.
God’s Church, the divine ecclesia — i.e., the souls called out of the world by the Holy Ghost — is under the direct government of the Holy Ghost. It is the only earthly survivor of the theocracy. God’s original purpose was to rule the world in Church and State in the heaven-born theocracy.
The last political vestige went out of His hands at the fall of Jerusalem B.C. 87. Since that time the ecclesia has been launched, in which he proposes to rule faithful bands. Ecclesia means God’s Church, over which the Holy Ghost always presides. When men take into hands the government of the Church, they usurp the office of the Holy Ghost. This is downright robbery. Will a man rob God? As a rule, the men who commit this awful crime are so hallucinated by the devil that they think they are doing God service; and if they do not take the government of the Church into hand, it will certainly go to ruin. Uzzah thought the Ark would be ruined if he did not hold it; but he only lost his life and arrested the progress of the Ark.
So the man who usurps the office of the Holy Ghost loses his soul and ruins the Church. Where can you find a Church, outside of the Holiness movement, which is not under human rule and spiritually dead? The ecclesia is Divine, and ruled by the Holy Ghost. The ecclesiasticism is human, and ruled by men, the Spirit having retreated away because He was superseded by men. In this way originated priestcraft, prelacy, and popery, followed by all the horrors of the autodafe and the Inquisition.
7. “I will tell thee the mystery of the woman and the beast that carrieth her.” The Greek musterion — i.e., mystery — means a secret which is to be revealed. God’s religion is a profound mystery, which none but Himself can reveal. He has revealed it to me, but I cannot, to save my life, reveal it to another. It is a matter of history that when the Church apostatized into Romanism she became a secret society, and is yet. Just as God’s people receive a secret from Him, so Satan’s people receive a secret from him.
The devil reigns in fallen Churches under the name of God, imparting the secret of his soul-destroying sorcery, by which he gulls and stupefies his devotees till he can dump them into hell. We find, by personal appeal, that very few Church people have an acquaintance with God and a knowledge of sins forgiven. They are resting in carnal security amid the ambrosial delusions of Satan, who has beguiled them with false hopes, founded on a spurious faith. Woman, throughout the Bible, means the Church. The fair, chaste bride of Christ is the true Church, the mother of God’s children. This old harlot is the counterfeit bride, the devil’s wife, the mother of his children. This beast is a wonderfully conspicuous figure in these prophecies. The Greek theerion means a ferocious, bloodthirsty wild beast. It represents all human governments contrastively with the theocracy. As Rome is the greatest and most conspicuous of all human governments, here we find the beast playing the most prominent part.
Revelation 12 : He has seven heads and ten horns; i.e.,
(1) the kingdom,
(2) the consulate,
(3) the dictatorship,
(4) the triumvirate,
(5) the tribuneship,
(6) the empire, and
(7) the papacy.
The ten horns are the ten kingdoms into which the empire was disintegrated when destroyed by the Huns, Goths, and Vandals, A.D. 476, and which remain, with little modification, to this day. Romanism, the great power of antichrist, has a duplicate organization, the political and ecclesiastical, the former typified by the beast and the latter by the woman. Hence, in the figure, the drunken harlot is debauched Romanism and her fallen daughters in a more remote sense, while the beast is the secular power supporting these fallen Churches.
8. “The beast was, is not, and yet is.” The Bible abounds in enigmas to sharpen our wits and impress the truth more vividly. Jesus says: “Let the dead bury the dead;” i.e., the spiritually dead bury the physically dead. This wonderful beast was in the capacity of pagan Rome, but having been destroyed A.D. 476, he is not in that form. Since the pope succeeded Caesar on the throne and perpetuated the empire, the beast is yet in the capacity of papal Rome. Since this beast is a medley of contradictions, all the world wondered after him and worshipped him — i.e. dragon, the devil — gave the beast power and His throne.
9, 10. Rome stands on seven hills. I saw them last summer. These are one phase of the seven heads. “There are seven kings : five have fallen, one is, and another has yet to come, and when he may come it behooveth him to remain a little time.” Here comes in the other more prominent phase of the seven heads; i.e. seven kings, or kingdoms (the concrete for the abstract). Rome was first ruled by kings, then by consuls, then by dictators, then by triumvirs, and then by tribunes. These five forms of government had all passed away before John’s day. Hence he says, “Five of the kings have fallen.” “One is;” i.e., the Roman Empire, under which John lived, and that was the sixth head of the beast. “One has not yet come;” i.e. papal head of the Roman world. The empire continued nearly four hundred years after this prophecy before it passed away and the papacy supervened. “When he — i.e., the pope — comes, it behooves him to remain a little time.” The papistical period in prophecy is 1260 — a short time contrastively with the lapse of ages, and especially the cycles of eternity.
11. “The beast which was, and is not, is himself the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” Now, who is this wonderful eighth beast? He is said to he one of the seven. Who are the seven? The kings, consuls, dictators, triumvirs, tribunes, emperors, and popes constitute the seven heads of the Roman beast. Since all these are dead and gone long ago, except the popes, it follows as an irresistible, logical sequence that the pope is the eighth beast. How can the pope he the seventh and the eighth too? Of course, when he passes from the seventh to the eighth, he assumes a new character. What is this character? It is that of antichrist. Hence we see from this prophecy that the pope is to become antichrist early in the tribulation. At present, the censorship of Babylon is the chief papal prerogative. As Babylon will fall about the middle of the tribulation, doubtless the papacy will undergo a radical revolution, assuming a decidedly more political, dogmatic, imperious, defiant, blasphemous attitude than ever before.
THE ANTICHRISTHOOD
The Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Christ of the new. Hence the excarnate Christ is the hero of the Old Testament, and the Incarnate of the New. Hence we see that the Christhood has always been progressive, and destined to culminate in the glorious millennial kingdom. It is equally true that the antichristhood has always been progressive. Every positive has its negative. Thus the antichristhood is the simple and normal negative of the Christhood. The word “antichrist” is from anti (instead of), and Christ. While this is the original definition and attitude, the secondary definition — i.e., the implacable enemy and indefatigable rival of Christ-assumes transcendent importance. 2Th 2:4 :
“Who opposeth and exalteth himself above everything that is called God or divinity, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself off that he is God.”
This inspired definition of Paul certainly does vividly describe the most pompous, pedantic, egotistical, defiant, and blasphemous rivalship of the Most High. When the sixth angel pours out his vial of wrath on the Euphrates, and those three unclean spirits, like frogs, shall come out of the mouth of the beast, the dragon, and the false prophet — i.e., paganism, Romanism, and Mohammedanism — and stir up the whole world to the great wars of Armageddon, in which all the powers of earth and hell will be arrayed against God Almighty — i.e. all human governments, political and ecclesiastical, united against divine rule; i.e., God’s theocracy — the pope, being the more influential of the three, will doubtless subordinate the other two departments of Satandom, assume the supremacy, and proclaim himself the incarnate Christ. Under these blasphemous assumptions, ambuscaded by the spiritual darkness which will fill the world after the Lord takes up His saints in the cloud, the first resurrection and concomitant translations having transpired, the pope, environed by the carnal millions of all nations, Catholic, Moslem, and heathen, will doubtless not only command their loyalty, but their adoration. During the terrible darkness of the tribulation (Dan 7:9), the Ancient of Days — i.e., God the Father, who has no incarnation, and is consequently invisible — will be here sitting on His judgment-throne, executing the just and awful retributions on the rebel nations and Babylonian Churches throughout the world. In consequence of the dismal spiritual night, which shall anticipate the bright millennial day, and the unprecedented activity of Satan, tremulously prognosticating his approaching doom, antichrist, through priestcraft, statecraft, witchcraft — i.e., spiritualism, socialism, secularism — and every species of diabolism, will rally the whole world against truth, righteousness, purity, and godliness, as never before. Dan 12:1 :
“There shall be a time of trouble, such as was never since there was a nation, even to that same time.”
This describes the great tribulation. It was an awful time when the Flood came and swept the world into eternity. When God rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorra, it was appalling in the extreme. When the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem, and the sword, pestilence, and famine slew a million of people, and a million more were sold into slavery, it was unutterably awful. But we are assured by Daniel, John, and Jesus that the horrors of the tribulation will transcend all the woes this wicked world, in six thousand years, has known. I am on the daily outlook for the Lord to come and take up the members of the bridehood, translating the living and raising the dead. Who is ready to meet Him in the cloud? This is our only hope of escaping the tribulations, unless the Lord takes Us to heaven after they set in.
12. John tells us the ten horns are ten kingdoms that have not risen in his day. They did not rise until after the fall of the universal Roman empire, A.D. 476. Horn, in the Bible, means political power. When great Rome fell, her worldwide territory was broken up into ten kingdoms, which remain to the present day much in their original integrity. At the present day, the great political powers of the earth are about ten. The pope was crowned A.D. 606, and dethroned in 1870, according to prophecy. He exercised his prerogative as universal bishop soon after the dethronement of Caesar in 476. From about this time the kings generally succumbed to his ipse dixit, till the Lutheran Reformation terribly relaxed his grip.
13. “These have one mind, and give their authority and power to the beast;” i.e., the pope. For more than a thousand years this prophecy has been signally verified within the above dates.
14. This verse prophesies the glorious triumph of Christ over all these secular and ecclesiastical enemies. We hail it with joyful enthusiasm.
15. You see in this verse a confirmation of much preceding interpretation, recognizing the sea, rivers, and fountains as symbolizing the people.
16. DIVORCEMENT OF CHURCH AND STATE.
“The ten horns which you saw, and the beast. these shall hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.” This prophecy is now rapidly being fulfilled. The secular powers, which tamely submitted to papistical interference and dictation, are now everywhere in rebellion. The Jesuits have been driven out of France, the most Catholic country on the globe. Not only the sovereigns of the old world, but Mexico, Central and South America, are ready in rebellion against the papal authority. So the time has come when the “horns” hate the “whore.” They will soon eat her flesh; i.e., confiscate her immense possessions in their kingdoms. This is coming during the tribulation, and will expedite her ruin; i.e., the fall of Babylon. The Roman Catholic Church has more financial ability than any nation on the earth. We see from this prophecy she is destined to lose it all. The secular governments will confiscate it; i.e., eat her flesh. “Burn her with fire.” Fire, throughout the Bible, symbolizes destruction. It is the constant symbol of sanctification, because this means sin’s destruction. Hence we see the secular powers are going to find out the awful imposition of ages and execute vengeance. You see the prophetic drama. This fallen woman is now riding the bloody beast, one of whose meanings is the world power. He has dressed her in scarlet, and covered her with gold and diamonds, and is carrying her on his back. In turn she promises to take him to heaven when he dies. He is going to find out the lying delusion; that he is paying his millions to adorn her in queenly splendor and toiling to carry her on his back, and all this for naught; for instead of taking him to heaven, she is not going there herself. They must all together make their bed in hell. No wonder he will throw her over his head and devour her without mercy. The English says “the horns on the beast” will do this; but the Greek says, “The horns and the beast will hate the whore, eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.” While the harlot means the fallen Church, the beast means the world power. The horns are the different governments which have been identified with Romanism, and that will take in nearly every state this side of the Moslem power in the East. This is a practical solution of the fall of Babylon; i.e., the secular powers are going to smash her into atoms. We now see not only the established Churches of the old world riding the state, but the Laodicean Churches of America are everywhere mounted on the back of the world, enjoying a ride to the bottomless pit; e.g., in an average city Church of one thousand members, at least half of them are hurrying to destruction because they are wicked. But they constitute the society wing of the membership, have the money, fill the offices, and bear the financial burdens of the Church. While I was preaching in a Southern city, a pastor of twelve hundred members, being informed that a prominent brother was drunk, responded: “I know he drinks, but he pays well; I would rather he would get drunk and pay than shout and not pay.” Take the wicked members out of the wealthy Churches and they will pay hundreds instead of thousands. Thus we everywhere see the Church riding the world. Methodist Churches have been poisoned by the introduction of worldly lay representation. Formerly the bishops went to God and made the appointments; now the laymen dictate to the bishop. How seldom any but men of wealth are elected in the Conference delegation? How often do you find rich men with any religion? In this way even Methodist Churches have climbed up and taken their seats on the old bloody dragon, and are now riding the world. What will the end be? Echo answers, Wonderful things already make haste. The time is at hand when the world is going to wake up to the awful cheat, and find out that they are paying their money for naught. Then the beast (the world) will throw the woman (the Church) over his head, eat her flesh, drink her blood, and pick her bones. These awful tragedies will transpire during the oncoming tribulation. While the world is racked in a universal volcano, all nations rushing into deadly conflict, then, to augment the horror of the scene, Church and State will quarrel and fight.
17. “God hath given it unto their hearts to do His will, and to have one will, and to give their power to the beast, till the words of God shall be fulfilled.” You must remember, Satan, the beast, and all other evil powers can only prevail by Divine permission. These evils belong to the mysteries of human probation. Ours is the period of the bridehood; hence, characterized by the most terrible temptations. The responsibilities of the bridehood are absolutely incalculable, sweeping on through all eternity, and involving the interest of myriads of worlds. Hence the importance that she pass through Satan’s flint-mills over and over. If she comes out with a shout of victory in her soul and loyalty to God every time, she is climbing Jacob’s ladder with cheering velocity. The devil, pope, and Mahomet, with their concomitant evil agencies, will tread down the world till the prophecies are fulfilled. I am glad the black reign of sin is nearly over. The Holiness movement is the morning star preceding the glorious millennial day. You must not think God is tied to the prophecies; they are tied to Him. If the Church had not permitted Satan to side-track her from the glorious doctrine and experience of entire sanctification, the millennium, with its floods of glory, would have filled the earth long ago. In that case the prophecies would have corroborated the facts. So all the kings of the earth gave their power to the pope till his appointed fall, which culminated in his temporal dethronement in 1870.
The Moslem power in the East is to fall in 1897. Ten thousand omens cheer us in the sanguine anticipation that this prophecy will be fulfilled. Still the papacy and Islam will continue to wield a wonderful influence, even to the very coming of our Lord to reign. Then they will be cast into the lake of fire. (Rev 19:20.)
18. The city of Rome has ruled the world two thousand years under the seven heads —
(1) kings,
(2) consuls,
(3) dictators,
(4) triumvirs,
(5) tribunes,
(6) emperors, an
(7) popes.
This city is the throne of the beast and the harlot.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain Section 1. (Rev 17:1-18.)
Section 1. (Rev 17:1-18.)
The rule of the harlot
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Babylon is already announced as fallen in the fourteenth chapter, and as judged of God under the seventh bowl; but we have not yet seen what Babylon is, and we are not to be left to any uncertainty. She has figured too largely in human history, and is too significant a lesson every way to be passed over in so brief a manner. We are therefore now to be taught the "mystery of the woman."
For she is a mystery: not like the Babylon of old, the plain and straightforward enemy of the people of God. She is an enigma, a riddle; so hard to read, that numbers of God’s people in every age have taken her, harlot as she is, for the chaste spouse of the Lamb. Yet here for all ages the riddle has been solved for those who are close enough to God to understand it, and the figure is gaudy enough to attract all eyes to her -seeking even to do so. Let us look with care into what is before us in these chapters, in which the woman is evidently the central object, the beast on which she is sitting being here viewed rather in its relation to her.
It is one of the angels of the bowls who exhibits her to the apostle, and his words naturally show us what she is characteristically as the object of divine judgment. As described by him, she is "the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication."
As brought into sharp contrast with the beast that carries her, we see that she is a woman, has the human form as the beast has not. A beast knows not God, and in Daniel we have found the Gentile power losing the human appearance which it has in the king’s dream, to take the bestial, as in the vision of the prophet. In Nebuchadnezzar personally we see what causes the change; that is, pride of heart which forgets dependence upon God. The woman, on the other hand, professedly owns God, and moreover, as a woman, takes the place of subjection to the man: in the symbol here, to Christ. When she is removed by judgment, the true bride is seen, to whom she is in contrast, and not, as so many think, to the woman of the twelfth chapter, who is mother, not bride, of Christ, and manifestly represents Israel.
But the woman here is a harlot in guilty relation with the kings of the earth. Here, also, is manifestly ambition, the desire of power on earth, the refusal of the cross of Christ, the place of rejection; and the wine, the intoxication of her fornication, makes drunk the "dwellers upon earth." These we have already seen to be a class of persons who, with a higher profession, have their hearts yet set upon earthly things. These naturally drink in the poison of her doctrine.
To see her, John is carried away, however, into the wilderness; for the earth is that, and all efforts of those who fain would do so cannot redeem it from this. There he sees the woman sitting on a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, easily identified as the beast of previous visions by its seven heads and ten horns. The beast is in a subjection to the woman which we should not expect. It is the imperial power, but in a position contrary to its nature as imperial; in this harmonizing with the interpretation of the angel afterwards -the beast that was and is not." In some sort it is; in some sort it is not; and this we have to remember as we think of its heads and horns. If the beast is not, necessarily its heads and horns are not. These are for identification, not as if they were existing while the woman is being carried by it. In fact, she is now its head, and reigns over its body, over the mass that was and that will be again the empire, but now "is not."
What are we to say of the scarlet color and the names of blasphemy? Are they prospective, like the horns? The latter seems so, evidently, and therefore it is more consistent to suppose the former also, the difficulty of which may be relieved somewhat by the evident fact that of these seven heads only one exists at a time, as we see by the angel’s words. The seven seen at once are again for identification, not as existing simultaneously. The scarlet color is that which typifies earthly glory -what is simply that. The beast’s reign has no link with heaven. That it is full of names, not merely words of blasphemy, speaks of the assumption of titles which are divine, and therefore blasphemous to assume. Altogether, we see that it is the beast of the future that is presented here, but which could not really exist as such while carrying the woman. She could not exist in this relation to him, he being the beast that he is; and thus the expression is fully justified -really alone explains the matter -the "beast that was, and is not, and will be."
There is clearly an identification of a certain kind all through. While the woman reigns, that over which she reigns is still, in nature, but the beast that was, and that after her reign will again be. There is no fundamental change all through. The Romanized nations controlled by Rome are curbed, not changed. And breaking from the curb, as did revolutionary France at the close of the eighteenth century, the wild-beast fangs and teeth at once display themselves.
But we are now called to consideration of the woman, who, as reigning as the professed spouse of Christ over what was once the Roman empire, is clearly seen to be what, as a system, we still call Rome -"that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth;" which did so even in John’s time, although to him appearing in a garb so strange that when he sees her he wonders with a great wonder.
She is appareled in purple and scarlet, for she claims spiritual as well as earthly authority, and these are colors which Rome, as we know, affects; God thus allowing her even to the outward eye to assume the livery of her picture in Revelation. These external signs are not to be thought unsuitable because external. They are intended surely to invite our attention to what is underneath them. She is decked, too, with gold and precious stones and pearls, figures of really divine and spiritual truths, which, however, she only uses to adorn herself outwardly with, and indeed to make more enticing the cup of her intoxication: "having a golden cup in her hand," says the apostle, "full of abominations and filthiness of her fornications." Now we have her name: "And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth."
Her name is Mystery, yet it is written on her forehead. Her character is plain, if only you can read it. If you are pure, you may soon know that she is not. If you are true, you may quite easily detect her falsehood. In lands where she bears sway, as represented in this picture, she has managed to divorce morality from religion in such a manner that all the world knows the width of the breach. Her priests are used to convey the sacraments; and one need not look at the hands too closely that do so needful a work. In truth, it is an affair of the hands, with the magic of a little breath by means of which the most sinful of His creatures can create the God that made him, and easily new-create, therefore, another mortal like himself. This is a great mystery, which she herself conceives as "sacrament," and you may see this clearly on her forehead then. It is the trick of her trade, without which it could not exist. With it, a little oil and water and spittle become of marvelous efficacy, her capital stock indeed, out of which, at the smallest cost, the church can create riches and power, and much that has unquestionable value in her eyes.
"Babylon the great" means "confusion the great." Greater confusion there cannot be than that which confounds matter and spirit, creature and Creator, makes water to wash the soul, and brings the flesh of the Lord in heaven to feed literally with it men on earth. Yet to this is the larger part of Christendom captive, feeding on ashes, turned aside by a deceived heart; and they cannot deliver their souls, nor say, "Is there not a lie in my right hand?" (Isa 44:20.)
This, for those who are deceived by it, lifts her at once into a place of supreme power that nothing can resist. If she has power to create God, she may well have power over all the creatures that He has created.
This frightful system has scattered wide the seed of its false doctrine, and the harlot-mother has daughters like herself. She is the "mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." Solemn words from the Spirit of truth, which may well search many hearts in systems that seem severed far from Rome, as well as those that more openly approach her. Who dare, with these awful scriptures before them, to speak smooth things as to the enormities of Rome? To be protestant is indeed in itself no sign of acceptance with God; but not to be protestant is certainly not to be with God in a most important matter. This Roman Babylon is not, moreover, some future form that is to be, though it may develop into worse yet than we have seen. It is that which has been (in the paradoxical language which yet is so lively a representation of the truth) seated upon the beast, while the beast "is not." It is popery, as we know it, and have to do with it; and woe to kings and rulers who truckle to it, or (again in the bold Scripture words) commit fornication with it! "Come out from her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues!"
"And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and when I saw her," says the apostle, "I wondered with a great wonder."
Romish apologists have been forced by the evidence to admit that it is Rome that is pictured here; but they say -and some Protestant interpreters have joined them in it -that it is pagan Rome. But how little cause of wonder to John in his Patmos banishment that the heathen world should persecute the saints! With us it is simple matter of history, and we have ceased to wonder; while, alas, it is true that many today no longer remember, and many more think we have no business to remember, the persecutor of old. It was the temper of those cruel times of old, many urge. Nineteenth century civilization has tamed the tiger, and Rome now loves her enemies, as the Christian should. But abundant testimony shows how false is this assertion. Here, just before her judgment, the apostle pronounces her condemnation for the murder of God’s saints still unrepented of.
The angel now explains the mystery, and begins with the beast. "The beast that was, and is not" is clearly from the point of view of the vision, as has been said. The rule of the woman necessarily destroys beast-character while it lasts. But the beast will awake from its long sleep. It is about to come up out of the abyss, and go into perdition. This coming up out of the abyss, however, as has been elsewhere said, does not seem to be merely the revival of the empire: the key of the abyss in the hands of the fallen star under the fifth trumpet, and the angel of the abyss being the person who, by the two languages of his name is the destroyer of both Jew and Gentile, necessarily leads us to believe that there is in it the working of Satanic power. This is strengthened by the connection of this ascent with the "going into perdition" of that which comes up.
The previous revival under the seventh head would thus be passed over; this being in fact merely temporary and transitional; the prophecy, which is not a history of the beast, but of its relation to the woman, hastens on to what is most important; the beast pictured here being identified, in fact, in the prophecy itself, with its own eighth head (ver. 11). That it has only seven, as seen in the vision, is not against this, if the seventh and eighth heads are the same person.
The unhappy "dwellers upon the earth" wonder at this revival, whose names have not from the foundation of the world been written in the book of the Lamb slain. Divine grace is that alone which makes any to differ; and of this we are reminded here. The power that works in the revival of the beast is plainly beyond that of man; and how many in the present day seem to take for granted that whatever is of more than human power must be divine! This is the essence of the "strong delusion" which God sends upon those who have not received the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Powers and signs and lying wonders confirm the imperial last head in his pretension; and that they are "lying" means, not that they are mere juggling and imposition, but that they are made to foster lies. They shall wonder, seeing how that the beast "was, and is not, and shall be present [again]."
And here is the mind that hath wisdom, the divine secret for an understanding heart. First, as to the woman: "The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth."One would think there need not be much doubt about the application of this, and in general there has not been. That Rome was the seven-hilled city is familiar to every schoolboy, and its being a "geographical" mark need not make it unsuited to be one, as Lange believes. God would point out in this way, in a manner plain even to unspiritual souls, if possible, what it is of which He is speaking here; and He has even, if one may so say, gone out of the way to give a needed plain mark of identification, that His saints may know, whose blood it would shed, and who would need the comfort of knowing, that He was against this "mother and mistress of the churches," with all her effrontery, and the crowd that follow her.
But the heads are also seven kings, consecutive, not contemporaneous rulers; for five had already fallen, one was, and another was yet to come, only to exist for a short time; the beast himself being the final one. Imperial Rome was evidently what existed in the apostle’s day. "One is" we must take, as it seems, as applying to the apostle’s day, for at the time of the vision the beast itself "is not." The only other time present would be the time in which the apostle lived himself.
The imperial head came to an end necessarily when the empire as a whole broke up under the attacks of the barbarians; and to make, as Barnes and others do, the exarch of Ravenna the seventh head of the world-empire, is either to overlook the plain terms of the prophecy, or else to pervert the simple facts of history. The exarchate lasted about 200 years, which Barnes considers comparatively but a short time, and the papacy he considers to be the eighth head. This falls with the exarchate; for the papacy would then be but the seventh, and nothing would correspond.
The seventh head began, according to Elliott, when Diocletian, already emperor, assumed the diadem -the symbol of despotic sovereignty after the Eastern fashion; and he quotes Gibbon’s words, that, "like Augustus, Diocletian may be considered the founder of a new empire." But if this were the seventh head, there was a gap between it and the papacy, and this must have been the time when the beast was not." This is better in some respects than Barnes, and may really be an anticipative fulfilment such as we find in the historical interpretation generally. But it fails when we come to apply it consistently all through, as where Elliott has to make the burning of the woman with fire by the ten horns to be merely the devastation of the city and the Campagna prior to their giving power to the beast, whereas in the prophecy it is really effected by the beast and the horns together, and is the complete end of the system which the woman represents. It would be manifestly incongruous to suppose the papacy to hate and consume the Roman Catholic church.
The scheme of prophecy involved in all this, if taken as a whole, must be reserved for an after-time, to consider more closely. When the papacy in fact ruled the empire, it had ceased to be in a proper sense the empire, and then it was that, according to the chapter before us, the beast was not. The true bestial character could not co-exist with even the profession of Christianity. The beast is necessarily, therefore, secular, not ecclesiastical. When the secular empire fell, the beast was not; though in that contradictory condition the woman might ride it. Since that fall there has been no revival, and therefore, as yet, no seventh head. The seventh head seems to be constituted that by the union of ten portions of the divided territory to give him power; and the preponderance of Russia in Europe might easily bring about a coalition of this kind. The new imperial head lasts but a short time, is smitten with a sword, possibly degraded to the condition of a "little horn," is revived by the dreadful power of Satan acting through the antichristian second beast of the thirteenth chapter, assumes the blasphemous character in which we have already seen him, and then throws off the last remnant of the rule of the woman. This is the beast as Revelation contemplates him generally, identified with the eighth head, but which is of the seven; in fact, is the seventh which had the wound by the sword, yet lived. Thus seen, all the passages seem to harmonize; a harmony which is the main argument for the truth of such an interpretation of them.
"And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings which have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and give their power and authority unto the beast." Alas, they are united against God and His Christ: "These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful."
Here we have anticipated the conflict of the nineteenth chapter. These that are with Christ are His redeemed people, as is plain. Angels may be "chosen and faithful," but only men are "called"; and when He comes forth as a warrior out of heaven, they, as "the armies that were in heaven, follow Him." The rod of iron which He has Himself is given to His people, and the closing scene in the conflict with evil sees them in active and earnest sympathy with Him.
The waters where the harlot sat are next interpreted as "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues." With another meaning and intent than where it is spoken of Israel, "her seed is in many waters." Her influence is wide-reaching and powerful, but it is brought to an end: "and the ten horns which thou sawest and the beast;" -so, and not "upon the beast," all authorities give it now; -"these shall hate the harlot, and make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her up with fire." That surely is not a temporary infliction, but a full end; and beast and horns unite together in it. She has trampled upon men, and according to the law of divine retribution this is done to her. This has been partially seen many times in the history of Rome, and the end of the eighteenth century was a dreadful warning of what is soon to come more terribly still upon her. The very profession of Christianity which she in time past used for the purpose of gain and power over men will, no doubt, by the same retributive law, become at last the millstone around her neck; and no eye will pity her, for it is God who has "put into their hearts to do His will, and to come to one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast until the words of God shall be accomplished."
How good to know, amid all that day of terror, that God is supreme, above all, in all, the devices of His enemies! Still "He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of it He restraineth." And this is the time which will most fully demonstrate this. It is the day of the Lord upon all the pride of man, to bring it low. It is the day when every refuge of lies shall be swept away and all the vanity of his thoughts shall be exposed. "The idols He shall utterly abolish." Yea, those who have been their slaves shall fling them to the moles and the bats. "And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day." Then the way is prepared for blessing, wide in proportion to the judgment which has introduced it.
There is yet a question which we should consider before passing on, and which affects the whole interpretation already given with regard to Babylon the great. It is being urged with more and more confidence, and by a growing number of prophetic students also, that Babylon here is, after all, not Rome, but the ancient city upon the Euphrates, which is to revive in the last days and manifest the old spirit which it had from the beginning. It is plain that the name itself is what has suggested this. Otherwise one would say it would never have found the acceptance which it has. The introduction, to so large an extent, of literalism into the interpretation of Revelation naturally provides for this view a great support. Those who can believe that the new Jerusalem itself is only a great city -literally 12,000 furlongs in measure, a cube or a pyramid, as it is variously considered, its foundations literal jewels, and all else accordant, -will contend most earnestly that Babylon the great is no other than that so constantly before us in the Old Testament Scriptures. Those, on the other hand, who believe that Revelation is essentially a book of symbols will find in the very name itself a suggestion really the other way. We need rather special proof that the name is literal here, where the beast, the horns, and other surroundings are so manifestly figurative. Then the word "mystery" comes before the name, as if to assure us that there is something deeper than the letter in it. Afterwards, also, we have the warning that, "here is the mind that hath wisdom;" which, again, suggests the care we need in looking at all this. Harlotry is the uniform figure for the departure from God of one in professed spiritual relation to Him. There are two exceptions to this -in the case of Tyre (Isa 23:1-18) and Nineveh (Nah 3:1-19). These are the only ones to be found in all Scripture, while abundance of quotations could be given from the prophets in which Israel’s relation to God is the very ground of such charges against a people departed from Him, and violating the relation in which He has brought them to Himself. The woman herself suggests such a thought as this. The woman of the twelfth chapter is not, however, as many take it, the figure of the Christian Church, but rather of Israel, as we have seen. That Babylon here is in contrast with her we need not deny or doubt, and the contrast comes out plainly in the fourteenth chapter where the 144,000 stand upon mount Zion with the Lamb. Of them it is said, "These are they that were not defiled with women, for they are virgins." Against Babylon of old no such charge as what is here is ever made. Babylon the great is not only a harlot, but the "mother of harlots," -a term which the lateness of Rome in the world’s history, according to some, makes it impossible to apply to her. And this connects itself with the objection derived from the universality of Babylon’s rule here, as also with the charge against her of "the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." The answer to this should be plain, that the Lord charges Jerusalem in His day in a similar manner; declaring that upon her inhabitants shall come "all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar." "All these things," He declares, "shall come upon this generation" (Mat 23:35-36). Certainly, nothing is said of Babylon here that can be stronger than this; and in fact upon any generation that takes up openly the sins of its ancestors, and makes them its own, such things may be said. That is how the Lord speaks of Jerusalem, and that is how the prophet speaks here.
There is no doubt that Babylon the great here is identified in spirit with the Babylon of old, and this accounts for the name given to her. There is a real unity in Satan’s work from the beginning, while at the same time it develops from age to age, to keep pace with the developing revelation of God. It is this development which is so important here, and which seems to be so much forgotten by those who see here Babylon on the Euphrates. Idolatry is thus connected all through the world’s history; and it is sadly interesting to trace in Romanism at the present time the adoption of certain old forms of idolatry, as indeed history assures us it has always, in every land, shown itself ready to ally itself with such things, covering them only with a new and Christian name. Indeed, the account of Babel at the beginning certainly looks forward to that which we find here, but not in the way in which it is represented by many: modern research and fragmentary traditions being woven together to make a history of the Biblical account for which the Bible itself is not responsible. Thus we are told that "the Bible says that it was arranged for the people to make for themselves a ’name’ -a sem, token, sign, banner, ensign, or mark of confederation, fellowship, and organized unity," and that "that sem, or sema, was, in the language of the time, a Sema-Rama. Thus we have the name of the mythic Semiramis, the dove-goddess, which was the ensign of all the Assyrian princes. . . . The symbol of such a name or confederation would naturally, and almost necessarily, take the place of a god, and become the holy mother, the great heavenly protectress," etc., etc. All this is inventing for the Bible, to bring it up to what the Bible is here supposed to say. The thought of the Babel-multitudes, as Scripture in fact gives it, "to make themselves a name" is as simple as possible, and does not permit such things to be read into it.
Scripture is sufficient of itself in all matters of this kind, and its own account of Babylon is surely not lacking. Its typical character has been already remarked upon in its place. All this history in Genesis belongs to a great system of types in which Israel’s own history is included, according to the apostle’s words, "All these things happened unto them for types, and are written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages are come." Thus the history of Israel is repeated in the Church, and the Babylonian captivity of Israel has had sorrowful repetition in that other Babylonian captivity which has left its mark everywhere upon Christendom today. These types in history are a result of the fundamental unity of man everywhere, in his weakness, his folly, and his sin, over which there has been always God’s controlling hand, acting according to His unity also with His own hand. Scripture gives us the history in such a manner as to bring out the types, and show us God’s knowledge of everything and control of everything from the beginning. But if we go outside of Scripture, it is quite possible in such things to follow a false clue, and lose the meaning. In fact, by reverting here to Babylon, as at the beginning, the meaning is lost, the end of Christendom as here set before us is obscured. It is not permitted to be apostate Christendom, but a new thing which replaces it, and which is but a revival of what was at the beginning. In the last phase of things here, it is Babylon herself that is to be set aside in the open revolt against God which follows it. The woman here presents to us what we must not be allowed to miss, the end of the false pretension of the day, after the true Church is removed to heaven. When this is done, Satan is met upon his own ground as manifestly Satan. Only the battle of the great day of the Lord God Almighty remains. The anti-Church is gone, but in its place there is an anti-Christ and anti-God; and man shows what has been in his heart all through, by taking his side against God, under Satan’s banner. Thus we have gone back of Babylon itself to where man placed himself at the fall; only now this is done deliberately and after the long, patient trial of centuries. The devil’s word, "Ye shall be as God," is now, if possible, to be carried out; and with this open defiance the end comes, of course.
The connection of the woman with the beast is of the greatest importance to consider in all this. The beast is plainly Daniel’s fourth beast, however much it may unite in itself at last the characters of those preceding. But Daniel’s fourth beast, it is evident, has no successor. It is Rome, therefore, that is to be found in power at the end, as Babylon was at the beginning. It is not imperial Babylon that is to be revived, nor is it possible to make room in the prophecy for this. It may be true that the seven heads of the beast, successive as they are plainly, may, as already has been said, begin before Rome, and the Roman beast be seen in this, like the Roman woman, to be but the development of that which began in earliest human history. The beast, though the Roman beast, is only the continuance of the lawless Gentile powers that were from the beginning ever against God. The six heads culminate, as already said, in Rome, before the collapse of the empire. The seventh head is a new imperial head, as seen with its ten horns and as carrying the woman. It is a different form of power, transitional, and thus anomalous, but with the germ in it of the last, so that the whole number of horns is, in another view, only nine. When Christianized, Rome already lost in a sense its beast-character, though still in fact existing. Morally, it was never Christian, and its profession to be this was but a weight upon it, provoking judgment for its profession of the holy name. Thus it went down, as the historical view of Revelation shows, under the war-trumpets. The trumpets begin the history of the Church, when Church and world have become thus one. Thus at last the beast was not, though the "holy Roman empire" remained, as it were, as the ghost of what was departed. When it rises again, it rises in this anomalous condition; but even as it could not continue in this way before, so now its continuance is but "for a short time." The seventh head is wounded to death, and only revived by the power of Satan when now it becomes, as the eighth head, openly apostate, destroying the woman herself, and thus making an end of the corrupt profession upon earth. There now remains only the open war with God and the Lamb.
The connection of Rome, the city, with the Babylonian harlot is easily seen; and it is not, as Auberlen says, "totally at variance with the spirit of this thoroughly symbolical book." He would, with others, even deny the note of identification presented by the seven mountains upon which the woman sitteth. We have been told by another that these could not be even called "mountains;" they were but very small hills; but the Romans, who may be supposed to know their own language best, call them, nevertheless, montes -"mountains;" and it is quite the order of things, as shown in history, that a system of this kind should have a local representation and a name. The city of Rome has long been the centre and head of a corrupted Christianity, and cannot be released from the responsibility of this. Thus, in the Lord’s day, as all through her history, Jerusalem, on the other hand, has been identified with Israel, and is the sign of their condition at the present time. In the judgment of Babylon which follows here, Rome will assuredly be found to have her part, and to remain, in her utter desolation, such a witness for God as Babylon upon the Euphrates has long been.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain Babylon the great Harlot
Babylon the great Harlot
The judgment on Rome, which had been announced before, is now shown in detail. The identification of 'Babylon' with Rome, here and elsewhere in Rev., is supported (HDB.) by the following considerations:—The name Babylon in Rev_17:5; 'is described as mystery, i.e. a name to be allegorically interpreted... B. is described (1) as “the harlot” the supreme antithesis of “the bride,” “the holy city,” “the new Jerus.” (2) as the centre and ruler of the nations, Rev_14:8; Rev_17:1; Rev_17:15; Rev_17:18; (3) as seated on “seven mountains,” Rev_17:9; (4) as the source of idolatry and impurity, Rev_17:2.; Rev_18:2; Rev_19:2... (5) as a great trading centre, Rev_18:3, Rev_18:11-19; (6) as enervated by luxury, Rev_18:7, Rev_18:12,. Rev_18:22; (7) as the arch-persecutor of the saints and of “the witnesses of Jesus,” Rev_17:6; Rev_19:2.' Babylon, as the seat of world-empire, and the ancient and persistent enemy of the people of God, was a striking type of Rome. Many think Rome is meant in 1Pe_5:13.
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1f. Rome is spoken of by the herald angel of the bowls as a harlot, cp. Isa_23:15. (Tyre), Nah_3:4; (Nineveh), sitting on many waters, cp. Jer_51:13; (Babylon), which signify the peoples over whom Rome ruled, cp. Rev_17:15.
1. Vials] RV 'bowls.'
3-6. St. John is taken to a wilderness to see the harlot city, as in Isa_21:1 the vision of Babylon's fall was declared from a wilderness. She is sitting on a beast, i.e. the Roman empire: cp. Isa_13:1. The beast is scarlet, because of the blood shed by Rome. It is full of names of blasphemy (e.g. Sebastos; see on Rev_13:1), for in coins and seals and statues and temples the empire was full of such names. It has seven heads and ten horns, explained in Rev_17:9, Rev_17:12 (Rev_17:3). The woman, i.e. the city, is clothed with luxury, and she has in her hand a golden cup, signifying debauchery: cp. Rev_14:8; Jer_51:7; (Rev_17:4). On her forehead, after the custom of Roman harlots, is a label with her name (Rev_17:5). She is drunken with the blood shed in the persecution of Nero. St. John wonders at her iniquity (Rev_17:6).
6. Admiration] RV 'wonder.' For some description of the condition of Rome, see Intro. Romans. The state of society at Rome, at the time of the Rev., was probably the worst the world had ever seen. The aristocracy, which alone had any voice in public affairs, was, with few exceptions, utterly given over to the most shameless wickedness. Vast wealth was in their hands, which was spent in unbridled luxury and debauchery. Their continual craving for new sensations was ministered to by foreign parasites, who introduced new vices and flagrant superstitions. With no feeling for others, their cruelty was appalling. With their appetite for life jaded by the pursuit of pleasure, suicide became common. The herded masses of the people were sunk in ignorance and pauperism. The public distribution of corn confirmed them in idleness, and the public shows helped to harden their hearts and to corrupt their feelings. The State religion was not believed in by the educated, while it had no moral teaching to provide for those who did believe in it, and there was no system of public education.
The Christians were accused of having caused the great fire which raged in Rome for nine days (64 a.d.) According to Tacitus, a great multitude were convicted, not only of incendiarism, but of hatred of mankind. Some were covered with the hides of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs; others were covered with pitch and set on fire at nightfall to illuminate the imperial gardens. For some years Christians were punished on the accusation of horrible crimes. Afterwards, certainly by the time of Domitian, the mere profession of Christianity became punishable.
7-18. The angel interprets the mystery (Rev_17:7). The beast, which has previously represented the empire, now stands for Nero, in whom the cruelty of the empire had been personified: see on Rev_13:3. He shall come up out of the 'abyss' (RV), cp. Rev_9:1 note, Rev_11:7, i.e. return to life, and then go to perdition: cp. Rev_19:20; Mat_7:13; (Rev_17:8). The seven heads have two significations. They represent the seven hills of Rome on which the city sits (Rev_17:9). They also represent seven kings, i.e. probably Augustus (27 b.c.-14 a.d.), Tiberius (14-37), Caligula (37-41), Claudius (41-54), Nero (54-68), Vespasian (69-79), Titus (79-81). Five are dead; therefore, apparently, the prophecy was written in the reign of Vespasian. Titus is about to come (Rev_17:10). Then Domitian (81-96) will reign. Besides being the eighth king, he will be 'Nero,' because in him the persecuting spirit of Nero will have returned (Rev_17:11). The ten horns are given an interpretation different from that in Revelation 13. Now they signify 'the kings from the sun-rising' of Rev_16:12; (Rev_17:12). These are to join with the beast in war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them: cp. Rev_16:16; Rev_19:19. (Rev_17:13.). In one sense, the Lamb overcame them when not even death could make Christ's people unfaithful to Him; in another sense, when the empire became converted to Christ. The kings of the earth, joined to the beast, will turn against the city, and destroy and burn her. In Rev_17:16 use is made of the common expectations that Nero, returned to life, and in alliance with the Parthians, would take signal vengeance on Rome for her rebellion against him (Rev_17:16.). In Rev_17:18 the city is identified with Rome. It is clear that the prophecy of the destruction of Rome, of which this chapter forms part, has not been fulfilled. It has been suggested that the rapid spread of Christianity in Rome altered the character of the city, and that, for this reason, God withheld the threatened judgment: cp. Gen_18:26. (Sodom), Jonas Gen_3:10; (Nineveh).
8. That was] RV 'how that he was.' Yet is] RV 'shall come.'
9. Here is the mind, etc.] i.e. a wise man will be able to understand that which follows. The expression challenges the reader's attention: cp. Rev_13:8.
10. There] RV 'they.'
10f. He must continue, etc.] With a different punctuation of the Greek this might be rendered, 'he must continue a little while, and (so must) the beast which was and is not. And he himself is also an eighth,' etc. With this rendering, the beast is not identified with one of his horns.
11. Even he is the eighth] RV 'is himself also an eighth.'
12. One hour] i.e. a very short time.
14. And they.. called] RV 'and they also shall overcome that are with him, called.'
16. Upon] RV 'and.'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain angels (See Scofield "Heb 1:4").
angels (See Scofield "Heb 1:4").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain Babylon, the Harlot, and Her judgment
CHAPTERS 17-18
Babylon, the Harlot, and Her judgment
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1. The description of the woman (Rev 17:1-6)
2. The angel’s interpretation (Rev 17:7-15)
3. The desolation of the whore (Rev 17:16-18)
4. The angelic announcement (Rev 18:1-3)
5. The call to separation (Rev 18:4-5)
6. Her pride and destruction (Rev 18:6-8)
7. Lamentation and jubilation (Rev 18:9-20)
8. Her utter and eternal destruction (Rev 18:21-24)
Rev 17:1-6.
Babylon was mentioned for the first time in this book in Rev 14:8; her fall was then anticipated. In two chapters we have a description of her and the details of her overthrow and complete destruction. Babylon is seen as a great, world-wide ecclesiastical, political and commercial system, and her dwelling-place, from where she exercises authority, is a great city, which is the seven-hilled city Rome. There are many who believe that the literal Babylon is in view here in these two chapters. It is claimed that literal Babylon on the banks of the Euphrates is to become once more a large city and the seat of government during the end of this age. Literal Babylon never was a part of the Roman empire, and as the Babylon of Rev 17:1-18; Rev 18:1-24 is seen in closest identification with the empire, and for a time at least is at its center and capital, the Babylon in Asia is ruled out at once. Rome was the great center of the Roman empire and Rome will once more become the seat where the woman pictured in this chapter will exercise her authority.
In the first part of this chapter we have a description of the great harlot Babylon. Who, then, is this woman, branded a harlot, whom one of the seven angels who poured out the vials showed to John? She represents the papal system in its final power and control in the world. We shall see how this assertion is fully confirmed by the words of this chapter.
We saw in the church-message to Thyatira, which stands for the papacy and its great corruption, that Rome is pictured as the woman Jezebel, corresponding to the woman in the parable of the leaven. And of Thyatira it is said “she repents not.” This shows that Rome will continue in her corrupt ways to the end, till judgment overtakes her. She is to be cast into great tribulation (Rev 2:22).
When the true Church is caught up, the papal system, as we call it, the Roman Catholic “church” will see a great revival. For a time she has been stripped of the temporal power she once had, but it will be restored to her. Along with the revival of the Roman empire there will be a revival of papal Rome. But we must look very briefly at some of the descriptions of this woman, the harlot. “She sitteth upon many waters.” We find the interpretation in Rev 17:15. “The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth are peoples, and multitudes, and nations and tongues.” Rome even now can boast of her children among all nations. She gets her support from the whole world. And when she gets her revival she will have a still greater dominion. The kings of the earth will yield once more to her spiritual fornication. Then John saw the woman upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. Who is the Beast she rides? It is the first beast of chapter 13, the revived Roman empire. She becomes identified with that empire. Her attire is purple and scarlet and she is decked with gold, precious stones and pearls. The pope and his cardinals wear these colors. Purple and scarlet are the leading colors displayed in great Romish celebrations; gold, precious stones and pearls describe her enormous wealth and dazzling glory, so attractive to the natural man. And in her hand was a golden cup full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.
How clearly this describes papal Rome. Her service, called worship, her rituals, her splendid edifices, etc., all are fair to behold and pleasing to the eye, like a golden cup. But inside we find her filthiness in doctrine and in practices. She encourages sin by her indulgences. With the celibacy there is also filth connected. And then the vileness and abomination of the confessional. Her shameless character is written upon her forehead. The true Church is to have His name upon the forehead and the great harlot-system bears an inscription.
Rev 17:7-15.
The interpreting angel told John who the beast is, the beast, that was, and is not, and yet is (Rev 17:8). It is the Roman empire as stated before, it was, in an imperial form in John’s day. In the fifth century, A.D., it ceased existing as imperial Rome; it is not. But it is to be again, a revival which is here described as coming out of the pit of the abyss (chapter 13). Rev 17:9 shows Rome (seven mountains), where the woman sitteth. Therefore, Rome speaks of “the See of the Papacy,” and “See” is derived from the Latin Sedes, which means seat or throne.
The seven kings or heads in Rev 17:10, mean different forms of government of the Roman empire. Five are fallen; these were kings, consuls, dictators, decemvirs and military tribunes. These are past forms of government. But in John’s day the empire had the imperial form of government. This is the meaning of “one is.” The other and final form of the Roman empire “is not yet come.” That is in John’s day it had not yet come. It is the Satanic revival and control of the empire as we saw it in chapter 13. And the eighth head, which goeth into perdition, is the man who heads the empire, the little horn, which Daniel saw on the ten-horned beast. The ten horns in Rev 17:12-13 are kings. They correspond to the ten toes on Nebuchadnezzar’s image and the ten horns on the fourth beast which Daniel saw coming out of the sea. And these ten kings yield their power and strength unto the beast. In Rev 17:14, their awful future is seen. We shall see this more fully in Rev 19:11-21. They are going to make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb, who is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, will overcome them. With Him are the called, the chosen and the faithful, that is the redeemed, who come with Him and are manifested when He appears.
Rev 17:16-18.
The woman rides the beast for a short time only. She will not be long successful in her regained power. The ten horns, the ten kingdoms, and the beast hate her and turn against the whore. (“And the Beast” is not in the Authorized Version; it is added in the Revised Version and belongs rightfully in the text.) First they were all for her and now they unite in making her desolate and naked and burn her with fire. But more than that “and shall eat her flesh,” just as Jezebel was eaten by the dogs. It is God in His righteous judgment who decreed her desolation in this way.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Kingdom of Anti-Christ Symbolized by the Great Harlot.
The Kingdom of Anti-Christ Symbolized by the Great Harlot.
The vision of the great harlot:
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v. 1. And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters,
v. 2. with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
v. 3. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
v. 4. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication;
v. 5. and upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.
v. 6. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.
Although this chapter makes the impression of an independent vision, it is very closely connected with the foregoing chapter and with the plagues of the seven angels, as the introduction shows: And there came one of the seven angels that had the seven vials, and spoke with me, saying, Come, I shall show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sits upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and those that inhabit the earth have become drunk with the wine of her fornication. One of the special messengers of the Lord that had poured out the vials of His wrath upon the kingdom of Anti-Christ and upon all his servants took John along to show him the doom, the execution of the sentence upon the anti-Christian harlot. With emphasis she is called the great harlot, for her impudence and shamelessness have become a proverb and a byword among the nations. It was a powerful harlot, for she exerted her authority over many waters, over many peoples; and it was a wily harlot, for she had induced the kings and princes of the earth to commit fornication with her, she had gained such power over them by her trickery that they willingly carried out her desires, and she had made all nations drunk with the wine of her fornication, with the glamour and pomp of her false doctrines, causing them to forget the love which they should bear to Jesus Christ alone.
John himself saw this harlot: And he took me away into a desert in the spirit. The prophet’s soul and mind were dissociated from his body for a short while, in order that he might see this picture: And I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast covered with names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns; and the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and wore ornaments of gold and precious stone and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand filled with the abominations and the filthiness of her fornication, and on her forehead a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of the harlots and the abominations of the earth. The impression of the whole picture is one of abhorrence mingled with surprise that the great harlot should have succeeded so well with her designs against the earth and its inhabitants. Everywhere there is a lavish display of barbarous splendor, together with a repulsive show of the traffic in blood and in filth. The beast on which she is sitting is scarlet-colored and covered with blasphemous titles to take away the honor from the Lord of heaven, and its seven heads and ten horns make a strange and fearful combination. The woman herself, clothed with the garments of kings and bedecked with jewels which represent the riches of the world, all of which she had gathered in the course of her unspeakable traffic, had a cup of gold in her hand, the most dangerous feature in the picture, for it was filled with all the abominations and the filth of her fornication, of her adulterous life, with the doctrines of Satan, who tries to deceive the whole world. But on the forehead of the harlot John saw names which she had not inscribed there, for it explained to all men that would read just who and what this woman was. It was a name of mystery that was written there, as the Coptic version of the New Testament has it, and it told all men that this was Babylon the Great, the personification of the kingdom of Anti-Christ. And as she herself had left the Lord of her youth, so she had now become the mother of all other adulterous and idolatrous people in the world and the mother of all the greatest abominations on the earth.
The disgusting impression of the picture is heightened by the last part of the description: And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, and I wondered, when I saw her, with a great wonder (a great amount of wondering). The kingdom of Anti-Christ is the devil’s harlot, and since he is a murderer from the beginning, she has joined him in shedding the blood of saints and of witnesses of Christ, until she is in a continual state of inebriation as a result of the great amount of blood which she has consumed. No wonder that John stood fascinated by the very horror of the woman’s aspect. See Isa 1:21.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
John begins to describe the part of his vision about the great prostitute.
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the condemnation of the great prostitute
The noun "condemnation" can be expressed with the verb "condemn." AT: "how God will condemn the great prostitute" (See: Abstract Nouns)
the great prostitute
"the prostitute that everyone knows about." She represents a certain sinful city. (See: Symbolic Language)
on many waters
If you need to, you can use a more specific word for the kind of water. AT: "on many rivers" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
It is with the wine of her sexual immorality that the earth's inhabitants became drunk
The wine represents sexual immorality. AT: "The people of the earth became drunk by drinking her wine, that is, they were sexually immoral" (See: Distinguishing versus Informing or Reminding and Symbolic Language)
her sexual immorality
This may well have a double meaning: sexual immorality among people and also the worship of false gods. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
angel
condemn
prostitute
water
king
earth
commit
sexual immorality
wine
drunk
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 17:1–19:10 The great drama in this section focuses on…
17:1–19:10 The great drama in this section focuses on the powers that are hostile to God and responsible for the persecution and suffering of God’s people. Rome’s power was captivating to many (17:6); John purposely defines Rome’s sins and provides God’s assessment (17:3-18) before outlining its fall (18:1-24) and heaven’s response (19:1-10).
17:1 One of the . . . angels of judgment addresses John and summons him to a new scene in which he sees the coming judgment of the great prostitute, who rules over many waters. Rome, located on the Tiber River, controlled the seats of power and water trade routes throughout the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to the Euphrates River.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.