Babylon the great: the prostitute, the beast and the fall of the city

Revelation was written to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia, most likely about AD 95 under Domitian, though a minority, including the preterists Gentry and Chilton, date it to Nero's reign in the late 60s. These chapters answer a question the hearers could hardly avoid: how should Christians see the empire that governed them, taxed them, fed their cities and demanded their loyalty? They are introduced by one of the seven angels with the bowls (17:1), and so explain the fall of Babylon announced in 14:8 and 16:19.

Rome drew grain, metals, marble, wine, spices, textiles and slaves from across the Mediterranean. Roman writers called it the city of seven hills, and the goddess Roma was honored with temples in Asia. Its peace and prosperity were real, and John's churches lived inside both. They also knew the price: the emperor cult, the violence of conquest and the trade in human beings.

Chapter 17 gives a vision of a woman on a beast with an angel's explanation. Chapter 18 gives the fall in laments: a call from heaven, the mourning of kings, merchants and sea captains, and the rejoicing of heaven. The passage text is long, so this class paraphrases it.

Chapters 17 and 18 are apocalyptic poetry and prophetic lament. They combine two Old Testament models: the oracles against Babylon (Isaiah 13, 21 and 47; Jeremiah 50 and 51) and the oracle against Tyre (Isaiah 23; Ezekiel 26 to 28), both of which depicted a great city as an arrogant prostitute whose trade and pride would fall. Nahum 3:4 describes Nineveh in the same terms. John applies these to a city of his own day.

• The first rule is to ask what each prophecy accused the city of, and what the audience would have recognized.
• The second rule is that John tells us a good deal of what the images mean: the waters are peoples, the seven heads are seven hills and also seven kings, and the woman is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.
• The third rule is that the woman and the beast are not the same figure. She sits on the beast, and the beast and its horns will turn on her.

The four approaches agree on much and diverge on the rest. Preterist readers identify Babylon with a city of the first century. Most scholars, including Aune, Collins, Koester and Bauckham, say Rome, citing the seven hills (17:9) and the city that rules the kings of the earth (17:18). Bauckham has stressed the economic critique of Rome in chapter 18. A minority of preterists, including Chilton and Gentry, identify the city with Jerusalem, which Jesus charged with the blood of the prophets (Matthew 23:35-37), and must account for the seven hills in another way. Historicist readers identify Babylon with papal Rome, as many Reformers did, or with the succession of Roman powers. Idealist readers, such as Hendriksen and Beale, take Babylon as the world's culture of power, wealth and idolatry in every age, as Augustine took the earthly city in the City of God. Futurist readers expect a revived Roman empire, a world religious and economic system, or a rebuilt literal Babylon, and dispensational writers such as Walvoord often separate religious Babylon (chapter 17) from commercial Babylon (chapter 18).

The millennial views affect the sequence rather than the identification. Dispensational and historic premillennialists place these events before the return of Christ and the thousand years. Amillennial and postmillennial readers can hold any of the four identifications, since their view of the thousand years does not decide who Babylon is.

Our understanding of the passage is limited to what the text itself supports. John says the woman is a great city on seven hills that rules the kings of the earth, and his first hearers could hardly have heard that as anything but Rome. The text does not close the door on later cities that fit the same picture, and the seven kings and ten horns are the points on which scholars who agree on Rome disagree most.

17:1-6. One of the bowl angels shows John the judgment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters. She is the city that has seduced kings, as Tyre was said to have done (Isaiah 23:17), and the nations are drunk on her wine. John is carried in the Spirit into the wilderness, where he sees the woman on a scarlet beast covered with blasphemous names, with seven heads and ten horns. This is the beast of chapter 13, now carrying her. She is clothed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold, jewels and pearls, holding a gold cup full of abominations. On her forehead is a name, a mystery: Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of the earth's abominations. She is drunk with the blood of the saints and of the witnesses to Jesus. John is astonished. The luxury set against the blood is the point of the picture.

17:7-14. The angel explains the beast, which was, is not and is about to rise from the Abyss and go to destruction. The phrase mocks the title of God, 'who is and was and is to come' (1:4, 8). The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, and also seven kings: five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come, and when he comes he must remain a little while. The beast itself is an eighth, who belongs to the seven. The ten horns are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom but who receive authority for one hour together with the beast. They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, because he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called, chosen and faithful.

The seven kings are the most debated feature. If the count begins with Augustus, the five fallen emperors would be Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius and Nero, with the sixth being Galba or Vespasian depending on whether the three short-lived rulers of AD 69 are counted. If the count begins with Julius Caesar, the five fallen are Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius and Claudius, the sixth is Nero, and the seventh is Galba, who reigned only months. The second scheme supports an early date under Nero, and the first allows a date under Vespasian. Those who date the book under Domitian often take the seven as a symbol of completeness. The beast as an eighth may reflect the legend that Nero would return. Futurist interpreters often see the seven as world empires leading to a final one, with the ten horns a final federation. Historicist interpreters identify the heads with stages in the history of Rome or the papacy.

17:15-18. The waters are peoples. The ten horns and the beast will hate the prostitute, strip her, devour her flesh and burn her with fire, because God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose. The woman is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth. The destroyers serve God's plan without knowing it, a pattern from Isaiah 10.

18:1-8. A mighty angel lights up the earth. The message repeats Isaiah 21:9: she has fallen. The city has become a dwelling for demons, a haunt of every unclean spirit and bird, as Isaiah 13:21 and 34:11-15 described Babylon and Edom. The nations and kings drank her wine, and the merchants grew rich on her excess. A second voice calls God's people to come out of her so as not to share her sins or plagues, repeating Jeremiah 51:45 and Isaiah 48:20 and 52:11. Her sins are piled up to heaven, and she is to be paid back double. She says in her heart that she sits as a queen and is no widow, words from Isaiah 47:8, and so her plagues will come in a single day.

18:9-19. The kings mourn, then the merchants, then the shipmasters, and each stands far off for fear of her torment and says the city fell in a single hour. The merchants' list of cargo runs from gold, silver, jewels and pearls through linen, purple, silk and scarlet, thyine wood, ivory, bronze, iron and marble, to cinnamon, spices, incense, myrrh and frankincense, wine, oil, flour, wheat, cattle, sheep, horses and chariots, and ends with slaves, which the text glosses as human lives. The model is Ezekiel 27, where the merchants of Tyre are named in the same way. The mourners grieve for their income.

18:20-24. Heaven, the saints, apostles and prophets are told to rejoice, because God has judged for them. A mighty angel takes up a stone like a great millstone and throws it into the sea, saying the city will be thrown down in the same way, as Jeremiah 51:63-64 enacted with a scroll. No harp, no craftsman, no millstone, no lamp, no voice of bride and bridegroom will be heard in her again. The reasons are given: her merchants were the great ones of the earth, her sorcery led the nations astray, and in her was found the blood of prophets and saints and of all who have been slain on earth.

What do the main readings agree on? That God judges the powers that make themselves ultimate, and that the judgment vindicates his people. The charge against the city is threefold: idolatry, injustice and violence. It claimed divine honor, it grew rich through the exploitation of other peoples, and it shed the blood of the saints. This matches the prophets' charges against Babylon (Jeremiah 50 and 51), Tyre (Ezekiel 26 to 28) and Nineveh (Nahum 3). All four approaches affirm the fall of the city, the deliverance of God's people, and the sovereignty of the Lamb over the kings. They differ about which city and which time.

The call to come out is a recurring biblical theme. Abraham was called out of Ur, Israel out of Egypt and out of Babylon, and the church is called out of the world's systems (2 Corinthians 6:17, quoting Isaiah 52:11). A second theme is the use of evil to destroy evil. The beast and the horns carry out God's purpose against the woman, as Assyria did against Israel in Isaiah 10:5-15, without intending to. Babylon and Jerusalem stand across the canon, from Genesis 11 to Revelation 21, as the city built against God and the city God builds. Augustine in the City of God used Babylon for the earthly city in every age.

What remains debated is whether the picture is exhausted by first-century Rome (or Jerusalem), is a pattern that appears in every age, or looks to a final city and system. The chapters contribute to eschatology the conviction that history has a moral shape: empires that trade in people and in worship do not last. The hope the church holds in the age between the comings is not that every empire will be good but that each, and the last, will be judged.

Christ appears in these chapters in three ways. The first is the one sentence in 17:14: the ten kings make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb conquers them, because he is Lord of lords and King of kings. The title comes from Deuteronomy 10:17 and Daniel 2:47, and it is the title that will be written on the rider's robe in 19:16. It answers the beast's claim to be lord: the emperors were called lord and god, and the Lamb is Lord of lords. The kings who fall under the city's spell are themselves under the Lamb.

The second is that the Lamb brings his people out. The call in 18:4 comes from a voice that speaks of my people. Jesus had told his disciples to be in the world but not of it (John 17:14-16) and had called his sheep by name (John 10:3). The people of the Lamb are those who have washed their robes and are not marked by the city.

The third is the contrast of the two women. The prostitute is the city of man, sitting on a beast, drunk with blood. The bride, to be shown in 19:7 and 21:2, is the city of God, clothed in fine linen and prepared for her husband. The Lamb is the husband. Between the two cities lies the work of Christ, whose blood redeems from every tribe and nation (5:9). Where Babylon sells human lives, the Lamb purchased them.