After these things, I saw another angel coming down out of the sky, having great authority. The earth was illuminated with his glory. He cried with a mighty voice, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and she has become a habitation of demons, a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird! For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality, the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from the abundance of her luxury.”
I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, that you have no participation in her sins, and that you don’t receive of her plagues, for her sins have reached to the sky, and God has remembered her iniquities. Return to her just as she returned, and repay her double as she did, and according to her works. In the cup which she mixed, mix to her double. However much she glorified herself, and grew wanton, so much give her of torment and mourning. For she says in her heart, ‘I sit a queen, and am no widow, and will in no way see mourning.’ Therefore in one day her plagues will come: death, mourning, and famine; and she will be utterly burned with fire; for the Lord God who has judged her is strong. The kings of the earth who committed sexual immorality and lived wantonly with her will weep and wail over her, when they look at the smoke of her burning, standing far away for the fear of her torment, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For your judgment has come in one hour.’ The merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, for no one buys their merchandise any more: merchandise of gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet, all expensive wood, every vessel of ivory, every vessel made of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble; and cinnamon, incense, perfume, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour, wheat, sheep, horses, chariots, and people’s bodies and souls. The fruits which your soul lusted after have been lost to you. All things that were dainty and sumptuous have perished from you, and you will find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, who were made rich by her, will stand far away for the fear of her torment, weeping and mourning, 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.
“Rejoice over her, O heaven, you saints, apostles, and prophets; for God has judged your judgment on her.” A mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and cast it into the sea, saying, “Thus with violence will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down, and will be found no more at all. The voice of harpists, minstrels, flute players, and trumpeters will be heard no more at all in you. No craftsman, of whatever craft, will be found any more at all in you. The sound of a mill will be heard no more at all in you. The light of a lamp will shine no more at all in you. The voice of the bridegroom and of the bride will be heard no more at all in you; for your merchants were the princes of the earth; for with your sorcery all the nations were deceived. In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on the earth.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24 Either Christ the eternal word of God the Father…
Either Christ the eternal word of God the Father (as often elsewhere) or a created Angel, and one deputed unto this service: but thoroughly furnished with greatness of power, and with light of glory, as the ensign of power.
The second place (as I said before, 17:1) of the history of Babylon, is of the woeful fall and ruin of that whore of Babylon. This historical prediction concerning her, is threefold. The first a plain and simple foretelling of her ruin in three verses, the second a figurative prediction by the circumstances, thence, unto verse 20. The third, a confirmation of the same by sign or wonder, unto the end of the Chapter.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–24 1 And after these things I saw another angel…
1 And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
Ver. 1. I saw another angel] Some excellent and worthy man (saith Mr Brightman), such a one as should come suddenly before he be looked for, as those things do that slip down from heaven.
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Having great power] εξουσιαν, or authority; as having in hand a great business, viz. the denouncing of Rome’s utter ruin.
And the earth was lighted] He delivered himself clearly and expressly, so as that all men may well understand his meaning. Ribera the Jesuit gives this note upon this text, that the judgment of Rome’s desolation shall be (not kept secret, but) made manifest to all men.
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 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24 It is a matter of no great moment, whether…
It is a matter of no great moment, whether by this
angel we understand Christ, or a created angel; the description agreeth to Christ, and may agree to a created angel.
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Having great power; to whom God had given power and authority to declare the ruin of Babylon.
And the earth was lightened with his glory; and he had communicated to him a great glory, suited to his splendour and greatness whose messenger he was.
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 On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 17, 20, 21 The destruction of spiritual Babylon hath in this prophecy…
The destruction of spiritual Babylon hath in this prophecy been several times predicted and already foretold: now here an angel from heaven is employed to declare it shall certainly be performed.
This angel is variously here described, 1. By the place from whence he came, namely, from heaven; signifying, that the destruction of Babylon was there surely decreed, and should most certainly be accomplished.
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2. By the authority and power with which he came, in the name of, and by commission from, the great God, and having great power. A mighty angel is employed in this great and mighty work, to destroy Babylon, the mighty throne of antichrist.
3. By the effect of his appearance, the earth was lightened with his glory; denoting, that Babylon’s destruction should be open and manifest, and matter of joy and glorious rejoicing both to heaven and earth.
Learn hence, That as the destruction of Babylon is the work and office of an angel, under God, so is it unto the angels matter of joy and triumph; especially to such of them as are employed as officers therein. I saw an angel come down from heaven, having great power, and the earth was lightened with his glory.
Observe, 2. The place against which the mighty angel doth denounce the vengeance of God, and that with an ingemination, or repetition of the threatening: Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen; where, by Babylon, all, both papists and protestants, do understand the city of Rome, though in different respects.
This is called mystical Babylon, in allusion to ancient Babylon, because of their resemblance,
1. In sin; namely, in pride and sedf-exaltation, in cruelty and oppression, in sorcery and witchcraft. Isa 51:7.
2. In punishment: the destruction of old Babylon was a sudden destruction, Isa 17:9 and a perpetual destruction. See Isa 13:20 compared with Rev 11:10 and Rev 18:8.
It is called Babylon the great, 1. Because of the greatness of its strength and glory; it was the strongest and most fortified place in the world. Cyrus besieged it thirteen years before he took it, and then by cutting channels, and drawing dry the river Erphrates.
2. In regard of her great power and dominion: literal Babylon said, and Are not my princes altogether kings? and mystical Babylon ruleth over all the kings of the earth.
Farther, it is here said, that Babylon the great is fallen, nay, it is ingeminated and repeated, is fallen, is fallen; implying,
1. The certainty of her ruin; it is a speech of faith, speaking of things to come as already past; God’s punishments when threatened are as certain as if already inflicted.
2. It denotes the suddenness of her destruction, She is fallen, that is subito ruitura, she shall soon fall; as when Christ said of his suffering work, It is finished, he meant that it was very near finishing.
3. It denotes her utter ruin and destruction, is fallen, is fallen, never to rise more: the church shall never more be tormented by her, or troubled with her.
4. It denotes the joy and rejoicing which will be found in Sion, at Babylon’s downfall and destruction: she is fallen, she is fallen; it is not only a speech of faith and trust, but of joy and triumph.
Learn hence, 1. That Rome or mystical Babylon, shall certainly fall, shall utterly fall, shall irrecoverably fall.
2. That the downfall of Babylon will be matter of great joy and triumph to the inhabitants of Sion, because she has been to the church of Christ an old and inveterate enemy, a cruel and bloody enemy, and shall be the last enemy. When Babylon is fallen, then shall all persecutions cease, Satan shall be bound, and the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord and his Christ. Let all that have an interest in God, be instant in prayer with him to hasten its time, that it may be in the history as it is here in the prophecy, that Babylon is fallen.
Observe lastly, what an heap of multiplied expressions the Holy Ghost is pleased to make use of, to set forth the utter ruin and final desolation of Babylon,--She is become the habitation of devils, the hold of every foul spirit, a cage of every unclean and hateful bird; that is, as devils and evil spirits are supposed to haunt desolate places, and birds which make hideous and dismal noises, do dwell in ruinous and ruined places: in like manner these expressions denote how entirely and absolutely God will bring about the destruction of Babylon, insomuch that the place which hath known her, shall know her no more, and her habitation shall be an eternal desolation, so that none that pass by shall say, This is Babylon.
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 On vv1, 9 The downfall and destruction of Babylon form an event…
The downfall and destruction of Babylon form an event so fully determined in the counsels of God, and of such consequence to his interests and glory, that the visions and predictions concerning it are repeated. 1. Here is another angel sent from heaven, attended with great power and lustre, Rev 18:1. He had not only light in himself, to discern the truth of his own prediction, but to inform and enlighten the world about that great event; and not only light to discern it, but power to accomplish it. 2. This angel publishes the fall of Babylon, as a thing already come to pass; and this he does with a mighty strong voice, that all might hear the cry, and might see how well this angel was pleased to be the messenger of such tidings. Here seems to be an allusion to the prediction of the fall of pagan Babylon (Isa 21:9), where the word is repeated as it is here: has fallen, has fallen. Some have thought a double fall is hereby intended, first her apostasy, and then her ruin; and they think the words immediately following favour their opinion; She has become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird, Rev 18:2. But this is also borrowed from Isa 21:9, and seems to describe not so much her sin of entertaining idols (which are truly called devils) as her punishment, it being a common notion that unclean spirits, as well as ominous and hateful birds, used to haunt a city or house that lay in its ruins. 3. The reason of this ruin is declared (Rev 18:3); for, though God is not obliged to give any account of his matters, yet he is pleased to do so, especially in those dispensations of providence that are most awful and tremendous. The wickedness of Babylon had been very great; for she had not only forsaken the true God herself, and set up idols, but had with great art and industry drawn all sorts of men into the spiritual adultery, and by her wealth and luxury had retained them in her interest. 4. Fair warning is given to all that expect mercy from God, that they should not only come out of her, but be assisting in her destruction, Rev 18:4, Rev 18:5. Here observe, (1.) God may have a people even in Babylon, some who belong to the election of grace. (2.) God's people shall be called out of Babylon, and called effectually. (3.) Those that are resolved to partake with wicked men in their sins must receive of their plagues. (4.) When the sins of a people reach up to heaven, the wrath of God will reach down to the earth. (5.) Though private revenge is forbidden, yet God will have his people act under him, when called to it, in pulling down his and their inveterate and implacable enemies, Rev 18:6. (6.) God will proportion the punishment of sinners to the measure of their wickedness, pride, and security, Rev 18:7. (7.) When destruction comes on a people suddenly, the surprise is a great aggravation of their misery, Rev 18:8.
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 On vv1–23 And after these things,.... The vision of the woman…
And after these things,.... The vision of the woman on the scarlet coloured beast, and the interpretation of both by the angel:
I saw another angel; not the Lord Jesus Christ, though the several things said of this angel agree with him; nor one of the ministering spirits, though the characters of him will also suit with one of them, but rather a minister of the Gospel, or a set of Gospel ministers, who will arise a little before the downfall of Babylon, in the spiritual reign of Christ; though not the same with the angel of fire, Rev 14:18 as some have thought, because of his illustrious appearance, and the loudness of his voice; but the same with the angel, or third thundering voice in Rev 14:6 for not only the times of both agree, but the selfsame words are expressed by one as by the other; and this angel is distinct from him that showed John the preceding vision, and gave him the interpretation of it, and from all the seven angels that had the vials, and is described as follows: and first by the place from whence he came, John saw him
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come down from heaven; denoting the suddenness of his appearance and cry; he came down at once, and cried out immediately; the subject of his cry, the destruction of Babylon, being what will be at an unawares; and also the commission and authority of the ministers signified by him, who will have their warrant from heaven to say what they will deliver; so that this likewise expresses the truth of their message, since both that and they come from heaven:
having great power; to do great work, to declare the fall of Babylon the great: or "having great authority"; being sent from the King of kings, in his name, as his ambassador, to proclaim what shortly will come to pass; an event of the greatest importance to the glory of God, the interest of Christ, and the comfort of his people:
and the earth was lightened with his glory; see Eze 43:2 by which is meant the glorious Gospel of Christ, the light of which will at this then be very great: these ministers will run to and fro the earth, and knowledge will be increased, and the earth will be filled with it: the Arabic version reads, "with the splendour of his countenance"; and the Ethiopic version, "with the splendour of his countenance, and his glory"; see Isa 60:1.
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 On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 And I saw another angel coming down out of…
And I saw another angel coming down out of heaven - Termed another, with respect to him who "came down out of heaven," chap. x, 1. And the earth was enlightened with his glory - To make his coming more conspicuous. If such be the lustre of the servant, what images can display the majesty of the Lord, who has "thousand thousands" of those glorious attendants "ministering to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand standing before him?"
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–24 A luminous angel proclaims the fall of Babylon, and…
CHAPTER XVIII.
A luminous angel proclaims the fall of Babylon, and the cause
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of it, 1-3.
The followers of God are exhorted to come out of it, in order
to escape her approaching punishment, 4-8.
The kings of the earth lament her fate, 9, 10.
The merchants also bewail her, 11.
The articles in which she trafficked enumerated, 12-16.
She is bewailed also by shipmasters, sailors, &c., 17-19.
All heaven rejoices over her fall, and her final desolation is
foretold, 20-24.
NOTES ON CHAP. XVIII.
Verse 1. The earth was lightened with his glory.] This may refer to some extraordinary messenger of the everlasting Gospel, who, by his preaching and writings, should be the means of diffusing the light of truth and true religion over the earth.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 12, 15, 22 Rev 18:1. And after these things — After the…
Rev 18:1. And after these things — After the angel-interpreter had so far explained the meaning of the vision, and mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns which carried her; I saw another angel — Termed another, with respect to him mentioned Rev 10:1; come down from heaven — To show the sure downfall of this antichristian power, which is here described in the same sublime figurative style as that in which Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel have foretold the fall of ancient Babylon and Tyre, the types and emblems of the spiritual Babylon; and, together with her punishment, the crimes which deserved it, her idolatry and wickedness; having great power, and the earth was lightened with his glory — In this description of the angel there seems to be an allusion to the vision of Ezekiel, (Eze 43:2,) when he beheld the glory of the God of Israel, and the earth, it is said, shined with his glory. A bright and shining light, it seems, usually attended the appearance of angels; and it is likely the splendour of the appearance used to be greater in proportion as the angel appearing was more honourable. The sending an angel of superior rank alludes to the custom of courts in employing persons of dignity, according to the weight and importance of the commissions they were to execute. We may observe here, if such be the lustre of the servant, in lightening the earth with his glory, what images can display the majesty of the Lord, who has thousands of thousands of those glorious attendants ministering to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand standing before him!
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 On vv1–24 And after these things - After the vision referred…
And after these things - After the vision referred to in the previous chapter.
I saw another angel come down from heaven - Different from the one that had last appeared, and therefore coming to make a new communication to him. It is not unusual in this book that different communications should be entrusted to different angels. Compare Rev 14:6, Rev 14:8-9, Rev 14:15, Rev 14:17-18.
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Having great power - That is, he was one of the higher rank or order of angels.
And the earth was lightened with his glory - The usual representation respecting the heavenly beings. Compare Exo 24:16; Mat 17:2; Luk 2:9; Act 9:3. This would, of course, add greatly to the magnificence of the scene.
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 On vv2, 4, 10, 13, 15, 20 Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. Idolatrous Rome…
Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. Idolatrous Rome is fallen. That mighty seat of power and dominion is fallen. The long fixed abode of voluptuousness and luxury, for the merchants of the earth have become rich by the strength of her delicacies, and now the hand of God hath struck her. It is utterly destroyed; not a human being in it. Thus it is become an accursed place, given up for an habitation of devils and a hold of every unclean spirit, or of frightful spectres and ghosts, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird, of owls, ravens, vultures, &c. &c. (Pastorini)
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 On v1 Revelation Chapter 18
Revelation Chapter 18
Chapter 18 announces the judgment. The one difficulty here is Rev 18:4, coming where it is; but, as every difficulty in scripture, it leads into further light. The destruction of Babylon is simple enough. She falls by God’s judgment just before Christ comes to judge the earth; and, first perhaps losing her power and influence, is destroyed by the horns and beast. The comparison of Rev 16:8, and the place it holds, Rev 16:19; Rev 18:8, and the beginning of 19, make this plain. Chapter 18 is a warning from heaven, not the angel of judgment of the earth. It is not consequent on events, but supposes spiritual apprehension of heaven’s mind. This is the case when it is simply a voice from heaven. This call then was a spiritual call, not a manifest judgment. It may be more urgent and direct just before judgment, and I doubt not will be: as the call is in Hebrews to come out of the camp because Jerusalem’s day was at hand. Hence I believe this applies whenever we see the system to be Babylon, and the sense of her iniquities is pressed upon the conscience.
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The chapter then goes on to the actual execution of judgment according to Rev 17:16. The horns, or kingdoms connected with the beast, have destroyed her. The kings mourn over her; so do those that have sought profit and ease and commerce in the earth. The royal and commercial system is shattered to pieces by the upset of the system. What characterises her, that for which she is judged, is idolatry, corruption, worldliness, and persecution. She is judged and destroyed, and the prosperity of the worldly is smitten by her fall, and the hopes of the kings who had commerce with her. The blood of all saints was found in her, as in Jerusalem in her day. Persecution comes from religion connected with worldly advantage. But what a picture we have here of the world, the relations of the kings and of the saints to Babylon!
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 On v1 1And [om. And]1 After these things I saw another…
B.–EARTH-PICTURE OF THE FALL OF BABYLON.
Rev_18:1-24.
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1And [om. And]1 After these things I saw another angel come down [descending] from [ins. the] heaven, having great power [authority]; and the earth was lightened2 [lighted up] with his glory. And he cried mightily [om. mightily] with [in] a strong voice,2 saying, [ins. Fallen, fallen is] Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen [om. is fallen, is fallen], and is become the [a] habitation of devils [demons], and the [a] hold (φυλακή) of every foul [unclean] spirit, and a cage [hold] of everyunclean and hateful [hated] bird. 3For all nations have drunk of [or fallen by]3 the wine4 of the wrath [anger or rage]5 of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have [om. have] committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed [became] rich through the abundance [from the power or influence(δύναμις)] of her delicacies [luxury]. 4And I heard another voice from [ins. the] heaven, saying, Come [ins. forth] out6 of her, my people, that ye be not partakersof [partake not in] her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. 5For her sins have reached [heaped together]7 unto [ins. the] heaven, and God hath remembered6 her iniquities. Reward [Render unto] her even [om. even] as [ins. also] she rewarded [rendered] you [om. you]8, and double unto her [om. unto her—ins. the]9 double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled [or mingled10], fill to [ormingle10 for] her double. 7How much she hath [om. hath] glorified herself [herself], and lived deliciously [luxuriated], so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart [ins. that]11, I sit a queen, and am no widow [a widow Iam not], and shall see no sorrow [sorrow I shall not see]. 8Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning [sorrow], and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth [judged]12 9her. And [ins. there shall weep and wail over her] the kings of the earth, who [ins. with her] have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her [om. with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her], when they shall [om. shall] see the smoke of her burning, 10standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas [Woe], alas [woe], that [the] great city [,] Babylon, that mighty [the strong] city! for in one hour is [om. is] thy judgmentcome [came]. 11And the merchants of the earth shall [om. shall]13 weep and mourn 12[sorrow] over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise [lading] any more: The [om. The]14 merchandise [lading] of gold, and [ins. of] silver, and [ins. of] precious stones [stone], and of pearls, and [ins. of] fine linen, and [ins. of] purple, and [ins. of] silk, and [ins. of] scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory [every ivory article], and all manner vessels [every article] of most 13precious wood, and of brass, and [ins. of] iron, and [ins. of] marble, and cinnamon, ins. and amomum,]15 and odors [incense (θυμιάματα)], and ointments [ointment], and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts [cattle], and sheep, and [ins. of] horses, and [ins. of] chariots, and [ins. of] slaves [bodies (σωμάτων)],14and souls (ψυχἅς) of men. And the [thy]16 fruits [fruit-time (ὀπώρα)]17 that thy soul lusted after are [om. that thy soul lusted after are—ins. of the desire of the16 soul is] departed from thee, and all [ins. the fat] things [ins. and the bright things] which were dainty and goodly [om. which were dainty and goodly] are [have] departed from thee, and thou shalt [they18 shall] find them no [never, never] moreat all.19 15The merchants of these things, which were made [who became] rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing [sorrowing],16And [om. And]20 saying, Alas [Woe], alas [woe], that [the] great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked [gilded] with gold,17and precious stones [stone], and pearls [pearl]! For [Because] in one hour [ins. was made desolate] so great riches [wealth] is come to nought [om. is come to nought]. And every shipmaster [pilot], and all the company in ships [every one sailing in the region (or any whither],21 and sailors, and as many as trade by [ply the] sea,stood afar off, 18and cried when they saw [or seeing] the smoke of her burning, saying,What city is [om. is] like unto this, the great city! 19And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing [sorrowing], saying, Alas [Woe], alas [woe], that [the] great city, wherein were made [became] rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is [was] she made desolate.20Rejoice over her, thou [O] heaven, and ye holy [om. ye holy—ins. the saints, and the] apostles and [ins. the] prophets; for God hath avenged you [om. hath avenged you—ins. judged your judgment]22 on her.21And a [or one] mighty [strong] angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it [om. it] into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall [ins. be cast] that great city [om. that great city] Babylon [ins., the great city] be thrown down [om. be thrown22 down], and shall be found no more at all.23 And the [a] voice of harpers, and [ins. of] musicians [or singers], and of pipers, and [ins. of] trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no [any] craftsman [artisan], of [ins. any art] whatsoever craft he be [om. whatsoever craft he be], shall be found any [no] more [ins. at all] in thee; and 23the [a] sound [voice] of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the [a] light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the [a] voice of the [om. the] bridegroom and of the [om. the] bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth;24 for by thy sorceries [sorcery] were all [ins. the] nations deceived [seduced or misled (ἐπλανήθησαν)]. 24And in her was found the [om. the] blood25 of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were [have been] slain upon the earth.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL.
SYNOPTICAL VIEW.
With the vision of the heavenly counsel of judgment upon Babylon and the ideal judgment itself, is conjoined the proleptical representation of the actual judgment as taking place on the earth. Hence, together with the unity of the two sections, we must also recognize the contrast between these two pictures of Babylon. In the light of Heaven, Babylon appears as a Woman, who, in the pomp of false magnificence and beauty, has lapsed into the extreme of hideousness; a Harlot,—drunken with blood—the blood of the saints; bearing still the golden cup of holy consecration, but riding upon the blood-colored Beast of Antichristianity, the organ of the abyss. In her earthly self-sufficiency and in the lament of the earth on her account (Revelation 18), she is a Queen, to whom the kings of the earth have paid homage, who has been magnified by the rich, the merchants, and the sea-farers, glorified by the artisans, and marvelled at, in her splendor, possessions and enjoyment, by the inhabitants of the earth.
A strong Angel, who descends from Heaven to earth, comes upon her. His strength is signalized by the fact that the earth is lighted up by his glory. There is but one enlightenment for the earth—viz., the light of the gospel; but there is a distinction between the stage of apostolic embassage, that of reformatory confession, dogma and cultus, and this spiritual day-light of evangelic truth—appropriated by all good spirits,—which, in Divine-human beauty, in Christian humanity, finally, as in one instant, extends from land to land, and illumines the fallen Woman in all her hate-fulness, thus executing upon her the ideal judgment and denouncing (Rev_18:2-3) the first real judgment, which appears as a self-judgment of the great Babylon in her internal relations. The ideal judgment is the heavenly proclamation of her fall, loudly promulgated through the earth. Fallen! fallen! is the judicial cry of Heaven. The fall agrees in greatness with the height which she claimed as Babylon the Great (see Isaiah 14).
First Fundamental Form of the Actual Judgment. Revelation of the Inner Judgment of the Fallen Church [Rev_18:2-3].
She has become a habitation or dwelling-place of demons;—does not this, considered in the light of Heaven, signify a sort of Hell on earth? A watch-tower [hold] of all manner of unclean spirits;—does not this mean a concentration of the most diverse evil motives and egoistical characters? A coop or poultry-yard [hold] of all unclean and hated birds;—does not this mean a gathering-place of all volatile minds, intent upon the prey of earthly profits? (See Mat_13:32.) The Spirit of prophecy has indicated a firm and exclusive organization by a three-fold term: a fixed habitation, a watch-tower, a secure receptacle for birds.26 It is true that φυλακή, in both instances of its occurrence, may be significant of a prison; this term would not here have been applicable to the demons. The cause of this destruction of Babylon is the wine of the anger [or rage] of her fornication, i. e., the riotous enthusiasm of her anger [rage] or fanaticism in favor of her idolatries, her deifications of all sorts. Of this wine she has given to all nations to drink, and has intoxicated them more or less, instead of truly sobering them for the milk of the Gospel and wholesome nourishment, in accordance with the reiterated instructions of the Apostles Peter and Paul (1Pe_1:13; 1Pe_4:7; 1Pe_5:8; 1Co_15:34; 1Th_5:6; 1Th_5:8; 1Ti_3:2; 1Ti_3:11; Tit_2:2; 2Ti_2:26). In distinction from this popular fanaticism, the kings of the earth, with the political consciousness of refined worldly-mindedness, have committed fornication with her—have deified her, permitted themselves to be deified by her, and shared all manner of other deifications with her.27 Another pernicious effect is that the merchants, i. e., those speculators of earth who are bent upon mammon, have become rich through her luxury. The very one who should equalize earthly relations by the spirit of Christian brotherliness [i. e., the Church], has, by self-deification and the deification of earthly powers, brought to a culmination that false pomp and love of magnificence by which the normal distinction of rich and poor has been perverted into unnatural and pernicious extremes of luxury and pauperism. The poisoning of popular life, of politics, of social ordinances—such is the three-fold and yet unitous effect of her three principal sins: [1] the presentation of the wine of anger [or rage (see Notes 5, p. 318; and 16, p. 274).—E. R. C.]; [2] seduction to fornication; [3] luxurious external show.
Second Judgment. Social Judgment of Separation between the People of God and the City of Babylon (Rev_18:4-5).
This separation is brought about by the command of a voice from the Heaven. Whilst the Angel who descended from Heaven has executed the judgment of the Spirit of truth, this voice comes from the height of Heaven, and, as appears from the context, from the judgment-throne of God Himself. The exode of the people of God from fellowship with Babylon, not only brings her internal judgment to view, but also serves as an introduction to the external judgment, because it is itself the dynamical social judgment. Thus must Noah go forth from the antediluvian race that had incurred the judgment of God; thus Lot must depart from Sodom; thus Israel, from Egypt; thus the primitive Christians, from fallen Jerusalem; and so on. This exode, which includes within itself the abrogation of all relations of religious fellowship, is demanded by truth, by righteousness, by fidelity to the Lord. Thus believers execute the minor ban in just reaction against the great ban, and the Church finally goes forth from the Church, in order that it may continue to be the Church (Heb_13:13).28 The conservation of human relations of duty will come out all the more clearly, the more the religious and moral errors of a false humanism are discarded in pure and strict freedom of spirit. This exode also becomes necessary, however, for the self-preservation of believing souls, as is declared by the warning: That ye partake not in her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. How easily an accompliceship in guilt originates through implication in the sins of others, the Old Testament has typically demonstrated in the institution of the sin-offering (Leviticus 5), as well as in many historical occurrences (Joshua 7.). The modern world’s sensorium for these mysterious relations of guilt is much enfeebled. Even an entrance into the heritage of the heaviest ancient blood-debts is performed by many with as little misgiving as if they were stepping into a child’s room pervaded with the breath of innocence, or even into a temple of pure spirit, pervaded with spirit-breath. The judgment of God, however, must be executed, because the sins of the City do not simply cry unto Heaven, like the sins of Sodom (Genesis 18), but they have become interlinked with each other and tower up upon each other even to Heaven, until they have become a demonic offence against the very Throne of God. Hence, God has become mindful of her iniquities—not simply of the last and newest, but of the entire series of them. The culmination of these iniquities has—humanly speaking—again made present to Him the whole history of their development, and with these words, the conclusion of His refraining long-suffering and the dawn of His infliction of judgment are expressed. At the basis of the expression in our passage lies a reference to the history of Sodom, the more obviously since here, also, a fiery judgment is at hand.
Third Judgment. The Recompense of Babylon (Rev_18:6-8).
The command to execute the judgment of retribution is not, like the preceding words, addressed to the people of God, as has been supposed in accordance with the reading of minuscules: as she rewarded [rendered to] you.29 But neither is the command addressed to the Angels of the plagues, as Bleek supposes, for this retribution is, according to Rev_17:16, to be executed by the Ten Horns and the Beast. The same judgment which, in the chapter cited, is spoken of as to be accomplished by them, is mentioned here, again, in Rev_18:8. The address is to those to whom she has presented the cup (Mat_7:6). De Wette with justice remarks: A challenge to the executioners of the penal judgment. ̓Αποδιδόναι has at its second occurrence the meaning of the Hebrew נָמַל. It shall be done to her as she has done to others. This is the law of historic retribution which runs through the whole of the Sacred Writings (see Rev_13:10). It shall, moreover, be recompensed double to her. As repentance has a double value in proportion to the punishment which preceded it (Isa_40:2), so the guilt which is heaped up for the Day of Wrath has, similarly, a double value in reference to the succeeding punishment. So, in particular, the cup of the wine of anger is to be filled double for her. At the time of judgment, negative fanaticism falls, with double fury, upon the guilt of positive fanaticism.—But not simply the torments which she has inflicted upon men are to be recompensed to her, but also her self-glorification and arrogant ostentation are to be punished, in a corresponding degree, with torment and sorrow. The heavenly voice also gives the ground of this severe sentence. For, even now in the hour of judgment, she, hardened and without a foreboding of approaching ill, gives utterance in her heart to her false security thus: I sit [Lange: am enthroned as] a queen, and a widow I am not (comp. Luk_18:3;—not the Church that misses her heavenly Christ on earth), and sorrow I shall not see. This obduracy is the motive which doubles her guilt and punishment. Therefore, also, shall her plagues come in one day—i. e., she does not gradually sink into ruin, but she plunges into it in one grand historic catastrophe. The plagues branch out into the number of the world, the worldly number of completeness, four: Death, mourning [sorrow], hunger, fire. Death, doubtless, should not be interpreted as the death of her children (Düsterdieck), but as a presentiment of ruin which now comes over her. With this death, her egoistic lamentations correspond, amid which, again, her hunger after world-empire is augmented to fury, whilst the fire of judgment is already coming upon her. These plagues now attack her with inevitable certitude, for God has already commenced to judge her (ὁ κρίνας), and He is mighty in His judgments, which He executes through the medium of mighty earthly powers.
Hereupon the heavenly voice denounces a simultaneous judgment upon those classes which have mingled with Great Babylon and involved themselves in her guilt; representing them as mourners over the fallen one (Rev_18:9-20).
The unitous idea of these lamentations lies in the premise that the mock-holy City has her sympathies, her roots, in the worldliness of the world, especially the great world; that she has, however, brought this world, which it was her duty to convert to God, itself to the brink of perdition. For she has made self-deification, the titanic glorification of her own dignity and authority, the centre of all corruption. She has thereby induced the kings or potentates of the earth to push their authority also to a degree exceeding a right human measure, to exchange reciprocal deifications with her and either in pride to compete with her, or to make fellowship with her. Thus have been formed the spheres of a morbid luxury, far exceeding the measure of morality, and as the merchants of the earth, or the organs of this luxury, have attained to a colossal and morbid greatness, so, likewise, have their riches reached a corresponding grandeur. Even wholesale trade, in the most extensive sense of the term, or supermarine intercourse of the world with the world, has been drawn into this great vortex of feverish worldliness. Thus the most thorough men of the world, far and wide, have lived and sinned with Great Babylon, and are most profoundly shaken and discomfited by her fall. But they care not to share her lot with her; they are faithless to her in her hour of need. The kings stand afar off for the fear of her torment (Rev_18:10). The merchants stand afar off for the fear of her torment (Rev_18:15). The sea-farers and marine traders stand afar off and cry (Rev_18:17). Doubtless, together with the ideas of their participation in her guilt, their grief, and their cowardly desertion of their mistress, there is likewise expressed the fact that Great Babylon is involved in a tremendous conflagration, which illuminates the whole earth, which admits of no remedy, which none dare approach, which, however, is visible from the remotest spots—so far, at least, as its pillar of smoke is concerned—holding all spectators spellbound with fear and amazement. It might be queried: why the great detailedness of the description, especially of articles of luxury (Rev_18:12-14)? Here we encounter the same masterly skill of the prophetic spirit which is displayed by Isaiah in his portrayal of the luxury of the Hebrew women (Isaiah 3). For the worldly mind, this very detail of articles of pomp and pleasure is of supreme importance; the prophecy, therefore, ironically enters into this mode of view—the more, since for Babylon every particle of her pleasure becomes a particle of torment. It is, further, characteristic that the kings shall weep and passionately and loudly lament (κόπτεσθαι) over the fall of Babylon, yet shall hold themselves aloof even at the ascending of the smoke from the beginning conflagration. That which caused them to become worshippers of the City, were the greatness and (magic) power of it. The merchants of the earth weep also; their sorrow, however, takes the form of mourning for the loss which has assailed them. Together with the greatness of the City, its magnificence and wealth have dazzled them. The sea-farers express their mourning for Babylon most passionately, in accordance with their life on the water; they were enchained by the incomparableness of the City and the great gain which it brought them.
The first lament is that of the kings of the earth; not the kings as such, but those rulers who, by the aid of the Hierarchy, have despotically governed, and, to enable them thus to do, have worked into the hands of the Hierarchy, being, therefore, bearers of a reciprocal deification.
The heavenly voice describes the lament of the merchants most comprehensively. The splendor of the merchandise of the City is expatiated upon, as consisting of: (1) Precious things [metals, jewels] and splendid stuffs; (2) Costly material (fragrant citron [thyine-] wood) and costly vessels of precious stuffs of all sorts; (3) Spices, ointments, incense; (4) Delicious articles of enjoyment and nourishment; (5) Articles of a princely household, from draught-cattle and flocks of sheep to the souls of slaves—or slavish souls, which are the permanent fundamental condition of every Babylonish power. It might be thought strange that after all this, mention is made of delicious fruit,30 and that here the enumeration passes into the form of an address to Babylon itself; but in this region the smallest thing is in many respects the greatest, and, moreover, a special category of gastronomical delicacies is in point—those, particularly, which belong to a princely dessert. Whilst the kings designated the great disaster of one hour, the catastrophe, as a judgment upon Babylon, the merchants lament that in one hour the great wealth of luxury in which Babylon arrayed herself, is destroyed.
Still more openly do the sea-farers express their egoistical interest in their cry of woe and lamentation for Great Babylon.
After this fore-description of the special judgments which, with the fall of Babylon, come upon her companions, the judgment upon Babylon herself is represented in a symbolic act.
The heavenly voice replies to all the unworthy lamentations of earth with a cry of exultation. All those who long ago pronounced the spiritual sentence of Babylon’s lost state, without its appearing that their sentence was of any value in the actual world, are exhorted to rejoice. Now their sentence is ratified by the judgment of God. For such is the meaning of the passage; reference is not again had to the false judgment which they have previously experienced from Babylon, for how would such a reference be applicable to Heaven? Babylon has been judged from of old: 1. By the Heaven in general, the whole ideal world of God; 2. By the Saints, and 3. By the Apostles—nay, 4. Even before them, by the Prophets of the Old Covenant.
Next follows the symbolic representation of the final consummation of the judgment. A strong Angel takes up a stone, like a great millstone, and casts it into the sea, making this act, the violent casting of the stone, the great whirlpool occasioned by it, and the precipitate sinking of the stone, a symbol of the imminent, sudden and violent reprobation of Babylon. The Angel, because he is a fore-runner of the close Parousia of Christ, is conceived of as a personal being (see Rev_19:9-10); his action, however, is thoroughly symbolical. The allegorical symbol gains in expressiveness, it becomes typical, if we consider that the sea denotes the life of the nations, that the millstone is already familiar as the instrument of punishment for offence given (Mat_18:6), that, finally, the proclamation of the strong Angel, in connection with his action, is expressive of the surest certainty of the Spirit of God in His Church. The judgment upon Babylon superinduces a great agitation in the sea of nations. This agitation is occasioned by a great stone of stumbling or most flagrant offence given by Babylon to the world, in particular to the “little ones;”31 and it is the Angel of the Christian faith who has in this world awakened the consciousness of the life of the nations in respect of this offence, as is expressed by the fore-runner of Christ from the other world, one, in angelic form, of the glorified ones who shall appear with Christ. The City, as Great Babylon, is destroyed; as a ruin, as a desert place, she continues, for a memorial of terror. Hence the Angel describes her imminent desolation, not simply in order to intimate that her own destruction is illustrated by the destruction of her glory. This has been previously declared. The design is, rather, to sketch the desolation of the ruin of this spiritual Babylon in negative traits, even as Isaiah depicted the desolation of the ancient Asiatic Babylon in positive traits. No musical sound from any festivity can be heard any more in the deathly stillness of Babylon. Not a single artist of any art can be found any more in the desert of her ruins. No sound of a mill betrays a trace of business or domestic life; no light of a candle occasions the inference of life or of a social circle; with the voice of bridegroom and bride, every festal presage of a future laden with new life has vanished. And now again, to conclude the picture, the grounds for the judgment are laid before us—viz.: Babylon’s double guilt. On the one hand, she has fully corrupted the corrupt world. For the great of the earth, the possessors of power, were her merchants, i. e., the agents and abettors of her affairs (οἱ ἔμποροι is the predicate, according to Eichhorn; see also Ebrard). Note well the distinction. The ἔμποροι τῆς γῆς (Rev_18:3) have become rich through the Woman; the μεγιστᾶνες τῆς γῆς have become the ἔμποροί σου, i. e., of the Woman. [See Text. and Gram., Note 24, Rev_18:23.—E. R. C.] Her love of magnificence has driven luxury to its acme, and converted the dealers in it into great lords; it is still worse, however, that she has made the great of the earth agents of her interests. It was her fault that the merchants32 could in many cases become barons and princes—that the princes could in many cases become merchants [Krämer], e. g., of indulgences, hierarchical stocks, and the like. Thus she has instituted a reciprocal action between egoistical mammon-service and egoistical power. The nations have been led astray by her sorceries of all sorts. Thus she has seduced the world in its great and little ones. Of the kernel of the Church, however—the Prophets and Saints—not the living images, but the bloody traces of martyrdom, were found in her. The Angel, truly, seems to conclude his accusation in a very hyperbolical manner. Is the blood of all who have been slain on earth to be placed to the account of Babylon? We might say: Undoubtedly it is, inasmuch as, at the day of reckoning, Babylon forms the centre of all human guilt and blood-guiltiness. The choice of the verb, however, constitutes a very important item for consideration. Σφάζειν, the verb in question, denotes; at least in a predominant degree, slaying from a religious point of view; here, therefore, are indicated the slain upon the earth who have been slain as sacrifices to fanaticism in general, and especially in the religious wars and religious criminal courts of earth. The centre of these specific crimes is Babylon; it is manifest, however, that Babylon is not here intended simply as a local centre, for the like blood-guiltinesses make their appearance sporadically all over Christendom—though, indeed, always as fanatical radii, having a fanatical centre.33
[ABSTRACT OR VIEWS, ETC.]
By the American Editor.
[Elliott: (See on pp. 281, 296.) The section extends to the close of Rev_19:4. In it we have—I. Rev_18:1. An angelic proclamation of the approaching destruction of Babylon;—a proclamation, (1) similar to that of Rev_14:8, but with additional circumstances (Rev_18:3); (2) anticipative, but as immediately preceding the catastrophe. II. A warning voice to Christ’s true servants to come out of her; which implies that (1) there would be some of the holy seed in the mystic Babylon, (2) their danger of participation in her destruction would be imminent. III. A vivid description of the catastrophe, in which are depicted: 1. Its nature, (1) unexpected (she sits a queen, etc.); (2) instantaneous (in an hour); (3) total (all life destroyed); (4) by eternal (superhuman?) fire (Rev_19:3): 2. The lamentations over the fall,—(1) of the kings who committed fornication with her; (2) of the merchants, etc., who were enriched by her. IV. The reasons for the judgment,—(1) her deception of all nations; (2) her persecution of the saints. V. The heavenly song of praise over the destruction,—(1) twice by the heavenly host, Hallelujah (Rev_19:1-3); (2) once (and it is the last act related of them) by the Elders and Living-beings, Amen—Hallelujah (Rev_19:4).—From this passage the following conclusions, as to the probable progress of fast-coming future events, may be drawn that—I. The destruction of Rome, the mystic Babylon (comprehending not only the City and the Ecclesiastical State; but, probably, the political tri-partition adhering to it, Rev_16:19), shall, very soon after the tri-partition, and unexpectedly, be effected by an earthquake and volcanic fire.34 II. Immediately before this event there will be a diffusion of great religious light, and a sounding forth of strong appeals on the character and imminent doom of both Rome and the Popedom, alike in the Church and in the world. III. The Jews will probably at, or just after, the catastrophe, be converted (indicated by the Hebrew Hallelujah—this being the first introduction of a word from that language in praise). IV. Down to the time figured by this chorus (a song represented as being in Heaven), no translation of the living saints or resurrection of the departed will have taken place.
Barnes: This chapter is a still further explanatory episode designed to show the effect of the pouring out of the seventh Vial (Rev_16:17-21) upon the Antichristian power; the description is that of a rich merchant-city reduced to desolation, and is but carrying out the general idea under a different form. We have—(1) the angelic descent and proclamation, Rev_18:1-3; (2) a warning to the people of God to be partakers neither of her sins nor plagues, accompanied by a description of the latter, Rev_18:4-8; (3) lamentation over her fall—by those who had been, (a) connected with her, (b) corrupted by her, (c) profited by her, Rev_18:9-19; (4) rejoicing over her fall, Rev_18:20; (5) the final (and total) destruction, Rev_18:21-24. (Whilst this writer regards the Papacy, and not the city of Rome, as the object specially contemplated by the prophecy, he thinks it possible that there may be a literal fulfillment of the prophecy burned with fire, Rev_18:8, in the destruction of the city as in order to the destruction of the power; for quotations tending to support this view, see the preceding foot-note. For special comments, see Explanations in Detail in loc.)
Stuart: In his Introduction to Revelation 17, this commentator remarks: “Before any attack was made upon the Kingdom of the Beast, an Angel proclaimed the fall of great Babylon (i. e., ‘persecuting and pagan Rome’), Rev_14:8. This, however, was only in general terms. But now the seventh Vial has been poured out, and the city has been shaken to its very foundation, and thus a ruinous state of things has already commenced, Rev_16:17-21. Final and utter extinction, however, still remains to be achieved. Accordingly an Angel next appears, and not only renews the proclamation of the fall of Babylon, but describes this in such terms as necessarily to imply its utter ruin.”35
Wordsworth: “Fuller description of the future fall of the Mystical Babylon. It is to be carefully observed that though Babylon falls, the Beast still remains. Therefore, the fall of Papal Rome will not be the destruction of the Papacy.”
Alford: Chaps. Rev_18:1 to Rev_19:10 relate to the Destruction of Babylon. I. Announcement of the destruction (Rev_18:1-3). II. Warning to God’s people to leave her on account of the greatness of her crimes and coming judgments (4–8). III. Lamentations over her on the part of those who were enriched by her, by (1) the kings of the earth (9, 10); (2) the merchants (11–16); (3) the shipmasters, etc. (17–19). IV. The calling of the heavens and God’s holy ones to rejoice over her (20). V. Symbolic proclamation of Babylon’s ruin (21–24).
Lord: The Angel of Rev_18:1 symbolizes a body of men who shall with resistless light unveil the Apostate character of Babylon (i. e., the nationalized hierarchies, see pp. 310 sq.). The fall of Babylon is her dejection from her nationalized position; it is to be (1) in consequence of her idolatry, Rev_18:3; (2) followed by (a) her becoming the resort of the most detestable of (human) beings, Rev_18:2, (b) another proclamation by another body of men calling upon those true Christians who remain in her to come out of her, Rev_18:4; (3) effected (a) violently, Rev_18:21; (b) by the multitude, and not by the kings and great men who are to mourn over it, Rev_18:9-19. The fall is to be distinguished from the punishment (plagues); the latter is speedily and suddenly to follow the former, Rev_18:4-6. The destruction is to be entire, Rev_18:21-24.
Glasgow: Rev_18:1 introduces an account of what accompanies or follows close upon the full effusion of the seventh Vial. The Angel of Rev_18:1 is the Holy Ghost, who announces the coming fall of Babylon, i. e., the Roman State; the voice of Rev_18:4 is that of Christ. By the kings of Rev_18:9-10, the traffickers of Rev_18:11-16, the mariners of Rev_18:17-19, are indicated the three parts into which the City is divided (Rev_16:19); “as ancient Babylon exists now only in the palace of her kings, the temple of Belus, and the tower of Nimrod, so over the fall of the mystic city are heard the wailings of superstitious rulers in the palace, of trafficking priests of simony in their cathedrals, and of far-travelled colonizers and missionaries, propagators of her errors.”
Auberlen: “The judgment on the Harlot (i. e., Babylon—the apostate Church) is described more minutely in its various aspects (Rev_18:1; Rev_19:5), first by an Angel having great authority; then by another voice from Heaven (Rev_18:4-20); after this, thirdly, by a strong Angel (21–24); and this is succeeded by great voices of much people in heaven (Rev_19:1-5), who praise God for, the judgment executed.—E. R. C.]
EXPLANATIONS IN DETAIL.
According to Düsterdieck, the judgment upon Babylon is still imminent at the close of Revelation 18 (“note the future βληθήσεται”), whilst in Rev_19:1 sqq., it is rejoiced over as actually accomplished. The judgment itself, therefore, [the act of judgment], would not be found in the description. As an external scene, it is, indeed, not to be portrayed. What, however, appertains to a judgment? Is not the heavenly sentence itself the ideal judgment (Rev_18:2-3)? Is not the separation of the people of God from Babylon, which must ensue directly upon the heavenly command, the decisive dynamical judgment (Rev_18:4-5)? Next follows the historic recompense; first for Babylon herself (Rev_18:6-7). And this is presupposed as an accomplished fact in the lamentation in which all her companions appear as sharers in the stroke which has fallen upon herself, (Rev_18:9-19). The rejoicing of Heaven and all the saints (Rev_18:20) clearly expresses the accomplishment of the judgment, and the symbolical act and speech of the Angel (Rev_18:21-24) are but declarative of the perfect reprobation of Babylon, together with its consequences, her guilt being once more solemnly affirmed. Thus is the judgment executed in four main acts. According to Hengstenberg, the Seer here describes what has already taken place. Exegesis, with him, steers backwards; it, probably, already sights the Millennial Kingdom—and this it is anxious to avoid, as though it were a rocky wall.
Rev_18:1. Another Angel.—A symbolic angelic form, suggestive of Michael, not precisely Christ (Calov., Hengst.), for the Parousia is not to come until after this. The Holy Ghost (Vitringa), however, is no angel of external events, and Luther’s embassage did at least not bring Babylon with violence to her fall. Historically defined, Christianity, in a new, glorious, and therefore mightily efficacious phase of development, must be understood by the Angel. Hence alone is his glory to be explained, which lights up the whole earth. A couple of wretched and disorderly negations can, of course, not be intended by this.
Rev_18:2. Fallen, fallen.—A certain future, which shall some day become both present and past. The cry of Rev_14:8 is reflected here; that, however, applied to the universal Babylon. In the first place, doubtless, the complete spiritual fall of Babylon is intended, as is manifest from the context: and is become, etc. But along with the complete spiritual fall, her historic fall is also decided. According to Düsterdieck, indeed, the words: a habitation of demons, etc., already denote external desolation, like the description Isa_13:22. Similarly Hengstenberg, vol. 2, p. 268. Düsterd. even regards it as singular that Ebrard should yet understand the birds “spiritually.” A naïve “yet!” According to Bengel, the “unclean spirits” are departed souls, and “this passage very clearly treats of such spirits as, when they appear to the living, are called ghosts.” The reverend divine would, however, surely not transfer Babylon to Wurtemberg! According to Hengstenberg, [also Stuart and Alford,—E. R. C.], the φυλακή denotes a prison—thus: a prison of unclean spirits and unclean birds. The expression, however, when used with reference to a fallen city, is applicable neither to spirits nor to birds. “The law of their essential character banishes them thither.” To the desert of pagan Rome? This would be the worst that could possibly be affirmed of Christian Rome! In respect of the birds, Hengstenberg cites Psa_102:6; Isa_13:21-22; Isaiah 34 [11, 13] 14 [15]; Jer_50:39; Zep_2:14.
Rev_18:3. For … of the wine, etc.—This is the offence which is judged primarily by a falling under the dominion of demonic powers. Babylon has offended against three classes of men—the nations, the kings, and a middle class, the merchants of the earth. We must again distinguish these merchants of the earth from the specific merchants whom the Woman has raised up for herself from the great of the earth (Rev_18:23, see Syn. View). If we examine the arrangements of the Seer, we shall find that he has a more general and a more special arrangement. The more general one distinguishes between the kings, or the mighty of the earth, and the nations. The Woman has seduced the former to the fornication of world-deification, and intoxicated the latter with the rage-wine of fanaticism, according to Rev_17:2; Rev_18:23. The more special arrangement inserts a third class, the merchants of the earth, a transition-form between the kings and the nations, in which the money-agents can become money-princes, and the princes agents of the Woman. But again, the class of mercantile people is, in our chapter, sub-divided into two classes, viz.: [1] the eminent merchants, who, as immediate servants of the Woman, participate in her luxury, and [2] the ordinary trades people of the world, here designated by sea-farers, whose interests are likewise, in a more general sense, involved in the luxury of the Woman. It was clear to the Seer that the super-human exaggeration of magnificence, the pomp of world-seeking in the heart of mankind, in the very place whence the forces of world-renunciation, simplicity and simple culture, should go forth, would place the whole organism of worldly life in a condition of morbid bloatedness, and feverishly egoistic agitation. [See Note 16 on chap. 14, p. 274.—E. R. C.]
From the power (or influence) [Lange: mighty operation], etc.—According to Düsterdieck (with Grot, et al.), ἐκ τῆς δυνάμεως τοῦ στρήνιυς “refers to the vast wealth [gewaltige Vermögen] of the City, employed in the service of luxury.” This would, undoubtedly, be more applicable to pagan than to Christian Rome. Be it well remembered, however, that the “world kingdom” did not become rich through the “world city,” but vice versâ. It is also better, from philological considerations, to regard δύναμις as the mighty operation of that central luxury. The interpretation: On account of her powerful luxuriousness (De Wette), really involves an obliteration δύναμις. [“Δύναμις, copia, as Vitringa, who remarks, ‘alluditur ad Hebræam voce חיל, cujus hæc significationis vis est. Job_31:5; Eze_28:4.’ We have πλούτου μεγάλου δύναμιν in Jos.: Antt. III. 2. 4.” Alford.—E. R. C.]
Rev_18:4. Another voice from the Heaven.—It is noteworthy that the voice from Heaven, speaking from Rev_18:4-20, is interposed between the two mighty Angels of Rev_18:1 and Rev_18:21. In the two Angels, we behold the denouncer and the executioner of God’s judgment upon Babylon, as that judgment appears on earth; in the voice from Heaven, we find the cry of the Church Triumphant—the Church not simply in the other World, but also in this world,—addressed to the Church of God on earth. For whilst there is, in the Church on earth, in respect of its individual members, a constant wavering between premature separation from Babylon (by which name even the evangelical Church is designated by sectarian spirits) and a tardy tarrying in the communion of a true Babylon, aggravated by manifold fanatical lapses into the captivitas Babylonica, there resides in the heavenly Church the true sense for the determining of the hour of need when the general exode from Babylon before the judgment shall be as necessary as the exode of the Christians of John’s time from Jerusalem to Pella. Too early a departure is opposed to humility and love; too late a departure is hostile to faith and fidelity; both acts, that of precipitancy and that of undue delay, are a fanatical opposition to the truth. According to Bengel, the voice from Heaven is the voice of God or Christ, against which Düsterdieck judiciously remarks that such an origin does not accord with the descriptive tone of its discourse. Mediately, of course, every angelic and every heavenly voice is to be referred to God and Christ.
Come forth out of her, my people.—This can refer only to the complete rupture of religious and churchly fellowship. If we regard the words as having reference to an external departure of the Christians from Rome, all Christian Rome would be a contravention of the heavenly voice. [“In Isa. (Isa_48:20; Isa_52:11) the circumstances differed, in that being a joyful exodus, this a cautionary one:36 and thus the warning is brought nearer to that one which our Lord commands in Mat_24:16, and the cognate warnings in the O. T., viz., that of Lot to come out of Sodom, Gen_19:15-22, when her destruction impended, and that of the people of Israel to get them up from the tents of Dathan and Abiram, Num_16:23-26. In Jer. (Jer_50:8; Jer_51:6; Jer_51:9; Jer_51:45) we have the same circumstance of Babylon’s impending destruction combined with the warning; and from those places probably, especially Jer_51:45, the words here are taken. The inference has been justly made from them (Elliott IV., pp. 44 sq.), that there shall be even to the last, saints of God in the midst of Rome; and that there will be danger of their being, through a lingering fondness for her, partakers of her coming judgment.” Alford.—E. R. C.] See Jer_51:6; Jer_51:9; Jer_51:45.
That ye partake not in her sins.—See Gen_19:15. This fellowship of sins is to be understood in a peculiar sense as a fellowship in guilt—a view which Düsterdieck combats, but which finds its sufficient explanation in the distinction between the Biblical ideas of sin (Sünde) and guilt [Schuld=reatus].37 A fellowship of sins, in the narrower sense (Luthardt), is as little intended as a fellowship in punishment for sins (Düsterd.) is exclusively meant. A guiltless participation in punishment would certainly be akin to propitiatory suffering. Fellowship with the sinner, however, on an equal moral footing, without the re-action of discipline, chastisement, excommunication, is fellowship in his guilt. Hence the πληγαί are not simply strokes; they are deserved [verschuldete] strokes (see Joshua 7; Num_16:21-24).
[“It is implied here that by remaining in Babylon they would lend their sanction to its sins by their presence, and would, in all probability, become contaminated by the influence around them.” Barnes.—E. R. C.]
Rev_18:5. For her sins have heaped together unto the Heaven.—See Syn. View.
Rev_18:6-7. Render unto her.—See Syn. View. Address to those injured by Babylon, as such. [Should we not rather, with Alford, regard these words as “addressed to the executioners of judgment?”—E. R. C.] With the double measure, the qualitative retribution is expressed in quantitative form. See Syn. View. Comp. Isa_40:2. The expressions διπλώσατε, διπλᾶ, διπλοῦν, are, therefore, not simply “rhetorical.” The consummation of her punishment is furnished with a three-fold motive, being the punishment (1) Of her evil deeds against the suffering party generally; (2) Of the cup, in particular—by which we are here to understand the cup of bitterness; (3) Of her self-glorification and pride, which involved a like measure of humiliation and oppression for the sufferers. For she saith in her heart.—Even now; so unforebodingly secure is she in face of the signs of the times. A queen.—Isa_47:7. And a widow I am not.—A widow in the more general sense, as one deserted. See Isa_47:8-9. Neither is she a bride or a wife any more, but a polyandria. Sorrow I shall not see.—Sorrow, particularly, for her many daughters (which, of course, are not the cities and peoples subject to pagan Rome). Thus she also regards herself as elevated above the universal law of earthly vicissitude, elevated above historic dooms.
[These expressions, in addition to reasons presented in Add. Comm. on Rev_17:18, and Add. Note, p. 317, identify the objective of Babylon with that of the Harlot. As in Revelation 17, where the main figure was the Harlot, a portion of the symbolization was drawn from the City,—so here, where the main figure is Babylon, a portion of the symbolization is taken from the Woman.38—E. R. C.]
Rev_18:8. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day.—Precisely therefore (לָכֵן). In antithesis to her pride. Death.—Since death can not come upon her twice, and since the death of her children is expressed by sorrow or mourning [Rev_18:7], the term doubtless embraces the death-doom in general, coming upon her primarily as a presentiment of ruin, and then developing into mourning, hunger, and fiery death. In one day—in one great catastrophe (see Isa_47:9).[Without succession through a protracted period—all-together.—E. R. C.] For strong.—The whole omnipotence of God opposes itself in judgment to the haughtiness of Babylon, and this judgment has already begun (κρίνας). The whole Providence of God executes the judgment of the Lord, for it is as such that God has primarily to do with Babylon.
Rev_18:9-10. And there shall weep and wail over her.—In Rev_18:9-20 [19] are presented the three laments over Babylon, in which the three classes associated in her guilt appear, in antithesis to the people of God, as sharers in the stroke which has fallen upon her. They represent the peripheries of the judgment, forming about its centre. Comp. Ezekiel 26, 27. The kings of the earth.—Düsterdieck rightly discards the view of Hengstenberg, who finds in the οὐαί, οὐαί a reference to “double to her double.” Highly significant is the kings’ standing afar Off: they will not be burned up with her, for their friendship with Babylon was based upon egoism. They must, however, together with her, be afflicted by the stroke which has descended upon her. Their lamentation is expressive of two things—on the one hand, that they have been dazzled by the grandeur and power of Babylon, and on the other, that they are aware of her guilt, for they speak of her judgment, although they do not come to the penitent consciousness that they have committed fornication and lived luxuriously with her.
[Standing afar off.—“The general sentiment here is that in the final ruin of Papal Rome the kings and governments that had sustained her, and had been sustained by her, would see the source of their power taken away, but that they would not, or could not, attempt her rescue. There have been not a few indications already that this will ultimately occur, and that the Papal power will be left to fall without any attempt on the part of those governments which have been so long in alliance with it, to sustain or restore it.” Barnes.—E. R. C.]
Rev_18:11. And the merchants of the earth.—Second lamentation. Here, egoism is more plainly visible. They weep and sorrow because no one will buy their merchandise any more. The vividness of the description is also augmented by the picturesque present: they weep, etc., and no less, by the circumstantiality with which their merchandise, the entire exposition of their secularized industry, is described (see Syn. View). No one buyeth their lading any more.—That is, the fall of Babylon is accompanied by a thorough contempt for all splendor and luxury; it ushers in the fashion of simplicity.
Rev_18:12-16. The wares are arranged in order (see Syn. View). “The alternation of accusatives and genitives dependent on τὸν γόμον, prevailing till the close of Rev_18:13, may serve as explanatory of the dubious construction found in Rev_14:4” (Düsterd.). The fact that the vision draws the picture of these articles of luxury from the view of antiquity—of ancient Rome for instance—proves nothing for the import of Babylon. On the individual articles comp. the Lexicons. Special consideration, as less known, is demanded by the ξύλον θύϊον, ἄμωμον, ὀπώρα. The distinction, σώματα and ψυχαὶ ἀνθρώπων, is noted by commentators and differently explained (see Düsterdieck, p. 527); the distinction, at all events, is not a very sharp one, and the second expression is indicative of an augmentation, the extreme consequence of slave-holding. The renewal of these circumstances, even in Christian Babylon, is well known. The strong emphasis laid at the end upon the missing of the favorite fruit39 is highly characteristic as an ironical trait. It is well known that fallen great men often grieve most for the loss of the veriest trifles. Conjoined with these delicacies in the way of fruit, are all sorts of delicious things; “τὰ λιπαρά, literally the fat, but its conjunction with τὰ λαμπρά admonishes us to take the expression in the usual unliteral sense (Isa_30:23; comp. Hesych., who explains λιπ. as καλόν, ἔλαφρον), with Luther, Bengel, Hengstenberg” (Düsterd.). There seems, however, to be a distinction made between articles of gastronomic and æsthetic taste.
Rev_18:15. The merchants of these things.—Here the style changes again from a vivid presentation of the Babylonish world-mart to the prophetic future. These merchants [Kaufleute] also bemoan the City in a characteristic manner. For them, the greatness of the City consisted, not, as for the kings, in her power, but in her outward splendor, her beauty of attire.
[Rev_18:11-16. “The description … is perhaps drawn, in its poetic and descriptive features, from the relation of Rome to the world that then was, rather than from its relation at the future time depicted in the prophecy. But it must not for a moment be denied that the character of this lamentation throws a shade of obscurity over the interpretation, otherwise so plain from the explanation given in Rev_17:18 (viz., ‘that the prophecy regards Rome pagan and papal, but from the figure of an harlot and the very nature of the predictions themselves, more the latter than the former’). The difficulty is, however, not confined to the application of the prophecy to Rome Papal, but extends over the application of it to Rome at all. … For Rome never has been, and from its position never could be, a great commercial city. I leave this difficulty unsolved, solved, merely requesting the student to bear in mind its true limits, and not to charge it exclusively on that interpretation which only shares it with any other possible one. The main features of the description are taken from that of the destruction of and lamentation over Tyre in Ezekiel 27., to which city they were strictly applicable. And possibly it may be said that they are also applicable to the Church which has wedded herself to the pride of the earth and its luxuries.” Alford.—E. R. C.]40
Rev_18:17. And every pilot, etc.—Marine affairs are sketched as that form of world-commerce and industry which was, proportionally, most remote from the City. Even this general mercantilism is affected by the fall of Babylon, because the blow inflicted upon the kings and upon the luxury of the great world touches it likewise. From the pilots, who can sail in all directions, are distinguished those who take ship for definite ports—from these latter, all who do business at sea (τήν θάλασσαν ἐργάζεσθαι). [See Text and Note 21, p. 319.—E. R. C.]
Rev_18:18. The smoke of her burning.—As Rev_18:9. Not to be confounded with the smoke, Rev_14:11. The impression which the City has made on them is, proportionally, the most indefinite: she was incomparable. If a reference to Rev_13:4 was intended, it could yet not be satirical in the mouth of seamen (as Ebrard claims). The expression is, besides, the most general and, therefore, most indefinite form of worldly astonishment. It is thus that popular travellers and seafarers have spoken from time immemorial. [At the same time it should be noted that in reference to both Rome actual and Rome symbolical the expression is strictly true. Barnes comments, “What city is like unto this great city? In her destruction. What calamity has ever come upon a city like this?”—E. R. C.]
Rev_18:19. And they cast dust, etc.—A well-known sign of passionate mourning. Hence we need not ask, Whence came the dust at sea? The idea may be, however, that they viewed the conflagration from different ports. The narrative has changed to the preterite. The lamentation of these last is particularly passionate, and the egoistic motive is expressly assigned.
Rev_18:20. Rejoice over her.—In face of the threefold lamentation of the world, the heavenly voice (not John himself) expresses the jubilation of Heaven. We might here discover the indications of a three-fold jubilation: that of Heaven, with the Saints—that of the Apostles—that of the Prophets. Düsterdieck claims a distinction betwixt “earthly believers”—as Saints, Apostles, Prophets—and Heaven. But even in Nero’s time, there were several Apostles in Heaven, to say nothing of Prophets.
For God hath judged your judgment [Lange: executed your sentence] upon her.—We cannot apprehend the judgment [Urtheilsspruch=sentence of judgment], κρίμα, passively, with Hengstenb., De Wette, et al., in the sense: God hath recompensed the judgment which ye suffered as martyrs. For how would that apply to Heaven? The rejoicing in this form would, moreover, express the satisfaction of the desire for vengeance, in a style savoring somewhat too strongly of the Old Testament. The fitting expression for that satisfaction is found in Rev_18:24, which is a sort of repetition when the above-cited exegesis is adopted. The higher satisfaction, however, which Heaven itself must experience in connection with all the Saints, particularly the Apostles and Prophets, consisted in the fact that their primeval prophetic sentence upon Babylon, accompanying her throughout her historic career, but appearing for so long a mere melancholic fancy, at which the world hooted, has been finally sealed by God Himself through His judgment. The rejoicing over this satisfaction is a rejoicing over the truth and righteousness of God Himself. [Alford comments, God “hath exacted from her that judgment of vengeance which is due to you.”—E. R. C.]
Rev_18:21. And a (or one) strong Angel.—On εἶς see Winer, p. 126. As we shall have occasion to recur to this Angel in Rev_19:9-10, we may here refer to the predicates there given by the Angel to himself. Düsterd. remarks that the strength of the Angel receives mention on account of the action which he is represented as performing. Like a great mill-stone.—See Jer_51:63-64. See Syn. View. With violence.—In a catastrophe. And shall be found no more at all,—i. e., as the magnificent City which it had been. That, however, it should continue as a desolate ruin, for a memorial of judgment, is evident from the following context. See Eze_26:13; Jer_25:10, et al.
Rev_18:22. And a voice of harpers.—Art stood high in Babylon [and in Rome, and in the Visible Church—especially as she increases in worldliness,—E. R. C.]; it was, however, completely under the influence of vanity and in the service of idolatry. With art business vanishes (the mill); with business, family life (the candle); with family life, family festivals [and relationships] (bridegroom and bride).
Rev_18:23. For thy merchants were the great men of the earth [Lange: the princes of the earth were thy merchants].—The vision closes, most appropriately, with a brief recapitulation of the guilt of Babylon. For this reason, also, we cannot, with Düsterd., Ewald, De Wette and Hengstenberg [also Lillie, Alford, Glasgow, et al.,—E. R. C.], read: thy merchants were the great of the earth.41 No leading reproach would be involved in the statement that some few money-changers became lords and princes under the influence of absolutist luxury. At all events, we should expect first a repetition of the two leading categories of the transgression of Babylon against the world related to her. The first transgression is the seduction of the kings, or the great, generally, whom she has made her merchants, abettors and brokers (her associates in fornication). The second transgression is against the nations, which she has seduced or intoxicated with her sorcery or poison-mixing (= wine of rage). Düsterdieck interprets φαρμακεία as the love-potions of the Harlot; “comp. Isa_47:9; Isa_47:12 sq.; Ewald, De Wette.” Our Seer, however, keeps the two categories separate, Rev_17:2; Rev_18:3. The nations have not been so much intoxicated by love-potions as by rage-potions (of fanaticism). A connection between the two forms is of course unmistakable. [The objective of φαρμακέια may be the instruments of seduction by which she either allures the nations into unholy alliance with herself, or by which she causes them to wander in unrighteous paths. See the Text.—E. R. C.]
After the transgression of Babylon against the world, ensues her transgression against the people of God—a transgression still greater than the former, yet connected with it.
Rev_18:24. See Synoptical View. Ebrard: “Hengstenberg, who makes the Millennial Kingdom commence with Charlemagne, must, to be consistent with his own view, point out the terrible destruction of Babylon depicted in Revelation 18, as occurring at some period during the time before Charlemagne. Nor does he find this difficult; to be sure, in the City of the Seven Hills the voices of lutists and pipers have never for one moment been silenced; neither is the City thrown into the sea, or burned, nor has an end been put to her commerce and her magnificence, nor has any one mourned over her downfall—on the contrary, she has quietly continued to subsist in the midst of the billows of national migrations: but—‘Rome here comes under consideration solely as the pagan mistress of the world’—and as pagan she is fallen, burned, desolated, etc.: and all this simply inasmuch as at about the time of Constantine she was gradually transformed from a pagan to a Christian City! In Revelation 18., therefore, we have, according to the exegesis of Hengstenberg, an entirely new portrayal of a—conversion.”
[ADDITIONAL NOTE ON Revelation 18]
By the American Editor
[This chapter, introduced by the disjunctive phrase, Μετὰ ταῦτα εἶδον, and immediately followed by a chapter having a similar introduction, forms, apparently, a supplementary section. In it are set forth events preceding the fall of Babylon. The direct vision of that fall occurred during the outpouring of the vials, Rev_16:18-19. As, however, that series of visions could not with propriety have been interrupted by the introduction of others descriptive of matters other than the plagues, supplementary visions were vouchsafed descriptive of important matters necessarily omitted, or barely indicated, in the main series. This chapter narrates a series of visions having reference (probably) to “the voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and earthquake” mentioned Rev_16:18. It consists of three parts, in which are narrated visions of—I. A glorious, heaven-descended Angel giving a proleptical prediction of the approaching destruction of the City, Rev_18:1-3, II. A voice from Heaven making a threefold call upon (1) the people of God, who should remain in the doomed City to come out of her, Rev_18:4-5; (2) the executioners of judgment to destroy, Rev_18:6-19; (3) the inhabitants of Heaven to rejoice, Rev_18:20. III. An Angel giving a symbolic prophecy of the destruction.—An analogue of this section, as to its subject matter, is to be found Jeremiah 50, 51, where we have a similar threefold division, viz.: 1. A proleptical declaration of destruction, Jer_50:2. 2. A call upon (1) the people of God to escape, Jer_50:1; Jer_50:8; Jer_51:6; Jer_51:45; (er 51:2) the executioners of judgment, Jer_1:14 sqq. Jer_1:3. A symbolical prophecy of the destruction, Jer_51:63-64.—One great distinction between the two sections should be noted. The one in the Apocalypse is the record of a prophecy of events (including prophecies); that in Jeremiah is simply a record of events (also including prophecies). John prophesied of a Divinely appointed messenger (Angel) who should prophesy. Jeremiah was himself the messenger (Angel) who foretold.
[In the judgment of the writer, the events here symbolized are yet future; nothing in the history of the world has occurred which adequately meets the symbolization, A comparison of this section with the one in Jeremiah, suggests the thought that by the glorious Angel of Rev_18:1-3 may be symbolized a Divinely called and gifted man, or body of men, who, in the spirit of the old Prophets, shall declare the approaching fall of the spiritual Babylon. By the Voice from Heaven of Rev_18:4 may be designated the inspired voice of these latter Prophets uttering the calls foretold; or, as the change in figure (another voice) probably indicates a change in instrumentality, by it may be indicated some other Divine influence exerted upon the three classes mentioned. By the strong Angel casting the millstone into the sea, Rev_18:21, may be symbolized some great catastrophe in history or nature—possibly the destruction of the great City that symbolizes the apostate Church.—An objection to the suggested interpretation may arise in the minds of some from the fact that the Voice of Rev_18:4 (an influence) and the Angel of Rev_18:2 (the agent of a catastrophe) are both represented in the context as prophesying. In answer it may be said that it is altogether in keeping with the dramatic nature of the Apocalypse to represent these symbols of Divine instrumentalities as themselves declaring the results of their agency.—E. R. C.]
Footnotes:
[1]Rev_18:1. Καί is omitted in accordance with א. A. B*. [P.], etc.
[2]Rev_18:2. The true reading is ἐν ἰσχυρᾷ φωνῆ, in accordance with decisive authorities. [So read Crit. Eds. generally; the ἐν with A. P.; the ἰσχυρᾷ φωνῇ with (א.) A. (B*.) P., etc.—E. R. C.]
[3]Rev_18:3. [Tisch. reads πἐπωκαν, πεπω- (πεπο) with P., -καν with A. C.; Treg. πέπτωκαν with A. C.; Alf. brackets the τ; א. and B*. give πεπτώκασιν.—E. R. C.]
[4]Rev_18:3. [Tisch. gives τοῦ οἴνου with א. B*., Clem., etc.; Lach. and Alf. omit with A., Am., Fuld., Tol., Lips.; Tregelles brackets.—E. R. C.]
[5]Rev_18:3. [For the rendering rage, see Note 16 on Chap, 14, p. 274.—E. R. C.]
[6]Rev_18:4. There are various forms of this; we, with Lach. [Ed. Maj., Tisch. (1859)], read ἔξέλθε, with B*. C., and also from internal reasons. [Lach. (Ed. Min.), Tisch. (8th Ed.), Treg., Alf., give ἔξέλθατε with א. A.; P. reads ἐξέλθετε.—E. R. C.]
[7]Rev_18:5. ̓Εκολλήθησαν in accordance with א. A. B*. C. [P.]. De Wette translates: “they have reached unto the heaven.”
[8]Rev_18:6. The ὑμῖν is omitted. [Om. by Crit. Eds. generally with א. A. B*. C. P., Am., Fuld., Demid., Tol., et al.; it appears in 1, 31, 91, 96, Clem., Lips., et al.—E. R. C.]
[9]Rev_18:6. The αὐτῇ is unfounded. [Om. by Crit. Eds. Tisch. and Treg. insert τά with א. C.; Lach. omits with A. B*. P.; Alf. brackets—E. R. C.]
[10]Rev_18:6. [See Note 19 on Chap. 14, p. 274.—E. R. C.]
[11]Rev_18:7. [Crit. Eds. give ὅτι with א. A. B*. C. P.—E. R. C.]
[12]Rev_18:8. [Crit. Eds. give κρίνας with א*. A. B*. C. P.; κρίνων is given by אo.1, 6, etc.—E. R. C.]
[13]Rev_18:11. [Crit. Eds. generally give κλαίουσιν καὶ πενθοῦσιν with א. A. C. P.—E. R. C.]
[14]Rev_18:12. [The article is without authority.—E. R. C.]
[15]Rev_18:13. In accordance with א*. A. C. [P. 6, 11, Am., Fuld., Tol., Lips.] etc. In the Rec. ἄμωμον is omitted.
[16]Rev_18:14. Codd. א. A. C. read σου τῆς ἐπιθυμίας.
[17]Rev_18:14. [The primary meaning of ὀπώρα is, “the part of the year between the rising of Sirius and Arcturus, …. and so, not so much the Lat. Auctumnus, as our dog-days or, at most, the end of summer … It was the proper time for both the field and tree fruits to ripen” (Liddell and Scott sub voce).—E. R. C.]
[18]Rev_18:14. [Lach., Alf., Treg., Tisch. (8th Ed.) give εὑρησουσιν with א. A. C. P. Vulg., etc.; Tisch. (1859) gave εὑρής with B*.; 7 reads εὑρείς.—E. R. C.]
[19]Rev_18:14. [The expression never, never more at all is adopted as the best idiomatic rendering of the threefold negative of the original, οὐκέτι οὐ μή.—E. R. C.]
[20]Rev_18:16. [Crit. Eds. omit καί with א. A. B*. C.; it appears in P., Vulg., Æth., et. al.—E. R. C.]
[21]Rev_18:17. [Crit. Eds. give καὶ πᾶς ὁ ἐπὶ τότον πλέων with א. A. B*. C., Am., Fuld., etc. (B*. inserts τόν before τόπον). Lange adopts this reading, declaring the Rec. (ἐπὶ τῶν πλοίων ὁ ὅμιλος) to be unfounded; he translates, however, all who sail to definite places. Alford translates, every one who saileth any whither. The first of the renderings given above is regarded as most in accordance with the presumptive meaning of the expression ἐπὶ τόπον; see Robinson under Επι, iii. a; and τόπος, d. (γ).—E. R. C.]
[22]Rev_18:20. [̓́Εκρινεν—τὸ κρίμα ὑμῶν ἔξ αὐτῆς. Lange translates: hath executed your sentence upon her.—E. R. C.]
[23]Rev_18:21. [The negatives in this and the following verses are merely double; see Note 19.—E. R. C.]
[24]Rev_18:23. [Lange translates: for the princes of the earth were thy merchants. See on pp. 323, 328 sq.—E. R. C.]
[25]Rev_18:24. Cod. B*. gives αἵματα; A. C. [א. P.] give αἵμα. [Tisch, adopts the former reading; Lach., Alf., Treg. the latter.—E. R. C.]
[26][In the second and third instances one and the same term is employed, viz.: φυλακή; and in the first, κατοικητήριον.—E. R. C.]
[27][For another exposition of the fornication, see Abstract of Auberlen, pp. 311 sq.—E. R. C.]
[28][See Add. Note and foot-note, p. 317.—E. R. C.]
[29][The ὑμῖν should be omitted. See Text. and Gram., Note 8. Rev_18:6.—E. R. C.]
[30][See Text. and Gram., Note 17.—E. R. C.]
[31][Above, the stone was the symbol of Babylon; its being cant into the sea, the symbol of her punishment by God; but here the stone is the symbol of Babylon’s sin, and its casting, that of her own sinful conduct!—E. R. C.]
[32][Krämer—a word of lower significance than Kaufleute, previously translated merchants; the latter denotes the great wholesale dealers, whilst the former signifies retailers—shopkeepers, as we say in English.—Tr.]
[33][See Expla. in Detail, Add. Comment on Rev_18:24.—E. R. C.]
[34][“A mode of destruction not obscurely intimated by certain very striking allusive expressions in other prophecies both of the Old and New Testament (Isa_34:9-10; Isa_30:33; Jer_51:25; Luk_17:28-32, etc.), and thus expected, as we find, alike by ancient Jewish Rabbis and Christian Fathers of the Church; not to add that the very nature of the Italian soil has forced on many a mind, in different ages, the thought of its physical preparedness almost for such a catastrophe.” Elliott.—Barnes, in support of the probable correctness of this view, writes as follows: “Gibbon (Revelation 15), with his usual accuracy, as if commenting on the Apocalypse, has referred to the physical adaptedness of the soil of Rome for such an overthrow. Speaking of the anticipation of the end of the world among the early Christians, he says, ‘In the opinion of a general conflagration, the faith of the Christian very happily coincided with the tradition of the East, the philosophy of the stoics, and the analogy of nature; and even the country, which, from religious motives, had been chosen for the origin and principal scene of this conflagration, was the best adapted for that purpose by natural and physical causes; by its deep caverns, beds of sulphur, and numerous volcanoes, of which those of Ætna, of Vesuvius, and of Lipari, exhibit a very imperfect representation.’ As to the general state of Italy in reference to volcanoes, the reader may consult, with advantage, Lyell’s Geology. B. II., chs. 9.–12. See also Murray’s Encyclopedia of Geography, II. 2. . . . . The following extract from a recent traveller will still further confirm this representation: ‘I behold every where—in Rome, near Rome, and through the whole region from Rome to Naples—the most astounding proofs, not merely of the possibility, but the probability, that the whole region of central Italy will one day be destroyed by such a catastrophe (by earthquakes or volcanoes). The soil of Rome is tufa, with a volcanic subterranean action going on. At Naples, the boiling sulphur is to be seen bubbling near the surface of the earth. When I drew a stick along the ground, the sulphurous smoke followed the indentation; and it would never surprise me to hear of the utter destruction of the southern peninsula of Italy. The entire country and district is volcanic. It is saturated with beds of sulphur and the substrata of destruction. It seems as certainly prepared for the flames as the wood and coal on the hearth are prepared for the taper which shall kindle the fire to consume them. The Divine hand alone seems to me to hold the element of fire in check by a miracle as great as that which protected the cities of the plain, till the righteous Lot had made his escape to the mountains.’—Townsend’s Tour in Italy in 1850.”—E. R. C.]
[35][It is exceedingly difficult to determine what is the idea of Stuart as to the interpretation of this chapter. This arises from the fact that nowhere in the special comment on it does he define what he means by Babylon; his meaning has to be sought through General and Special and Particular Introductions, and through excursuses and textual comments. His comment on Rev_14:8 can leave no doubt that there he regards Babylon as the City of Rome; that this interpretation is contemplated throughout this portion of the Apocalypse, is implied in numerous remarks. But the peculiar scheme of Stuart requires him to regard the woe as having been accomplished; and manifestly the City of Rome has never yet become a desolation. The most plausible idea concerning his interpretation is that he regards the prophecy as having its specific fulfillment in the destruction of Rome long ago commenced, but not yet accomplished; and its generic accomplishment in the overthrow of all Antichristian powers. The view as to the specific fulfillment is suggested by the following remark under Rev_14:8 : “The reader is not to suppose, that fallen, while it denotes absolute certainty, at the same time denotes complete and instantaneous excision. The predictions respecting ancient Babylon were fulfilled only in the lapse of several centuries; but they were at last fully accomplished. And so of the tropical Babylon. The Apocalypse itself gives sufficient intimation of a gradual fulfillment; comp. Rev_16:19-21 with Rev_18:4-8; Rev_18:20-24 and Rev_19:11-21.”—E. R. C.]
[36][A cautionary exodus may be a joyful one. The cautioned escapers may rejoice in view of their escape.—E. R. C.]
[37][The distinction here referred to seems to be that contemplated by the theologians of the Reformation in the use of the Latin terms macula and reatus potentialis—the former indicating the stain of sin; the latter, the exposure to punishment proper to the persons sinning. Thus Turretin (Vol. I., p. 654), “Macula est pollutio spirituals et ethica, quâ hominis anima inficitur. Reatus est obligatio ad pœnam ex prævio delicto. … Duplex oritur reatus; alius qui potentialis dicitur, qui notat meritum intrinsecum pœnæ, quod à peccato inseparabile est; alius verò actualis, qui per Dei misericordiam ab eo separari potest,’ etc. As the term guilt is technically employed by a large class of English Theologians as the equivalent of reatus, and as it is the term generally employed in the E. V., where Schuld occurs in the G. V., it is here adopted. It should he carefully noted, however, that it is employed, not in its ordinary meaning, but in the special sense indicated above.—E. R. C.]
[38][The true condition of the Church during the personal absence of her Husband and Head is that of a widow, comp. Mat_9:15; Mar_2:19-20; Luk_5:34;—she should ever be looking, with longing, for His appearing, Tit_2:13. The Am. Ed. cannot resist the thought that these expressions are indicative of a state of the Church in which she shall believe and assert that the personal absence of Jesus is no bereavement,—that already as a Queen she has entered upon the possession of the promised Kingdom,—that, during Christ’s personal absence, without material hindrance, she is to go on to complete supremacy over the nations. Already in Rome, and to a great extent throughout Christendom, is this cry heard.—E. R. C.]
[39][On the meaning of ὀπώρα see the Text, and Note 17, p. 319. The entire clause is probably figurative, declaring that the period of temporal prosperity has passed away.—E. R. C.]
[40][The Am. Ed. entertains the view that by Babylon is meant the City of Rome, and, still further, that by the City of Rome is symbolized the Visible Church (apostate in the time of the fulfillment of the prophecy). It seems to him that the difficulties suggested by Alford are imaginary rather than real in reference to both these hypotheses. It should be remembered that, in the days of the Apocalyptist, Rome was not only the centre of the Empire, but in a peculiar sense her boundaries were coterminous with those of the Empire; the commerce of the entire State was hers,—at once resulting from, and ministering to, her wealth and power. A peculiar relation of headship continued to be borne by the City to the nation dwelling within the pale of the old Empire, even after that Empire had been shattered into fragments. Even to the present day she is in a sense the capital of Papal Europe. And still further—the relation of Rome to the peoples of whom she was and is the acknowledged capital, well symbolizes the relation of the Visible Church to Christendom. She is its inspiring centre,—the source, and to a large extent a partaker, of its power and splendor. The commerce of the world is, in a peculiar sense, hers. To Rome actual, and Rome symbolical (in the sense set forth), the description of these verses is applicable.—E. R. C.]
[41][The order of the Greek requires this translation. The reproach is, not “that some few money-changers became princes,” but that her merchants, her men of business generally, busied themselves with the affairs of this world, became worldlings, and assumed the position of its leaders and great men.—E. R. C.]
SPECIAL DOCTRINO-ETHICAL AND HOMILETICAL NOTES (ADDENDUM)
Section Fifteenth
First Special End-Judgment; Judgment upon Babylon. Earth-picture. (Ch. 18)
General.—That essential judgment of Babylon which lies in her very appearance, and has been manifested in the light of Heaven, is here unfolded on earth in a distinct series of evolutions.
The first Act of the judgment, as executed by the Angel from Heaven, consists of the verdict upon Babylon, the sentence of Divine justice.
The second Act is the incipient execution of the judgment in the social sphere of justice. It is divided into two actions: (1) The people of God go out of Babylon (Rev_18:4; Rev_18:6), and (2) the world is commissioned to react against Babylon in pursuance of the same law of violence which she herself has exercised (Rev_18:6; Rev_18:8). The universality of her judgment is expressed in the despair and lamentation of all her allies, who are too cowardly to take her part, but yet are stricken with her. The third Act is the complete historic repudiation of Babylon, executed by the strong Angel with a millstone, in a symbolic act.
The whole constitutes the greatest tragedy of the world, complete in three or five Acts, according to the greater or less prominence bestowed upon the middle items:
1. The guilt of Babylon towards humanity;
2. The exode of the people of God from her;
3. The reaction of the hostile world against her;
4. The lamentation of her friends—a prelude to the final catastrophe;
5. The final catastrophe.
The Angel who, descending from Heaven, lightens the earth with his radiance, and proclaims the fall of Babylon, is also, without doubt, the actual spiritual author of her judgment. For he has great authority, and transports her judgment from Heaven to earth. That is, that judgment which is already declared in the sphere of the celestial Spirit, with the delineation of the character of Babylon, now, through the heavenly illumination proceeding from the Angel, becomes a subject of the universal consciousness of mankind. We hold that the Angel represents evangelic Christianity in the full development of the beauty of its moral and humane principles. For Babylon has outraged all these principles, from liberty of conscience to the recognition of public law. She has perverted her claim to be the educator of mankind into the exact opposite, having become the seducer and destroyer of humanity.
The cry of this Angel is followed by the voice from Heaven, the sentence of the heavenly Spirit, the law of the Kingdom of God—declaratory, on the one hand, of the right of the Church (come forth out of her) and, on the other hand, of the right of the State (recompense to her), and expressing itself, thirdly, as the spirit of history and poetry, in the portrayal of the great lamentations. The tragic coloring of this entire judgment-scene is distinctly brought out in all this; it is particularly prominent, however, in the symbolic execution of the final catastrophe.
Special.—[Rev_18:1.] Who is the Angel who comes down from Heaven, and whose glory lightens the earth?—[Rev_18:2.] The mighty cry over Babylon. Fallen! fallen! or the perfect certainty that Babylon will fall on earth, even as she has already fallen in the sight of God.—Contrast betwixt what Babylon should be and what she has become.—[Rev_18:3.] Babylon’s transgression against mankind: (1) against the nations, (2) against the kings, (3) against the rich and great.—[Rev_18:4.] Call to the people of God, to come out from Babylon: 1. Meaning of the call; 2. Motive of the call; 3. Neglect of the call (latitudinarianism); 4. Misinterpretation of the call (separatism).—[Rev_18:4; Rev_18:6.] Diverse conduct of the Church and the world toward guilty Babylon.—Retributory right of the world. This remains pure only in so far as it remains an execution of the right and keeps itself free from fanaticism.—[Rev_18:8.] Recompense of corporeal fiery judgments by a social and spiritual judgment of fire.—[Rev_18:7-8.] Contrast between the haughty self-blinding of Babylon and her imminent and great day of judgment.—The City of the Seven Mountains: yesterday and today.—[Rev_18:9-19.] The three lamentations of the world over the fall of Babylon. Common characteristics of them: 1. A view of her fall; 2. A standing afar off and refraining from taking her part; 3. A participation in the stroke that has fallen upon her—but in the sorrow of this world, with no recognition of the justice of the blow, of its nature as a judgment, or of the Judge Who has inflicted it.—Heaven’s judgments, earth’s tragedies.—[Rev_18:9-10.] Lamentation of the kings (see Exeg. Notes).—[Rev_18:11; Rev_18:15-17]. Lamentation of the great, the supporters of the luxury of the earth.—, [Rev_18:17-19]. Lamentation of the pilots or tradesmen.—Community and division of egoistical interests in the lamentations over the fall of Babylon.—Ironical enumeration of the depreciated goods of Babylon (Rev_18:12-14).—As the Church in its way, and the State in its way, so science and art in their way are concerned in the judgment upon Babylon.—The unspiritual lamentation of the world over the fall of Babylon contains the germ of that judgment which is later to descend upon the world.—[Rev_18:21.] The symbolic act of the strong Angel, a representation of the grand final catastrophe itself.—[Rev_18:22-23.] Babylon’s desolation. Her spiritual desolation shall be followed by an æsthetic desolation, and to this a desolation of business and of home life shall succeed.
Rev_18:24. The summit of Babylon’s guilt: she is the murderess of the prophets and saints.—This verse is supplemental to Rev_18:3.
Starke: Rev_18:2; comp. Isa_21:7; Jer_51:8 The repetition of the word [fallen] is indicative of the greatness and certainty of the fall.
Rev_18:4. This exode is based upon a gracious leading out on the part of God. There are certain grades in the execution of it, and it is performed as follows: 1. With the heart, by a right belief and acknowledgment of the truth, and hatred of false doctrine; 2. With the mouth, by a public confession of the truth, and rejection of errors; 3. With the body, by a going away from those places in which Babylon has its throne and superstition.—God’s people and Church are, partially, still in Babylon, although hidden; otherwise God could not command them to come out.—[Rev_18:5.] Sins that cry unto Heaven (Gen_4:10), whose measure is full, and upon which final ruin follows.
Rev_18:7. These words are taken from Isa_47:5-10. The greater the security and pride of the wicked, the more terrible is their punishment.
Rev_18:8. As Babylon burned innocent martyrs with fire, so shall she herself be burned with fire.
Rev_18:10. The fear of torment may cause us (outwardly) to remove far from those with whom we have sinned, but love to God alone can make their sin odious to us.
Rev_18:12. Quesnel: Let us gather treasures that will endure to eternity; nought is eternal save that which is done with a view to eternity. Rev_18:16. The world does not mourn over the loss of eternal salvation, but over the loss of riches and external magnificence.
Rev_18:20. It is at the downfall of evil, and at Divine vengeance that the pious rejoice; not out of a carnal mind and self-love, but by the ordinance of God and from the love of righteousness (Psa_91:8).
Rev_18:21. The wicked fall into the abyss of perdition as stones fall into the abyss of the sea. That which the world regards as highly exalted finally meets with the deeper fall (Eze_21:26).
Rev_18:24. The slaughter of true believers under the papacy is like the murder of the saints in the beginning of the world.—Great cities are destroyed on account of the many and enormous sins that are committed in them.—God reckons to the charge of the wicked all the sins of their ancestors, because they tread in their foot-steps (and the guilt of their ancestors attains its consummation and meridian in them).
Schlüssel Offenb. Joh. durch einen Kreuzritter (p. 289): The most terrible thing for a human community is when the salt of the earth, that should preserve it from corruption, is taken out of it by death or emigration, when the props of the rotten building give way, when Lot is led forth from Sodom, because there are not even, ten righteous men therein.
[From M. Henry: Rev_18:4. Those that are resolved to partake with wicked men in their sins must receive of their plagues.
Rev_18:5. When the sins of a people reach up to heaven, the wrath of God will reach down to earth.
Rev_18:7. God will proportion the punishment of sinners to the measure of their wickedness, pride and security.
Rev_18:9-19. The pleasures of sin are but for a season, and they will end in dismal sorrow.]
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.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–24 mightily . . . strong--not supported by manuscripts. But…
mightily . . . strong--not supported by manuscripts. But A, B, Vulgate, Syriac, and Coptic read, "with (literally, 'in') a mighty voice."
is fallen, is fallen--so A, Vulgate, Syriac, and ANDREAS. But B and Coptic omit the second "is fallen" (Isa 21:9; Jer 51:8). This phrase is here prophetical of her fall, still future, as Rev 18:4 proves.
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devils--Greek, "demons."
the hold--a keep or prison.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 a. An announcing angel proclaims the past downfall and…
a. An announcing angel proclaims the past downfall and prospective permanent desolation of Babylon, Rev_18:1-3.
After these things—After John’s return from his visit to the wilderness to obtain a view of the harlot; see last chapter. He returns, as appears by Rev_19:4, to the temple, the scene of chapter iv, where are the throne, the elders, and the “four beasts.”
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Earth was lightened with his glory—A beautiful image. So luminous was his person that the earth was made luminous around him.
4. Song of triumph over the accomplished destruction of Babylon, Rev_18:1-24.
1. And—After the full completion of the account both of Babylon’s fall and the harlot’s destiny, our seer finds the moment for giving the triumphal rejoicing upon the victory separately over each. This entire chapter is occupied with the triumph over the capital; nearly half of the next chapter over the harlot.
The fact that most of the verbs after Rev_18:3 are in the future has beguiled the commentators into the idea that “the great city” is not demolished in chapter 16. Thus Alford says, “The seer does not see the act of destruction,” which is in itself antecedently a very improbable supposition, and contradicted by the whole narrative of that chapter, as our notes, perhaps, have shown. These interpreters overlook the dramatic character of this paean; the frequent preterites that remind us that the event is really past; the numerous instances in which the future tense really describes the long future desolation and woe consequent upon the past downfall; and that in a large share of the chapter the futures are uttered from the standpoint of the ancient prophets, and are simply the triumphant applications of the maledictions upon old Tyre and Babylon to Babylon the new.
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 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 Her Glory and Sudden Plagues. Chap. 18 Rev_18:1-8
Her Glory and Sudden Plagues. Chap. 18 Rev_18:1-8
1. another angel] See on Rev_14:6.
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great power] Apparently for destruction: see note on the use of the word in Rev_9:19.
the earth was lightened with his glory] Eze_43:2, translated rather more literally than in the LXX.
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 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 (1) And after these things . . .—Or, better,…
(1) And after these things . . .—Or, better, After these things (omit “and”) I saw another angel coming down, having great power (or, authority—entrusted to him for the work against Babylon); and the earth was illumined by (literally, out of) his glory. The light which shines from the heavenly messenger shines like day upon the tawdry splendour of Babylon, and shows that what was admired was but worthless and corrupt. In his brief, but rousing call, he proclaims it to be so.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–24 And after these things I saw another angel come…
And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven; after omitting "and... coming down, etc. The usual form of introduction to a new vision. (cf. Rev_4:1 Rev_7:1, etc.) The "mystery" of the beast and the harlot having been declared, the angel now describes the doom in store for them. The angel is from heaven, as carrying the news of the judgment which is sent from heaven. (cf. Rev_10:1 Rev_19:6, Rev_19:15, 17 15:1, etc.) Having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. The great "authority" refers to the judgment which follows, which, however, is not acted out before the seer, but only described. The last clause records the visible manifestation of the great power. (cf. the description in Eze_43:2)
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY. Vers. 1-24. The overthrow of wickedness.
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This, in symbolic form, is the real subject of this chapter. Wickedness shall be utterly and forever destroyed.
I A GLORIOUS ANGEL PROCLAIMS THIS. (Cf. ver. 1 as to this angel.) Then such overthrow must be:
1. Righteous.
2. Blessed.
3. Divine.
Had it been possible for men to affect this, it would have been done long since.
II GOD"S PEOPLE RECEIVE COMMAND.
1. To separate themselves from sin. From which we learn:
a. That God"s people may have to dwell in the midst of sin.
b. That though where wickedness is, they are not to be partakers of it.
c. That they shall one day be effectually separated from it.
2. To avenge themselves upon it. Resentment and wrath are passions given us by God. Our peril and propensity is lest we turn them in a wrong direction. We do so when we use them for private revenge. This is what our Lord forbids. But against the forces of sin they may, they should, be used. This the command here.
III THE FRIENDS OF WICKEDNESS LAMENT.
1. Wickedness has friends. Those who find delight in it, who "live deliciously" in it (ver. 9). Those who make profit out of it. The merchants, etc. (ver. 11). And:
2. Their lament is loud and long. They weep, mourn, wail; say, "Alas, alas!" cast dust on their heads, etc. (vers. 11, 15, 16, 19).
3. But the lament is utterly selfish. They mourn not because of the wickedness; that does not trouble them. Nor even for Babylon"s sufferings. But because the hope of their gain is gone (ver. 19).
4. And they do not go to her help (ver. 15). They stand afar off for the fear of her torment. Look well at these friends, for such are they that sin and sinners call friends. "There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother," but such Babylon never gets.
IV ALL HEAVEN, ANGELS AND SAINTS, REJOICE. When we read over the subject of their joy, we find that:
1. It is not because in this Babylon there was noticing innocent or good. There was much. Vers. 22, 23 tell of what was lawful and right in any community. In the worst of men there is good. None are utterly bad. But:
2. That the main characteristic of her life was evil. And, therefore, her destruction was a matter of joy. She deceived all nations. She slew God"s saints. Thus:
3. Justice was done. And:
4. It was completely done. See the symbol of the angel with the millstone (ver. 21). Nothing like this has ever been accomplished yet, but this prophecy is a sure promise that it will be. "Who shall live when the Lord doeth this?" Amongst whom shall we be found? Let us now "come out of her, that we be not," etc. (ver. 4). S.C.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Vers. 1-8. The fall of corrupt society.
"And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven," etc. Regarding, as I do, this book as a record of visions which its author had in Patmos, at a period when the most stupendous events were occurring around him, the only practical use that can be made of them is to illustrate and impress those moral principles that are trite to man as man, the world over and the ages through. It appears absurd and useless, and an utter waste of labour, to attempt (which most expositors have done and are doing) an interpretation of a dream containing, as it generally does, objects that are grotesque, unnatural, and monstrous. Albeit it is most rational and practically valuable to employ it to set forth and impress the eternal realities of the spirit world. Our subject is the final fall of corrupt society. "Babylon is fallen, is fallen" (ver. 2). Babylon here represents society. it is a city. It is not the private residence of an individual, isolated from all others, but congeries of houses for the dwelling of a community. Because man is a gregarious animal and sympathetic, he lives, for the most part, in communities. A community may be as small as a family, as vast as a city, or as wide as an empire. It may be barbaric or civilized, civil or religious, or a combination of both. But Babylon not only represents society, but corrupt society. The moral character of the population was an outrage on all the laws of true morality and genuine religion. Human society was not only corrupt in Babylon, but it is corrupt in all its sections throughout the world. What an old Hebrew writer says of the Jewish nation, is true, more or less, of all society. "From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no soundness... but wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores." Morally, all society is Babylonianized. In this Babylon this corrupt society even as it exists here in Christendom we have all the evils and the vices that were found in pagan Rome. The distinction between pagan Rome and papal Rome is purely fictitious. What cardinal sins find you in the former that were not embodied in the history of the latter? "Is fallen, is fallen:" what in the history of Divine truth will be in fact and form millions of ages hence is now in spirit and reality. Hence "Babylon is fallen." The following remarks are suggested concerning the fall of Babylon, this fall of corrupt society.
I IT IS DIVINELY PROCLAIMED. Who proclaims it? A Divine angel, a minister from the Eternal. "After these things I saw another angel come coming down from out of heaven, having great power authority; and the earth was lightened with his glory" (ver. 1). "After these things." After the stupendous events recorded in former visions, this mighty angel, clad with authority and corruscating in splendour, comes down from the eternal heavens of reality, and proclaims with a loud voice this fall of moral Babylon. The ultimate fall of all that is morally corrupt in human communities is not a matter of speculation and mere probability; it is absolutely inevitable. Wrong cannot stand forever; though, like the colossal image in Daniel, it may be constructed of gold, and silver, and brass, and iron, and be associated with the splendours of empire, yet its "feet are of clay," and it must sooner or later tumble to pieces. Head of gold, but feet of clay! It is not a fixed star in the immeasurable expanse of space, but a mere meteor, brilliant and swift for a moment, then black and still forever. As there is a law of disintegration in the material universe, that so separates the hugest mountains that they ultimately disappear, so there is in the moral a law of retribution, which will ultimately break into pieces the world of corrupt society. Babylon must fail.
II IT IS MANIFESTLY DESERVED. The description here given reveals such a condition of moral foulness and wickedness as not only to merit but to demand this doom. "Is become the a habitation of devils, and the a hold of every foul unclean spirit, and a cage a hold of every unclean and hateful bird (ver. 2). As in the ruins of old cities, the cormorant, the screech owl, the vulture, and other hideous creatures are found, so in this moral Babylon are found the most horrible and detestable of all existences. The utter extermination, or rather extinction, of such objects is urgently required. But this is not all. Mark its appalling wickedness. "For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication For by the wine of the wrath of her fornication all the nations are fallen, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through by the abundance power of her delicacies wantonness" (ver. 3). "Reference here is not," says an expositor, "made to earthly but to spiritual wares indulgences, idolatries, superstitions, and worldly compromises." Does not such a corrupt society, such a moral Babylon, justly deserve this miserable ending? "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." The seeds of ruin lie in every evil principle, and are found in the moral heart of men. These seeds must break into fruits of rankling poison sooner or later.
III IT IS A REASON FOR QUITTING IT. "And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye be not partakers have no fellowship of with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues" (ver. 4). As the house is falling, let the tenants quit and save their lives; the city is about breaking into flames, therefore escape to the mountains. This voice from heaven suggests:
1. The possibility of good men, living in this corrupt society this moral Babylon. "Come out of her, my people." Good men are found living and working in the midst of a "wicked and perverse generation." There were a few men in corrupt Sardis who "walked with God." The depravities of our contemporaries and neighbours are no justification for our defects. They should rather warn us against the wrong, and stimulate us to the right.
2. That good men, unless they quit this corrupt society, will be involved in its guilt and fate. "That ye be not partakers of her sins." The exodus here demanded is not, of course, bodily, but spiritual; not from places, but from principles; not from persons, but from characters; from the corrupt spirit of places and persons. "Come out from among them, anti be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." Unless you do so you will be tainted with their impurity and afflicted with their plagues.
IV IT IS A DEVELOPMENT OF RETRIBUTION. "For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities, Reward her render unto her even as she rewarded you rendered, and double unto her double the double according to her works" (vers. 5, 6). "The idea is of a great heap firmly fastened, and towering, like another Babel, as far as heaven. (comp. 2Ch_28:9 Ezr_9:6) The idea is more than that of the cry of sin reaching heaven, as in the case of Sodom; (Gen_18:20, Gen_18:21) the sins themselves, many and imperial, have touched the face of heaven. God hath remembered her. Sometimes the oppressed have thought that God hath forgotten the voice of the enemy; but the long suffering of the Lord is salvation. The same voice which bids the people of God come forth summons the agents of vengeance. Many Old Testament parallels will suggest themselves. (Jer_51:18 Psa_79:12 Psa_137:8 Isa_40:2) The "double" must not be taken to mean "double her sins." Her sins are themselves called double, and her judgment is according to her sins. She is double stained in wickedness, and the law of retribution fiercely works in her. The cup of her luxuriousness becomes the cup of vengeance. The flowery path has led to the broad gate and the great fire (Bishop of Ripen). The ruin comes, then, not as a casual event, nor as a positive infliction, but as the result of the eternal law of retribution: a law silent in its operations, resistless in its force, and inevitable in its issues. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This law of moral causation links sin to misery as indissolubly as attraction links planets to the sun. "As you stood some stormy day upon a sea cliff, and marked the giant billow rise from the deep to rush on with foaming crest, and throw itself thundering on the trembling shore, did you ever fancy that you could stay its course, and hurl it back to the depths of ocean? Did you ever stand beneath the leaden, lowering cloud, and mark the lightning"s leap as it shot and flashed, dazzling athwart the gloom, and think that you could grasp the bolt, and change its path? Still more foolish and vain his thought, who fancies that he can arrest or turn aside the purpose of God, saying, "What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?" "Let us break his bands asunder, and cast away his cords from us." Break his bands asunder! How he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh!
V IT INVOLVES AN OVERWHELMING CATASTROPHE. "Therefore shall her plagues come in one day in one day shall her plagues, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth which judged her" (ver 8). "She thought herself strong," says a modern expositor. "She forgot the strength of the Almighty. Her plagues were fourfold, as though from every quarter her trouble came. Death, for her scorn of the prospect of widowhood; mourning, for her inordinate revelling; famine, for her abundance; and fire, the punishment of her fornication." When full judgment comes upon a corrupt community, the horrors involved not only transcend description, but even imagination. What is lost? Friendship gives way to fiendish battlings; peace gives way to furious storms; hope gives way to black despair and terrible apprehensions; liberty gives way to a crushing thraldom, in which every faculty of the soul is bound in chains of darkness. All the lights of the soul are quenched, and the whole heavens are mantled in a starless midnight.
CONCLUSION. Mark well, brother, and study deeply the final fall of corrupt society. Every corrupt soul is in truth a moral Babylon that "is fallen, is fallen." "Fallen" from whither? From some local height? From some Himalayan apex to a fathomless dungeon, or from some worldly pinnacle? From a mansion to a cot, from a princeling to a pauper? Such falls are not vital. Change of place does not necessarily affect the highest interests of the soul. "The mind is its own place." Nor change of circumstances. In truth, a descension from the highest affluence to the lowest indigence may conduce to its true elevation. The fall is from virtue to vice, from truth to error, from liberty to thraldom, from sunshine to midnight, from the Divine to the devilish. What more terrible sentence can be pronounced on a soul than "It is fallen, it is fallen"? Will it continue to fall forever? Is there no hand to arrest the descent, and to lift it to the heights from whence it has fallen? "The hand of mercy is not shortened, that it cannot save." On the pages of ecclesiastical history, of sacred biography, and of our own memory, we read of souls that have fallen low, but have been raised again. They have been able to appropriate the language of an old Hebrew writer, and say, "He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." "Thy mercy, Lord, is like the morning sun, Whose beams undo what sable night hath done; Or, like a stream, the current of whose course, Restrained awhile, runs with a swifter three. Oh! let me glow beneath those sacred beams, And bathe me in those silver streams. To thee alone my sorrows shall appeal Hath earth a wound too hard for Heaven to heal? (Quarles) D.T.
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 On vv1, 9, 18, 21 Babylon the great is fallen.
Rev_18:1-8
Babylon the great is fallen.
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The overthrow of wickedness
I. A glorious angel proclaims this (cf. Rev_18:1 as to this angel). Then such overthrow must be--
1. Righteous.
2. Blessed.
3. Divine. Had it been possible for men to effect this, it would have been done long since.
II. Gods people receive command.
1. To separate themselves from sin. From which we learn--
(1) That Gods people may have to dwell in the midst of sin.
(2) That though where wickedness is, they are not to be partakers of it.
(3) That they shall one day be effectually separated from it.
2. To avenge themselves upon it. Resentment and wrath are passions given us by God. Our peril and propensity is lest we turn them in a wrong direction.
III. The friends of wickedness lament.
1. Wickedness has friends. Those who find delight in it, who live deliciously in it (Rev_18:9). Those who make profit out of it. The merchants, etc. (Rev_18:11). And--
2. Their lament is loud and long. They weep, mourn, wail; say, Alas, alas cast dust on their heads, etc. (Rev_18:11; Rev_18:15-16; Rev_18:19).
3. But the lament is utterly selfish. They mourn not because of the wickedness: that does not trouble them. Nor even for Babylons sufferings. But because the hope of their gain is gone (Rev_18:19).
4. And they do not go to her help (Rev_18:15). They stand afar off for the fear of her torment. Look well at these friends, for such are they that sin and sinners call friends.
IV. All heaven, angels and saints, rejoice. When we read over the subject of their joy, we find that--
1. It is not because in this Babylon there was nothing innocent or good. There was much. Verses 22, 23 tell of what was lawful and right in any community. In the worst of men there is good. None are utterly bad. But--
2. That the main characteristic of her life was evil. And therefore her destruction was a matter of joy. She deceived all nations. She slew Gods saints. Thus--
3. Justice was done. And--
4. It was completely done. See the symbol of the angel with the millstone (Rev_18:21). Nothing like this has ever been accomplished yet, but this prophecy is a sure promise that it will be. Who shall live when the Lord doeth this? Amongst whom shall we be found? Let us now some out of her, that we be not, etc. (Rev_18:4). (S. Conway, B. A.)
Babylon
I. The description of Babylon.
1. Its corrupt character. As before the prophets were false and the spirits were unclean, and stood opposed to God; so now harlotry, fornication, drunkenness, blasphemy, abominations, luxury, persecuting, violence, sorcery, submission to the beast, warring against the Lamb, are the terms employed to describe or indicate the excessive foulness and corruption of the faithless city. This is the woman having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations, even the unclean things of her fornication. This the Babylon the great, which is become a habitation of devils, a hold of every unclean spirit and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird.
2. Virulent antagonism to the good, even to the loftiest ideals of goodness. War against the Lamb; blasphemed the God of heaven; gather together unto the war of the great day of God; poured out the blood of saints and prophets; in such terms is the antipathy to all righteousness declared.
3. Occasion of all evil, seen in the corruption of life, the deceitfulness of iniquity, the loss of the blessings of righteousness, degradation in sin, to which the peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues are reduced where the harlot sitteth; and the judgments and consequent sufferings in which they are involved.
4. The widespread, universal character of the desolation caused. In every aspect this vision is great and marvellous. It is Babylon the great. The harlot sitteth upon many waters, which waters are peoples and multitudes, and nations and tongues. And the woman is the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth; by the wine of the wrath of her fornication all the nations are fallen. What city is like the great city, with whose sorcery were all nations deceived? In her was found the blood of all that have been slain upon the earth. This is the universal kingdom of evil, whose sins reached unto heaven. This great kingdom shall come to an end. Such is the ever-recurring promise of this book.
II. Its destruction is complete. The harlot is made desolate and naked; hated by all over whom she sat as a queen; they shall eat her flesh, and burn her utterly with fire. Woe, woe! is pronounced against the great city, Babylon; for in one hour is thy judgment come. Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. In one day shall her plagues come, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God which judgeth her. The Lamb shall overcome, and thus shall they also overcome that are with Him. And a strong angel took up a stone as it were a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with a mighty fall shall Babylon, the great city, be east down, and shall be found no more at all. Then shall the kings of the earth that committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth who were made rich by her, and every shipmaster and mariner, and all that were made rich by her, weep and mourn and lament; while to heaven a sweet song of joy and thankfulness shall rise from them who with the Lamb have overcome--who are called, and chosen, and faithful. (R. Green.)
The fall of corrupt society
The fall of corrupt society is--
I. Divinely proclaimed. As there is a law of disintegration in the material universe, that so separates the hugest mountains that they ultimately disappear, so there is in the moral a law of retribution, which will ultimately break into pieces the world of corrupt society.
II. Manifestly deserved. As in the ruins of old cities, the cormorant, the screech-owl, the vulture, and other hideous creatures are found, so in this moral Babylon are found the most horrible and detestable of all existences. The utter extermination, or rather extinction, of such objects is urgently required.
III. A reason for quitting it.
1. The possibility of good men living in this moral Babylon. The depravities of our contemporaries and neighbours are no justification for our defects.
2. Good men, unless they quit this corrupt society, will be involved in its guilt and fate.
IV. A development of retribution. The ruin comes, not as a casual event, nor as a positive infliction, but as the result of the eternal law of retribution: a law silent in its operation, resistless in its force, and inevitable in its issues (Gal_6:7).
V. An overwhelming catastrophe. When full judgment comes upon a corrupt community the horrors involved not only transcend description, but even imagination. What is lost? Friendship gives way to fiendish battlings; peace gives way to furious storms; hope gives way to black despair and terrible apprehensions: liberty gives way to a crushing thraldom, to which every faculty of the soul is bound in chains of darkness. All the lights of the soul are quenched, and the whole heavens are mantled in a starless midnight. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The habitation of devils.
The habitation of demons
I. Every Babel-like city or system, is doomed to destruction, and will fall into an abyss of fearful degradation. This is the lesson of all history from the beginning of the world. We see it in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, of the Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms, and of the Greek and Roman Empires. Wherever we find a nation that is supremely devoted to the things of sense, we have Babel-like adolaters, who are destined to a certain fall and degradation. Such is the appointed end of every political or religious system that ignores God and His truth, and seek after material power and prosperity as the chief objects of life. Let a nation lose her faith in God--let her drive truth, virtue, love, and righteousness from her heart and life, and what will she become? Can she become anything else than a habitation of devils? Can she become anything else but the seat and prey of demon-like passions?
II. Observe how diabolical the passions of men may become. The most terrible physical calamity that can be imagined, says one, has no terror to compare with that of fiends let loose from hell and taking possession of human hearts and hands. A ship sinking in a tempest with its hundreds of helpless passengers; a Lisbon overwhelmed by sudden earthquake; a Pompeii buried alive beneath the lava and ashes of Vesuvius are very terrible to hear of, and to think of, but they are nothing to what Paris has lately seen. Her streets have been flooded with the worst passions of which human nature, satanically inspired, is capable. Men, women, and even children, born in the same streets, neighbours all their life long, who have traded and danced and sung together, pursuing each other to death with the ferocity of tigers, and inflicting all manner of dishonour and indignity on the mangled remains of the dead--and all this in the most polished and beautiful city in the world--what can it all mean, except it be an eruption of demons from the bottomless pit?
III. We see what society has to expect from the apostles of infidelity and atheism. When men have destroyed the idea of a God in their own minds, is it not natural to think that they will enter on a career of destruction in reference to other and smaller things? If they hesitate not to destroy the idea of a God--the fountain of right and wrong--will they shrink from destroying human life or property? If the idea of a God be not a sacred idea to such persons, do you think that the idea of the value of human life or property will be a sacred idea to them? No. Society has everything to lose and nothing to gain from such apostles of atheism and infidelity. Not from them, but from other and higher sources, would we look for the salvation of men.
IV. All men are in danger of falling into a Babel-like spirit and life. For all are only too prone to put faith in the things of sense, and to forget the things that are unseen and eternal. The Babylonian spirit is not dead. Every man to some extent is a little Babel. We have faith in the powers of nature. We have faith in the sun, in the moon, in the star, in the coal, and in the seed that we cast into the ground. Do we believe also in God? Have we a real and lasting faith in Him? Have we such a faith in love, truth, virtue, and righteousness, as in the things that we see with the eye of our body and touch with our hands? (Wm. MKay.)
Come out of her.--
The influence of the apostate Babylon
When the great apostate power named Babylon comes, as hero sot forth, to utter destruction, it is seen how wide and how deep its malign influence had been. The whole fabric of the worlds commerce is shattered by its fall; for all human industries and traffic and all the markets of the world had come to be diverted from the service of God, and directed and controlled by the corrupt principles and unhallowed delights of the vast apostasy. Even though the identity of this mystic Babylon be left unfixed, the warning reaches us with no lack of distinctness and urgency. We need not wait until we can precisely define and allocate the form and system of wrong which is here denounced before we determine to hold ourselves clear of all wrong, by doing that only which is right, by acknowledging and serving God alone in all particulars and interests of our daily fife, at home and in the world. (G. S. Rowe.)
In the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.--
The rule of retribution
I. This rule commends itself to our sense of justice. That those of the wicked who in this world live in affluence, and have more than heart can wish, possess abundant opportunities for intellectual and moral improvement, and means of doing good, should in future retribution fare alike with those who have none of these blessings or advantages, would be an outrage on our sense of right. Justice requires a balancing of human affairs, a kind of compensation for existing discrepancies, and this mankind will have in the great retributive future.
II. This rule answers to biblical teaching. Throughout the whole Scripture record it is taught that sinners, after they have passed through their probationary period, will be dealt with according to the mercies they have abused, the opportunities they have neglected, and the advantages they have wasted. He that knoweth his Masters will and doeth it not, etc. It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime didst receive, etc.
III. This rule agrees with universal experience. Conscious contrast between a propitious past and a distressing present is and must ever be an element in mental suffering. (Homilist.)
She hath glorified herself.--
The degenerate Church
Called to prepare men for the second coming of the Lord, and to teach them to live, not for the present, but the future, she becomes herself the victim of the present. She forgets that, in the absence of the Bridegroom, her days are days of fasting. She fails to realise the fact that until her Lord comes again her state is one of widowhood. And, instead of mourning, she sits as a queen, at ease and satisfied, proud of her pomp and jewellery. (W. Milligan, D D.)
Therefore shall her plagues come.--
National ruin
Our scientific friends find yellow bricks still impressed with the name of Nebuchadnezzar, and they go back to the sarcophagus of a monarchy buried more than two thousand years ago. But is it possible that that is all that remains of Babylon? a city once five times larger than London and twelve times larger than New York? Wall three hundred and seventy-three feet high and ninety-three feet thick. Twenty-five burnished gates on each side, with streets running clear through to corresponding gates on the other side. Six hundred and twenty-five squares. More pomp and wealth and splendour and sins than could be found in any five modern cities combined. A city of palaces and temples. Great capital of the ages! But one night, while honest citizens were asleep, but all the saloons of saturnalia were in full blast, and at the kings castle they had filled the tankards for the tenth time, and reeling and guffawing and hiccoughing around the state table were the rulers of the land. General Cyrus ordered his besieging army to take shovels and spades, and they diverted the river from its usual channel into another direction, so that the forsaken bed of the river became the path on which the besieging party entered. When the morning dawned the conquerors were inside the city walls. Babylon had fallen. But do nations die? Oh, yes, there is great mortality among monarchies and republics. They are like individuals in the fact that they are born, they have a middle life, they have a decease, they have a cradle and a grave. Some of them are assassinated, some destroyed by their own hand.
1. One evil threatening the destruction of American institutions is the solidifying of the sections against each other. This country cannot exist unless it exists as one body--the national capital, the heart, sending out through all the arteries of communication warmth and life to the very extremities.
2. Another evil threatening the destruction of our American institutions is the low state of public morals. What killed Babylon of my text? What killed Phoenicia? What killed Rome? Their own depravity; and the fraud and the drunkenness, and the immorality which have destroyed other nations will destroy ours, unless a merciful God prevent. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
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 On v1
CHAPTER X I V.
THE FALL OF BABYLON.
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Rev_18:1-24.
BABYLON has fallen. We have now the Divine proclamation of her fate, and the lamentation of the world over the doom to which she has been consigned: -
"After these things I saw another angel coming down out of heaven, having great authority; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried with a mighty voice, saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become a habitation of devils, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird. For by the wine of the wrath of her fornication all the nations are fallen and the kings of the earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth waxed rich by the power of her wantonness (Rev_18:1-3)."
At Rev_17:1, we read of one of the angels that had the seven Bowls. The angel now introduced is another, or a second. We shall find as we proceed that we have entered upon a new series of seven parts, similar to that in chap. 14, where six angels and their actions, three on either side, are grouped around One higher than angels, and forming the central figure of the movement.* The series is a long one, extending from chap. 17:1 to chap. 22:5, the central figure meeting us at Rev_19:11; and again, as before, the fact ought to be carefully noticed, for it has a bearing on the interpretation of some of the most difficult sections of this book. Meanwhile we have to do with the second angel, whose action extends to Rev_18:20 of the present chapter. (*Kliefoth seems to have been the first to point this out.)
The description given of this angel is proportioned to the importance of his message. He has great authority; the earth is lightened with his glory; the voice with which he cries is mighty. It could hardly be otherwise than that, with such joyful tidings as he bears to men, the "glory of the Lord should shine round about him, and a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun."1 The tidings themselves follow, taken from the Old Testament accounts of the desolation that was to come upon Babylon: "And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans pride, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall shepherds make their flocks to lie down there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And wolves shall cry in their castles, and jackals in the pleasant palaces."2 In words such as these, though combined throughout both the present and following descriptions with expressions taken from the ruin of other famous and guilty cities of the Old Testament, we have the source whence the powerful and pathetic words of this chapter are drawn. The most terrible disasters of bygone times are but types of that wreck of all the grandeur of earth which we are now invited to behold, while Babylon s sinfulness is referred to that her fate may appear to be no more than her appropriate punishment. (1 Luk_2:9; Act_26:13; 2 Isa_13:19-22)
At this point we are met by one of those sudden transitions, common in the Apocalypse, which so completely negative the idea of chronological arrangement. A cry is heard which seems to imply that Babylon has not yet fallen: -
"And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come forth, My people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Render unto her even as she rendered, and double unto her the double according to her works: in the cup which she hath mingled mingle unto her double. How much soever she glorified herself, and waxed wanton, so much give her of torment and mourning: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall in no wise see mourning. Therefore in one day shall, her plagues come, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God which judged her (Rev_18:4-8)."
The first words of this voice from heaven deserve peculiar attention: Come forth, My people, out of her; that is, out of Babylon, the degenerate Church. We are at once reminded of the striking teaching of our Lord in chap. 10 of the fourth Gospel, where He compares Himself to the "door" of the fold, not the door by which the sheep enter into, but by which they come out of, the fold.l We are also reminded of the blind man of chap. 9 of the same Gospel, whom our Lord "found" only after he had been "cast out" of the synagogue.2 In the midst of the blinded theocracy of Israel in the days of Jesus there was a faithful, though small, remnant. It had been betrayed by the religious guides of the people, who had become "thieves and robbers," whom the true sheep did not know, and to whom they ought not to listen. Jesus came to call it out of the theocracy to Himself. Such was the spectacle which St. John had witnessed when his Master was in the world, and that experience is now repeated. The Church as a whole degenerates. Called to prepare men for the Second Coming of the Lord, and to teach them to live, not for the present, but the future, she becomes herself the victim of the present She forgets that, in the absence of the Bridegroom, her days are days of fasting. She fails to realize the fact that until her Lord comes again her state is one of widowhood. And, instead of mourning, she sits as a queen, at ease and satisfied, proud of her pomp and jewellery. What is all this but a recurrence of the old events of history? The Apostle sees the future mirrored in the past; and he can only follow in his Masters footsteps, and call His Christian remnant out of Babylon. (1 Joh_10:7; 2 Joh_9:35)
The words are in the highest degree important for the interpretation and understanding of the Apocalypse. We have already found in more than one passage distinct traces of this double Church, of the true Church within the false, of the few living ones within the Body which had a name to live, but was dead. Here the distinction meets us in all its sharpness, and fresh light is cast upon passages that may have formerly seemed dark. "Many are called," "many" constituting the outward Church; but "few are chosen," "few" constituting the real Church, the Church which consists of the poor, and meek, and lowly. The two parts may keep together for a time, but the union cannot last; and the day comes when, as Christ called His sheep out of the Jewish, so He will again call His sheep out of the Christian "fold," that they may hear His voice, and follow Him.
Having summoned the true disciples of Jesus out of Babylon, the voice from heaven again proclaims in a double form, as sins and as iniquities, the guilt of the doomed city, and invites the ministers of judgment, according to the lex talionis, to render unto her double. The command may also be founded upon the law of the theocracy by which thieves and violent aggressors of the poor were required to make a double repayment to those whom they had injured,1 or it may rest upon the remembrance of such threatenings as those by the prophet Jeremiah, "I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double."2 (1 Exo_22:4; Exo_22:7; Exo_22:9; 2 Jer_16:18)
Judgment is next supposed to have been executed upon Babylon; and the Seer proceeds to describe in language of unexampled eloquence the lamentation of the world over the citys fall: -
And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived wantonly with her, shall weep and wail over her, when they look upon the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Woe, woe, the great city Babylon, the strong city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise anymore: merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stone, and pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel made of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and spice, and incense, and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and cattle, and sheep, and merchandise of horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. And the fruits which thy soul lusted after are gone from thee, and all things that were dainty and sumptuous are perished from thee, and men shall find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, who were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and mourning, saying, Woe, woe, the great city, she that was arrayed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stone, and pearl! for in one hour so great riches is made desolate. And every shipmaster, and every one that saileth anywhither, and mariners, and as many as gain their living by sea, stood afar off, and cried out as they looked upon the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like the great city? And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and mourning, saying, Woe, woe, the great city, wherein were made rich all that had their ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate. Rejoice with her, thou heaven, and ye saints, and ye apostles, and ye prophets; for God hath judged your judgment on her (Rev_18:9-20)."
Three classes of persons are introduced to us: Kings, Merchants, and Sailors. All are of the earth; and each class, in its own strain, swells the voice of lamentation. The words are largely taken from the Old Testament, and more particularly from the description of the overthrow of Tyre in Ezekiel (chaps. 26 and 27). There is even a peculiar propriety in this latter reference, for Tyre was known by the prophets as another Babylon. In describing the "Burden of Tyre," Isaiah uses in one part of his description the words, "The city of confusion" (the meaning of the word Babylon) "is broken down."* (* Isa_24:10)
It is unnecessary to enter into any examination clause by clause of the passage before us. We shall better catch its spirit and be made sensible of its effect by attending to a few general observations upon the description as a whole.
1. Not without interest may we mark that the classes selected to mourn over the burning of the city are three in number. We have thus another illustration of the manner in which that number penetrates the structure of all the writings of St. John.
2. Emphasis is laid upon the fact that the city is burned. Her destruction by fire has indeed been more than once alluded to. Of the beast and the ten horns it had been said that "they shall burn her utterly with fire;"1 and, again, it had been proclaimed by the voice from heaven that "she shall be utterly burned with fire."2 We shall not venture to say with any measure of positiveness that the type of this "burning" is taken from the burning of Jerusalem by the Romans. It may have been taken from the burning of other cities by victorious enemies. But this much at least is obvious: that, in conjunction with the fact that Babylon is a harlot, destruction by fire leads us directly to the thought of the spiritual, and not simply the civil, or political, or commercial, character of the city. According to the law of Moses, burning appears to have been the punishment of fornication only in the case of a priest s daughter: "And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the harlot, she shall be burnt with fire."3 (1 Rev_17:16; 2 Rev_18:8; 3 Lev_21:9)
3. Whether there is any other allusion to spiritual traffic in the lamentations before us it is not easy to say. Of one at least which may be quoted in this connection the interpretation is uncertain. When the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over the loss of that merchandise which they now miss, they extend it, not only to articles of commerce bought and sold in an ordinary market, but to souls of men. It may be that, as often suggested, slavery alone is thought of. Yet it is highly improbable that such is the case. Rather may it be supposed to refer to that spiritual life which is destroyed by too much occupation .with, and too engrossing interest in, the world. "The characteristic of this fornication is the selling themselves for gold, as the Greek word signifies. Therefore with such wonderful force and emphasis of accumulation is every species of this merchandise mentioned, running up all into one head: the souls of men. Like that in the prophet: Their land is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land also is full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots; their land also is full of idols And it must be observed that all these things which are so minutely particularized as expressive of the meshes of that net by which mens souls are taken have also their place in the new Jerusalem, where every jewel is specified by name, and the gold of its streets, and the fine linen, and the incense, and the wine, and the oil, its white horses also. In both alike must they stand for spiritual merchandise of good and evil, the false riches and the true."* (*Isaac Williams, The Apocalypse, with Notes, etc., p. 360)
The conclusion to be drawn is that Babylon is a spiritual city. That, as such, she is Jerusalem is further confirmed by the fact that, at the close of the chapter, it is said, And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that have been slain upon the earth. Similar words met us in Rev_17:6; and here, as there, they unmistakably remind us of the words already quoted in which our Lord describes the great city of the Jews.* (* Mat_28:35)
4. From all that has been said, it must be obvious that nothing is here spoken of Babylon inapplicable to Jerusalem when we think of this latter city in the light in which the Seer specially regards it. Jerusalem was indeed neither a commercial nor a maritime city, but Rome also was no city on the sea. A large part, therefore, of the details of St. Johns description is not less destitute of force when applied, if applied literally, to the latter than to the former. On the other hand, these details are more applicable to Jerusalem than to Rome, if we remember that Jerusalem supplies, in a way impossible to Rome, the groundwork for a delineation of those religious forces which are far more wide-spreading in their reach, and far more crushing in their power, than the legions of the imperial metropolis.
Babylon then is fallen, and that with a sudden and swift destruction, a destruction indeed so sudden and so swift that each of the three companies that lament takes particular notice of the fact that in one hour did her judgment come.* (* Rev_18:10; Rev_18:17; Rev_18:19)
More, however, so important is the subject, has to be said; and we are introduced to the action of the third angel of the first group: -
"And a strong angel took up a stone, as it were a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with a mighty fall shall Babylon, the great city, be cast down, and shall be found no more at all. And the voice of harpers, and minstrels, and flute-players, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft, shall be found any more at all in thee; and the voice of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for with thy sorcery were all the nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that have been slain upon the earth (Rev_18:21-24)."
Yet once again, it would seem, must we think of Babylon as to be destroyed rather than as destroyed already. So great is her guiltiness that the Seer again and again approaches it, and dwells, though from different points of view, upon the thought of her disastrous fate. In the present case it is less the method than the effect of her destruction that is before his eye, and nothing can be more touching than the light in which he presents it. At one moment we behold the city in her brightness, her gaiety, her rich and varied life. We hear the voice of her harpers, and minstrels, and flute-players, and trumpeters, all that can delight the ear accompanying all that can please the eye. Her craftsmen of every craft are busy at their work; and each shop in the great city resounds with the noise of the hammer, or the shuttle, or the other instruments of prosperous industry. The cheering sound of the millstone tells that there is food in her humbler dwellings. Her merchants, too, are the princes of the earth; innumerable lamps glitter in their halls and gardens; and the voice of the bride groom and the bride is the pledge of her well-being and joy. The next moment the proud city is cast like a millstone into the sea; and all is silence, desolation, and ruin. The resources of language appear as if they had been exhausted to supply the description of so great a fall.
We have now reached the close of the longest and most important section of the Apocalypse, beginning, as has been already pointed out, with chap. 6. It is the fourth in that series of seven of which the book is composed; and the main purpose of St. John in writing finds expression in it. As the writer of the fourth Gospel describes in the fourth section of that book, extending from chap. 5 to chap. 12, the conflict between the Son of God and "the Jews," so he describes in the corresponding section of the Apocalypse the conflict between the glorified Son of man as He lives and reigns in His Church and the evil of the world. Throughout the conflict we are not once permitted to forget that, although Christ and the true members of His Body may be the objects of attack, and may even have to retire for security from the field, God is on their side, and will never suffer His faithfulness to fail or forget His promises. In a threefold series of judgments the guilty world and the guilty Church are visited with the terrors of His wrath. These three series of judgments, too, go on in an ascending line. The climactic character of their contents has already been pointed out, and nothing more need be said of it. But it may be worthwhile to notice that the element of climax appears not less in the nature of the instruments employed. Comparing the Trumpets with the Seals, the simple fact that they are Trumpets indicates a higher, more exciting, more terrible unfolding of wrath. The Trumpet is peculiarly the warlike instrument, summoning the hosts to battle: "Thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war;" "That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities."* That the Bowls, again, are still more potent than the Trumpets, appears from the language in which they are described, from their mode of introduction, and from the vessels made use of for the plagues. They are "the last " plagues; in them is "finished" the wrath of God; they are called for by a "great voice out of the sanctuary;" and they proceed. not from a secular instrument, however warlike, but from a sacred vessel, not from one which must be sounded for a length of time before it produces its effect, but from one which, inverted in a moment, pours out with a sudden gush its terrors upon men. Similar though they thus are, the three series of judgments lose what might otherwise be their sameness; and the mind is invited to rest upon that most instructive lesson of the providence of God, that in proportion to privilege misused is the severity with which sin is punished. Throughout all these judgments the righteous are kept safe. (* Jer_4:19; Zep_1:15-16)
It will thus be observed that there is no strict chronological succession in the visions of this book. There is succession of a certain kind, succession in intensity of punishment. But we cannot assign one series of judgments to one period in the history of the Church or limit another to another. All the three series may continually fulfill themselves wherever persons are found of the character and disposition to which they severally apply.
But while these three series constitute the chief substance of the fourth, or leading, section of the seven into which the Apocalypse is divided, they do not exhaust the subject. The last series, in particular - that of the Bowls has proceeded upon a supposition the most startling and pathetic by which the history of the Church is marked, - that "they are not all Israel which are of Israel," that tares have mingled With the wheat, and that the spirit of Babylon has found its way into the heart of the city of God. A phenomenon so unexpected and so melancholy stands in need of particular examination, and that examination is given in the description of the character and fate of Babylon. The remarks already made upon this point need not be repeated. It may be enough to remind the reader that in no part of his whole book is the Seer more deeply moved, and that in none does he rise to strains of more powerful and touching eloquence. Yet what is chiefly required of us is to open our minds to the full impression of the fact that Babylon does fall, deep in ruin as in guilt, and that with her fail the conflict ends.
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 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 1–3. After these things. Those described in chapter 17.…
1–3. After these things. Those described in chapter 17. Another angel. Some have urged that this is Christ. There is no proof of their correctness. Having great power. There was assigned to him great authority. And the earth was lightened with his glory. This was a proof of power proceeding from God.
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 On v1 FOR the reasons given at the foot of page…
FOR the reasons given at the foot of page 553, no suggestions for exegetical or homiletical treatment are given in connection with chap. 18
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 On v1 THE name of this angel is not given. The…
FALL OF BABYLON
THE name of this angel is not given. The wonderful light of his glory would lead to the suspicion, at least, that it was Michael. Gabriel and Michael are the only archangels whose names are given. The former always comes in the interest of humanity, and the latter in the interest of divinity. We must remember we are now in the tribulation. The Ancient of Days — i.e., the Father — is here executing the awful premillennial judgments. Hence the world is full of divine interventions, in every way necessary to the fulfillment of prophecy. What stupendous miracles will be wrought in the universal destruction of Babylon, we cannot anticipate. Of course this proclamation is anticipatory of the speedy fall. Such will be the wonders of Omnipotence in this notable event, that counterfeit religions will all perish from the earth. Babylon will be utterly spoilated of her sorceries and enchantments, so that henceforth she will no longer be able to delude a human soul, but will be occupied by devils only.
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3. The infliction of these terrible castigatory judgments will utterly destroy and exterminate false religion from the earth. A just retribution supervenes because all nations have fallen (Greek) by the wines of her fornication. All religion intoxicates. The people thought the apostles were drunk when filled with the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost. It is equally true that false religion intoxicates — the one with the Spirit of God, sanctifying you and making you holy like God; the other with the spirit of Satan, filling you with lying delusions, making you dream you are on your way to heaven when you are on a bee-line to hell, inspiring you with Satan’s false faith, vain and carnal love, all of which but ripen you for hell and lead you into it. “The age of miracles is past” is as gratuitous as it is unscriptural. It favors that modern infidelity called “evolution,” which takes God out of the world’s government and turns it over to man. I anticipate greater miracles to attend our Lord’s second coming than the ages have ever known. Rest assured, when the time comes, Babylon will fall, her spiritual power be utterly annihilated, and her temporal dominions exterminated. What is included in Babylon? Romanism, with all her temporal and spiritual power. Besides, it certainly will include all forms of human ecclesiasticisms. God made religion, but Satan made sectarianism. While the papacy is the mother of harlots, she is very prolific, and has many daughters. Human government is political and ecclesiastical. It must all go down before the King of kings, who is coming to reign in righteousness forever. The tribulation revolutions will effect these results, and thus prepare the way for the coming King. The terrible antagonisms and retributions inflicted on the fallen Church by the State will doubtless prove an important precursor in her final ruin.
CONVOCATION OF GOD’S PEOPLE
4. “Come out of her, my people.” This call is largely anticipatory. It contemplates the savable, rather than the saved. When the Lord spoke to Paul. in the night vision at Corinth, saying, “I have much people in this city,” it is to he understood prospectively, as the whole city was in idolatry at that time. The crushing catastrophes of the tribulation, both political and ecclesiastical, will sweep from the earth the incorrigible and unsavable popular elements. The terrible bloody revolutions attending the fall of the time-honored kingdoms will he used by a gracious Providence as political purifiers, while the fall of Babylon will prove the greatest religious purifier the world has ever seen. We must remember that the world is to be inhabited again after the great tribulation. Daniel pronounces a great blessing on those who survive the tribulation. (Dan 12:12.) According to this prophecy, the tribulation will be (1335 minus 1290) 45 prophetic years.
When the mighty cyclones of premillennial judgments shall have expended their forces, and the kings of the earth shall have been shaken from their thrones, and Babylon shall have been smashed into debris, then our King, descending in His glory, will receive the salutations of an obsequious world, disencumbered of human yokes and prejudices, and ready to fall in line with the new administration. Some good people have doubtless made an innocent mistake in coming out prematurely, thus leaving an unfinished work in Babylon. We are to remain among the warring sects of Babylon, faithfully preaching the everlasting gospel, till she falls. Certainly we have not yet reached that historical epoch, though evidently very rapidly approaching it. Two hundred millions of God’s saints have shed their blood in Babylon.
2-4. Certainly we can afford to be steadfast. We see from this prophecy that Babylon is to be the recipient of the seven last plagues unto her utter extermination. This is given as a reason why the Lord’s people shall make their escape.
5. Here we learn that the sins of Babylon have actually reached their maturity, when she, with her multiplied millions encompassing the globe, is fully ripe for doom and damnation. We here see from this verse that God never forgets anything. Every tear shed and groan uttered by His martyrs, in all bygone ages, is as fresh in His memory as the events of yesterday. We see from this Scripture that He assuredly pays back with compound interest.
7. “She says in her heart, I sit a queen, am no widow, and see no sorrow.” The true Church, consisting of the invisible children of God, has mourned, a widow, prophesying in sackcloth because of her absent Lord, ever since He left her and flew up to heaven. She will remain unknown, misjudged, and persecuted, till her Divine Spouse rides down on a cloud and takes her to Himself. The reason why the fallen Church — i.e., Babylon — is no widow, is because she has forsaken her ascended Husband and married antichrist. You can well discriminate the Babylonian Churches, because they all claim that their sect is the true Church, thus confessing judgment against themselves. Col 3:3-4 :
“Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.”
Here Paul positively teaches the invisibility and entire sanctification of the true Church. Never will the true Church on earth be visible till her Head returns and becomes visible again. Thus we see how the belligerent parties of Babylonian ecclesiasticism have ignorantly signed their own death- warrant in their pertinacious controversies to vindicate themselves.
8. We see from this verse that the fall of Babylon will mark a distinct epoch in history. Doubtless, like all other great events, it will be preceded by a progressive series of preparatory developments, and followed by a grand sweep of wonderful consequences. The burning with fire may be literally verified in the conflagration of Rome; but fire, throughout the Bible, is the constant figure of utter destruction. For this reason, fire is the constant type of sanctification, because sin is thereby utterly exterminated. “The Lord God who condemneth her is mighty.” In a mysterious way, Babylon has been a powerful factor in the probationary scheme. Multiplied millions, beguiled by her lies and intoxicated with her adulterous wine of wealth, fame, carnal pleasures, and secular aggrandizement, have toppled into hell. These twelve hundred years, she has been Satan’s greatest temptation. She is exceedingly prominent in the all things that “work together for good to them that love God” (Rom 8:28). Only the blood-washed, fire-baptized pilgrim, who gladly forsook all for Christ, has been able to withstand her wiles. I am so glad all the prophecies culminate in the verdict that her race is about run. The hand- writing announcing her doom is even now legible to spiritual eyes on the walls of the magnificent cathedrals from which the Holy Ghost has long since retreated. You must not look too much to human agencies in the destruction of Babylon, as you see this scripture imputes it to God alone. When she has run her race, and her cup is full, then will the hand of God lift the flood-gate of doom.
9, 10. The wailing of the kings over the fall of Babylon may strongly contrast with the scene of the preceding chapter, when they were all goring her with their “horns,” thus doubtless somewhat preparing the way for her downfall. Daniel (12:12) gives the tribulation period forty-five years. This will be one unbroken revolutionary cyclone. Consequently we need not be surprised at anything. Daniel (12:1) says:
“It will be a time of trouble, such as the world has never seen.”
Christ says :” It will he a time of trouble, such as the world never saw and never will” (Mat 24:21). It is peculiar to the caprices of war that the victor, reveling in blood and slaughter, will stop and weep over a fallen rival.
UNIVERSAL BANKRUPTCY
12-14. The fall of Babylon will doubtless occur far out amid the flood-tide of the tribulation. The bankruptcy will come as a normal consequence of universal revolution. However, it is pertinent to observe that the fallen Church is the autocrat of style, fashion, pomposity, buncombe, and phantasmagoria infinitesimal. The world is more disposed to run on utilitarian lines. Romanism has amassed billions by fraudulent sales of candles, heads, crucifixes, et cetera, at enormous prices, for magical value. The whole world has long followed Satan’s gewgaws, expending their money for imaginary emolument. During the tribulation, all of Satan’s delusions will he unearthed to the eye of the world. National finances are generally on a bogus foundation. All intrigue, externality, and pomposity must fade before the coming King. The millennium will he a world of realities. From an analysis of the bogus condition of the world’s commerce and finances, and the wonderful incantatory influence of Babylon among the nations, we readily see how her sudden and utter destruction would bring a universal financial panic, culminating in worldwide bankruptcy.
As Noah’s Flood swept away the institutions of the Antediluvian world, leaving not a vestige, so the great tribulation will rack, topple, turn, overturn, and smash all the institutions of the present age, leaving the world a blank, with its new population so divested of the Satanic institutions that now fill the earth that they will constitute a de nova element, out of which the King of kings will lay the foundation of the millennial world.
15, 16. “Gilded with gold, precious stones, and diamonds.” When I was in Rome last summer, I was much reminded of this language of inspiration. St. Paul’s Cathedral, on the spot where he was beheaded, has already cost fifty millions of dollars, and will take five millions more to finish it. Internally it exhibits in gigantic mosaic all the popes (287), and all of the apostles in gigantic stature. In the altar they allege the remains of Paul are deposited. It is environed by every species of rubies, precious stones, and diamonds, whose sparkling radiance, amid the constantly burning candles, exhibits every conceivable tint and hue of the rainbow at all times, night and day. St. Peter’s Cathedral at the Vatican palace cost two hundred millions of dollars, and occupied two hundred years in building, thus expending sufficient money to put the Bible in every home on the earth. It is 835 feet long, 330 feet wide, and 447 feet high — the largest building in the world, not even excepting the Coliseum. It is certainly the grandest monument of idolatry on the globe. John Tetzel, Luther’s antagonist, and others, raised money to erect this superstructure by the sale of indulgences. Thus the faces of all nations were ground two hundred years to erect this mammoth temple of idolatry. “In one hour so great wealth was laid waste.” We learn in Rev 16:19 Rome will be divided into three parts by the great earthquake at the beginning of the tribulation. We see, further on, that she is to be utterly destroyed in a moment. This will constitute the salient epoch in the fall of Babylon.
17, 18. No wonder the ship-masters will weep and wail. The Roman superstition has brought multiplied millions of money to seamen. In a single month, quite recently, one hundred thousand pilgrims came to Rome. Ship companies make immense sums of money. On my first trip across the Atlantic, our ship carried fifteen hundred passengers, besides immense quantities of freight. The passengers alone, at forty dollars per capita, would bring the company sixty thousand dollars. The seamen of every nation have been enriched by Babylon. Hence they weep and wail when she goes down to rise no more.
20. “Rejoice over her, O heaven, saints, apostles, and prophets, because God hath judged your judgment from her.” Rome has outraged the saints, apostles, and prophets, and insulted heaven, by idolizing them. What an insult to Peter, the humble fisherman, to build to his memory an idolatrous monument at the paradoxical cost of two hundred millions of dollars, which should have been used to save the world What an insult to humble Paul, who lived a tramp and died a martyr, to erect a fifty-five-million- dollar mausoleum over his dust in which to worship idols, of which they have made him chief. In the destruction of Babylon, God truly vindicates the martyrs, with whose blood she has been drunken for ages.
21-24. We see from these verses the final doom of Rome. She is to sink into the sea and never be seen again. Having been terribly shocked and divided into three parts by the earthquake early in the tribulation (16:19), she is finally to receive another shock, so terrible as to bury her so deep in the sea that not a spire nor monument will ever be seen again. On that enchanted spot, where sat the world’s ruler two thousand years, naught shall be seen but the mighty, thundering billows of the dark, deep sea. From the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, B.C. 753, she has been cruel as the grave and despotic as Diabolus. She deluged the world with blood and whitened it with bones, to make her way to the summit of despotic power. Under pagan rule, for three hundred years, she fattened her lions on Christians, till she fed out one hundred millions. Under papal rule, she has martyred a hundred millions more. “In her, the blood of prophets, saints, and all of those slain upon the earth, is found.” Babylon was the persecuting power under the former dispensation, and Rome, her successor, under the latter. It is a significant fact that this wicked world has never martyred God’s saints; but this odious diabolism has always devolved on the votaries of false religion. Rome began her bloody catalogue with the Son of God; the Jews not having the power of capital punishment, it devolved on the Romans, the rulers of the world. When I was in Rome I saw the finest monuments of ancient art, having been transported from Egypt. Rome is to this day the monumental city of the world, still abounding in the mementos of her former grandeur, when she dictated law to all nations. Amid all her boasted grandeur and glory, she simply ruled by wild-beast power. She is the grand ultimatum of human rule, both political and ecclesiastical. Her best achievements in the former consisted in the terror inspired by her ferocious brutality; in the latter, those dark superstitions which gave sanction to all the blood and slaughter of popery, prelacy, and priestcraft. So black is the record of Rome that she cannot survive the tribulation, lest she darken the escutcheon of the millennial world.
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 On v1 Section 2. (Rev 18:1-24.)
Section 2. (Rev 18:1-24.)
Her judgment.
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The eighteenth chapter gives the judgment from the divine side. The question has been naturally raised, Is it another judgment? There is nothing here about beast or horns, -nothing of man’s intervention at all, -and there are signs apparently of another and deeper woe than human hands could inflict. It is this last which is most conclusive in the way of argument, and we shall examine it in its place.
Another angel descends out of heaven, having great authority; and the earth is lighted with his glory. Earth is indeed now to be lighted, and with a glory which is not of earth. Babylon is denounced as fallen, not destroyed, as is plain by what follows, but given up to a condition which is a spiritual desolation worse than the physical one of Babylon of old, under which she has long lain, and from which the terms seem derived. She has become the dwelling-place of demons -"knowing ones;" Satan’s underlings, with the knowledge of many centuries of acquaintance with fallen men, and serpent-craft to use their knowledge; a "hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird." The parable of the mustard-seed comes necessarily to mind; and without confining the words here to that, it is amazing to see how deliberately filthy and impure Rome’s system is. She binds her clergy to celibacy, forces them to pollute their minds with the study of every kind of wickedness, and then, by her confessional system, teaches them to pour this out into the minds of those to whom she at once gives them access and power over -and all this in the name of religion!
What has brought a professing Christian body into so terrible a condition as this bespeaks? We are answered here by reference once more to her spiritual fornication with the nations and with the kings of the earth, and to the profit which those make who engage in her religious traffic. As worldly power is before all things her aim, and she has heaven to barter in return for it, the nations easily fall under her sway, and are intoxicated with the "wine of the fury" -the madness -"of her fornication." First of all, it is the masses at which she aims, and only as an expedient to secure these the better, the kings of the earth. Thus she can pose as democratic among democrats, and as the protector of popular rights as against princes. In feudal times the Church alone could fuse into herself all conditions of men, turning the true and free equality of Christians into that which linked all together into vassalage to herself; and so the power grew which was power to debase herself to continually greater depths of evil. Simoniac to the finger-ends, with her it is a settled thing that the "gift of God can be purchased with money." And with her multiplicity of merchandise, which is put here in catalogue, there will naturally be an abundant harvest for brokers. With these, who live by her, she increases her ranks of zealous followers.
Another voice now sounds from heaven -"Come forth from her, My people, that ye partake not of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues; for her sins have heaped themselves to heaven, and God hath remembered her unrighteousness."
Even in Babylon, and thus late therefore, there are those in her who are the people of God. But they are called to separation. Rome is a false system which yet retains what is saving truth. Souls may be saved in it, but the truth it holds cannot save the false system in which it is found. Truth cannot save the error men will ally with it, nor error destroy the truth. There are children of God, alas, that "suffer Jezebel," but Jezebel’s true children are another matter: "I will kill them with death" is God’s emphatic word. The testing-time comes when the roads that seemed to lie together are found to separate, and then the necessity of separation comes. Truth and error cannot lead to the same place, and he that pursues the road to the end will find what is at the end.
"Recompense to her as she recompensed; according to her works, double to her double: as she hath glorified herself, and lived luxuriously, so much torment and sorrow give her. For she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore in one day shall her plagues come on her -death, and sorrow, and famine; and she shall be burned up with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her."
The government of God is equal-handed, and for it the day of retribution cannot be lacking. "God hath remembered" Babylon at last. In truth He never lost sight of her for a moment. But the wheels of His chariot seem often slow in turning, and there is purpose in it: "I gave her space to repent," He says pitifully; but pity is not weakness -nay, it is the consciousness of strength that may make one slow. There is no possibility of escape. No height or depth can hide from Him the object of His search -no greatness, no littleness. The day of reckoning comes at last, and not an item will be dropped from the account.
Then follows the wail of the kings of the earth for her, while they stand off in fear for the calamity that is come upon her, more sentimental than the selfish cry of the merchants, whose business with regard to her has slipped out of their hands. And then comes the detail of it, article by article -all the luxuries of life, each of which has its price, and ending with "slaves, and souls of men." If one had skill to run through the catalogue here, he would doubtless find that each had its meaning; but we cannot attempt this now. The end of the traffic is at hand, and the Canaanite is to be cast out of the house of the Lord.
The lament of so many classes shows by how many links Rome has attached men to herself. Her vaunted unity is large enough to include the most various adaptations to the character of men. From the smoothest and most luxurious life to the hardest and most ascetic, she can provide for all grades, and leave room for large diversities of doctrine also. The suppleness of Jesuitism is only that of her trained athletes, and the elasticity of its ethics is only that of the subtlest ethereal distillation of her spirit. But though she may have allurements even for the people of God, she has yet no link with heaven, and while men are lamenting upon earth, heaven is bidden to rejoice above, because God is judging her with the judgment that saints, and apostles, and prophets, have pronounced upon her.
Finally, and reminding us of the prophetic action as to her prototype, "a strong angel took up a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with a mighty fall shall Babylon the great city be cast down, and shall be found no more at all." And then comes the extreme announcement of her desolation. Not merely shall her merchandise be no more, there shall be no sign of life. at all -no pleasant sound, no mechanic’s craft, no menial work, no light of lamp, no voice of bridegroom or of bride; and then the reason of her doom is again given; "For thy merchants were the princes of the earth; for with thy sorcery were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that have been slain upon the earth."
Interpretation is hardly needed in all this. The detail of judgment seems intended rather to fix the attention and give us serious consideration of what God judges at last in this unsparing way. Surely it is needed now, when Christian men are being taken with the wiles of one who in a day of conflict and uncertainty can hold out to them a rest which is not Christ’s rest; who, in the midst of defection from the faith, can be the champion of orthodoxy while shutting up the Word of Life from men; who can be all things to all men, not to save, but to destroy them; at such a time, how great a need is there for pondering her doom as the word of prophecy declares it, and the joy of heaven over the downfall of the sorceress at last!
Heaven, indeed, is full of joy, and gratulation, and worship: "After these things, I heard, as it were, a great voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, Hallelujah! salvation, and honor, and glory, and power, belong to our God; for true and righteous are His judgments; for He hath judged the great harlot which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of His servants at her hand. And a second time they say, Hallelujah! And her smoke goeth up for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshiped God, saying, Amen: hallelujah!"
We may now briefly discuss the question of how far there is indication here of a divine judgment apart from what is inflicted by the wild beast and its horns. These, we have read, "shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh, and burn her up with fire." In the present chapter we have again, "And she shall be burned up with fire; for strong is the Lord God who hath judged her." The kings of the earth "wail over her when they look upon, the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment." And so with the merchants and the mariners. And finally we read, "Her smoke goeth up for ever and ever." Nothing in all this forces us to think of a special divine judgment outside of what is inflicted by human instruments, except the last. The last statement, I judge, does. It cannot but recall to our minds what is said of the worshipers of the beast and false prophet in the fourteenth chapter, where the same words are used; but this is not a judgment on earth at all; could, indeed, "her smoke goeth up for ever and ever" be said of any earthly judgment? The words used are such as strictly imply eternity: no earthly judgment can endure in this way; and the language does not permit the idea that the persistency is only that of the effects. No, it is eternity ratifying the judgment of time, as it surely will do; and it is only when we have taken our place, as it were, amid the throng in heaven that this is seen.
But thus, then, we seem to have here no positive declaration of any judgment of Babylon on earth, save by the hands of the last head of western empire and his kings. Yet the eighteenth chapter, we have still to remember, says nothing of these kings: all is from God absolutely, and at least they are not considered. It has been also suggested that it is the "city" rather than the woman (the ecclesiastical system) that is before us in this chapter; but much cannot be insisted on as to this, seeing that the identification of the woman with the city is plainly stated in the last verse of the previous one, and also that the terms even here suppose their identity.
On the other side, there is in fact no absolute identity; nor is it difficult to think of the destruction of the religious system without its involving at all that of the city; nor, again, would one even suppose that the imperial head, with his subordinates, would utterly destroy the ancient seat of his own empire. Here a divine judgment, strictly and only that, taking up and enforcing the human one as of God, becomes at least a natural thought, and worthy of consideration.
Outside of the book of Revelation, Scripture is in full harmony with this. The millennial earth, as we may have occasion to see again, when we come to speak more of it, is certainly to have witnesses of this kind to the righteous judgment of God upon the objects of it. In it, as it were, heaven and hell are both to be represented before the eyes of men, that they may be fully warned of the wrath to come. During the present time, it is objected, there is not sufficient witness; in the Millennium, therefore, there shall be no room left for doubt. Therefore, while the cloud and fire rest as of old, but with wider stretch, as of sheltering wings, over Jerusalem (Isa 4:5-6; comp. Mat 22:37), we have on the other side the open witness of the judgment upon transgressors which the Lord Himself renders, as a type of the deeper judgment beyond (Isa 66:23-24; cp. Mar 9:43-50).
Besides this, Edom remains desolate, and, to come near to what is before us, Babylon also (Isa 13:20; Isa 34:9-10). How suitable that Rome, the seat of a power far worse, and of far greater significance, should be so visited! Such a judgment would fill out the prophecy most fully and exactly. What a picture of eternal judgment is that of Idumea, in that "year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion"! "And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up forever." Rome is the great Edom, as it is the great Babylon; and it would be really strange if there were not to be in her case a similar recompense. Barnes quotes from a traveler in Italy in 1850 what is only a striking confirmation of the story told by all who with eyes open have visited the country: "I behold everywhere, in Rome, near Rome, and through the whole region from Rome to Naples, the most astounding proofs, not merely of the possibility, but the probability, that the whole region of central Italy will one day be destroyed by such a catastrophe. The soil of Rome is tufa, with a volcanic subterranean action going on. At Naples the boiling sulphur is to be seen bubbling near the surface of the earth. When I drew a stick along the ground, the sulphurous smoke followed the indentation. . . . The entire country and district is volcanic. It is saturated with beds of sulphur and the substrata of destruction. It seems as certainly prepared for the flames as the wood and coal on the hearth are prepared for the taper which shall kindle the fire to consume them. The divine hand alone seems to me to hold the fire in check by a miracle as great as that which protected the cities of the plain till the righteous Lot had made his escape to the mountains."
That Rome’s doom will be as thus indicated we may well believe. And it is in awful suitability that she that has kindled so often the fire for God’s saints should thus be herself a monumental fire of His vengeance in the day in which He visits for these things!
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Fall of Babylon
The Fall of Babylon
In the last c., the fall of Rome, and the manner of its fall, were prophetically announced. In this c., the greatness of the tragedy is shown by songs of thanksgiving and of lamentation which it calls forth.
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As was suggested on Revelation 17, we may believe that the songs of the joy of angels over sinners that repent have taken the place of these songs. Yet they serve their purpose in encouraging God's people to faith and endurance when at any time wickedness and worldliness seem to be triumphant.
The language of the prophets of the OT. is freely used. From the human side, we may say that the mind of the writer was so saturated with the old Scriptures that he naturally employed their language. From the divine side, we are to learn that 'no prophecy.. is of any private interpretation,' 2Pe_1:20, and that God looks on worldly wickedness at any time according to the same principles with which he regarded Babylon and Tyre of old.
1-3. Proclamation of the Fall of Rome.
2. Fallen] cp. Rev_14:8; Isa_21:9. Habitation] cp. Isa_13:21; Isa_34:13. Cage] RV 'hold,' i.e. prison.
3. RV 'For by the wine of all the nations are fallen': cp. Rev_14:8; Rev_17:2. Abundance of her delicacies] RV 'power of her wantonness.'
4-8. God's people are commanded to come out of Babylon as, before, they were warned to quit Jerusalem: cp. Jer_51:45; Mat_24:16. So, spiritually, God's people are to take care that the pleasures of wickedness do not entice them to have fellowship with it.
5. Remembered] cp. Rev_16:19.
6. Reward her] RV 'Render unto her': a command to the ministers of God's wrath. Rewarded you] RV 'rendered': cp. Psa_137:8. Double] i.e. very great sin calls forth very great punishment: cp. Jer_16:18.
7. Lived deliciously] RV 'waxed wanton.' Saith] cp. Isa_47:5.
9-20. Dirge of those who loved the wicked city. The writer evidently had in his mind Ezekiel 26. (of Tyre). The dirge is suddenly overmastered (Rev_18:20) by the exultation of those she has oppressed.
9. Deliciously] RV 'wantonly.'
11. Rome was not a trading city, but must have been a great buyer of luxuries.
12. Thyine wood] a very hard, fragrant wood, specially valued by the Greeks and Romans as a material for tables (HDB.).
13. Cinnamon] RV 'cinnamon, and spice.' Odours] RV' incense.' Beasts] RV' cattle.'
14. Goodly] RV 'sumptuous.'
20. Ye holy apostles] RV 'ye saints, and ye apostles,'—SS. Peter and Paul were put to death at Rome.
Avenged you] RV 'judged your judgment.'
21-24. An angel compares the casting down of Babylon to the casting down of a millstone into the sea, i.e. it shall be sudden, and 'with no restoration in the future' (Benson).
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 On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 22 (See Scofield "Heb 1:4").
angel
(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 On v1 Rev 18:1-3.
CHAPTER 18
Rev 18:1-3.
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Babylon is now seen under another aspect. In the former chapter we have the religious center of Rome and her wicked idolatries, in the present chapter it includes also the whole system of apostate Christendom in its social and commercial aspect, the so-called “Christian civilization” in its final apostate condition and doom. Papal Rome in her short revival becomes the head of apostate Christendom and controls everything till her appointed doom comes upon her. While we saw in the preceding chapter the desolation of the whore by the ten kings and the beast, here we see how God views her and that He dethrones this system in His judgment. A strong angel comes down to announce her doom and to lay bare her inner and most awful corruption. A strong descending Angel whose glory lightened the earth, shows what the boasting thing, she, who bore the blessed name of Christ, has become. (This angel may represent the Lord Himself. If this is correct we have the third manifestation of our Lord in the garb of an angel: 8:3 in His priestly dignity; 10:1 in His royal dignity and here as the herald and executor of the vengeance of God upon Babylon.) She is seen to be the habitation of demons. Even now behind all the denials of the doctrine of Christ and the false doctrines which mark the onward march of the predicted apostasy, demons are the leaders (1Ti 4:1).
And the nations drank eagerly her cup and the kings committed fornication with her. These kings are not the ten kings of the Empire for they are used in the judgment of the whore, while the kings mentioned here bewail her destruction (Rev 18:9). And with the system there was connected great commerce; merchants through her became rich.
Rev 18:4-5.
God always calls out His true children from that which is evil. His own must be a separate people. Saints in past centuries have heard this call and left behind the Romish abominations and thousands sealed their testimony with their blood. And in these days in which our lot is cast, days of increasing signs, heralding as never before the approaching end and the home call of His people to meet Him in the air, in these days God demands the separation of His true children. Christendom is becoming daily more and more the religious camp of apostasy. And, therefore, He calls: “Let us go forth unto Him without the camp bearing His reproach” (Heb 13:13). He who remains in that which denies His Name, is partaker of her sins (Rev 18:4; compare with 2Jn 1:10-11). As all drifts back to Rome and the coming political and religious confederacy, this final Babylon looms up; God’s people must hear that call. To whom is this call addressed? Undoubtedly to the remnant of God’s ancient people, the believing remnant and also to that large number of Gentiles who hear the final message, the gospel of the kingdom.
Rev 18:6-8.
Like ancient Babylon, the whole apostate system, Rome and all her offspring, was filled with pride. She was lifted up in all her earthly glory and now God breaks her completely. “She shall be utterly burned with fire.” As her smoke is to arise forever and ever (Rev 19:3) it is possible that the proud city, Rome, the center of the system of apostasy and commerce, will be destroyed by volcanic action, and where the seven-hilled city once stood there may be instead an immense crater, testifying through the millennium of God’s righteous retribution. In view of the volcanic conditions on the Italian peninsula this is more than possible.
Rev 18:9-20.
And now follows the great and universal lamentation over the destruction of the great world-system. There is weeping and wailing when at last this anti-Christian civilization, all Christendom united with Rome, and for a time controlling the commerce of the world, is wiped out by the hand of God. The kings, the merchants, the ship masters, the company in ships and sailors, all are seen mourning, weeping and wailing. The destruction of the system and of its proud city affects them all. They bewail their great loss. Notice twenty-eight things are mentioned by them. The first is gold and the last is the souls of men. How this describes Rome! She is the trafficker in souls and the destroyer of souls as well. And in studying the articles of the commerce of apostate Christendom we notice that these are nearly all articles of luxury. The greatest panic has then come and there will be no recovery of the market. The rich men will weep and howl for their misery is come upon them (Jas 5:1). See also Zep 1:11; Zep 1:15.
Heaven is called to rejoice over her, and three classes are mentioned (Revised Version), saints, apostles and prophets. “For God hath judged your judgment of her.” This is the better rendering. The judgment which the saints pronounced on her is now executed. The next chapter shows us more fully the rejoicing heavens.
Rev 18:21-24.
In Jer 51:60-64 we read that Seraiah was commissioned by Jeremiah to attach a stone to the book containing the prophet’s words and to cast it into the Euphrates. “And thou shalt say, thus shall Babylon sink and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her and they shall be weary.” Here an angel took up a millstone and cast it into the sea, showing by this action the complete and final destruction of the wicked system and the equally wicked city. And what revelation there is in the statement, “for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” In chapter 20 we read that the old serpent deceives the nations. Sorceries, wicked spirits, demon-powers blinded the eyes of the nations to follow Rome’s seductive lure. And thus it is with a lifeless, spiritless Protestantism and its bloodless gospel. The sorceries of Rome, the demons underneath it all, attract apostate Christendom so that all will be united in the great, final Babylon.
So that we may not question that both chapters refer to Rome, though the entire apostate Christendom is also in view, her blood-guiltiness is mentioned once more.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 9, 15, 21 The Fall and Destruction of Anti-Christ’s Kingdom.
The Fall and Destruction of Anti-Christ’s Kingdom.
The angel’s announcement:
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v. 1. And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
v. 2. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the Great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
v. 3. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
This entire paragraph reminds one of chap. 14:6-7, where an angel was pictured as lying in mid-heaven: After these things I saw another angel descending out of heaven having great power, and the earth was lit up by his glory. The reference is undoubtedly to Luther and his co-workers in the great work of the Reformation. The Gospel which they once more proclaimed was not their own, but was the message of God from heaven, and therefore was full of power. Nor was this movement one that was done in secret, but the preaching and the writing of these men of God was done before the whole world, and gave true spiritual light to all men that accepted the pure doctrine of salvation.
The specific message of the angel on this occasion is recorded by the prophet: And He cried with a mighty voice, saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great, and has become the habitation of demons and a hold of every unclean spirit and a hold of every unclean and loathsome bird; for of the wine of the wrath of her fornication all nations have drunk, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich through the power of her luxury. That was the effect of the preaching of the pure Gospel upon the kingdom of Anti-Christ, especially on the Pope and his hierarchy. Spiritually the empire of the Pope has been cast down; his show of spirituality has been taken from him, his magic is no longer as effective as formerly. To all believers that do hot willfully close their eyes the true nature of the Roman Church as such has been revealed. Since the Church of the Pope has officially rejected the preaching of the pure Gospel and declared her unwavering devotion to the fundamental errors that crept into the Church in the Middle Ages, since that time the Church of the Pope as such has hardened her heart, has become obdurate against all true reform. It has become the habitation of devils, of unclean spirits, and of loathsome birds, as the prophets describe the condition of all anti-Christian bodies, Isa 13:21-22; Isa 34:14; Jer 50:39; Jer 51:8-38. And that is a just punishment of God upon the kingdom of Anti-Christ, for the deliberate guilt of this Church as such is such as cannot be adequately expressed. She has done more to spread the anti-Christian doctrine of works than any other organization in the world, trying especially to obtain influence with the great and powerful in the world, to lead them into the ways of idolatry and to make them her willing servants. And so far as the merchants of the earth are concerned, including many of her own high officials, the luxury and pomp of this Church have brought them untold wealth. The very name of God, which the Church of the Pope piously used, was and is made a bait for the unwary, and the wrath of the zealous God is aroused to the utmost pitch.
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 On vv1, 4, 7, 9, 11, 14, 15, 18, 21, 23 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Another angel comes down from heaven and speaks. This is a different angel than the one in the previous chapter, who spoke about the prostitute and the beast.
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General Information:
The pronouns "she" and "her" refer to the city of Babylon, which is spoken of as if it were a prostitute. (See: Personification)
Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great
The angel speaks of Babylon having been destroyed as if it had fallen. See how you translated this in Revelation 14:8. (See: Metaphor)
detestable bird
"disgusting bird" or "repulsive bird"
all the nations
The nations is a metonym for the people of those nations. AT: "the people of all the nations" (See: Metonymy)
have drunk the wine of her immoral passion
This is a symbol for participating in her sexually immoral passion. AT: "have become sexually immoral like her" or "have become drunk like her in sexual sin" (See: Symbolic Language)
her immoral passion
Babylon is spoken of as if it were a prostitute who has caused other people to sin along with her. This may well have a double meaning: literal sexual immorality and also the worship of false gods. (See: Personification and Metaphor)
merchants
A merchant is a person who sells things.
from the power of her sensual way of living
"because she spent so much money on sexual immorality"
translationWords
angel
heaven
authority
glory
voice
Babylon
demon
clean
nation
wine
king
sexual immorality
power
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 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20, 21, 23 18:1-24 This chapter contains seven poetic responses to the…
18:1-24 This chapter contains seven poetic responses to the fall of Babylon (or Rome; see study note on 17:5).
18:1-3 The angel’s powerful taunt song is the first poetic response. Ancient taunt songs derided a defeated enemy (see Isa 13:19-22; 34:10-17). In these taunts, the fall of Babylon (or Rome; see study note on Rev 14:8) is portrayed as a traumatic event for subservient kingdoms and especially for those who had profited from her luxury. The sacking of Rome by the Goths and Visigoths (AD 400s) brought the prosperous empire to an end.
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18:1 This angel derived his splendor from heaven. The word splendor is normally used for the divine presence.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.