Throughout the series of Revelation we have been discussing how this letter was communicating a message to first century churches about the intensity of the persecution to come but also how they can be encouraged that the pain they see today will not be the pain they see tomorrow. There is hope for what is on the other side. There is a time limit on what is about to take place. And thus these first century churches whose lives are being threatened must stand firm as John reveals to them what must all take place.
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me: “Come, I will show you the judgement of the notorious prostitute who is seated on many waters. The Kings of the earth committed sexual immorality with her, and those who live on the earth became drunk of the wine of her sexual immorality.” Then he carried me away in the Spirit to a wilderness. (Revelation 17:1-3 CSB)
John sets up our imaginations with an image of a prostitute who is about to face serious judgement for the evil she has done. This prostitute did not merely work on the street corner, rather she captured the Kings of the earth with her glance. She lured the most powerful men over nations to commit these crimes with her. Which then led to the ripple effect of all the people living underneath the reign and rule of these Kings who have been persuaded by this prostitute, to become drunk on this same evil they have profited off of.
Who Is Babylon The Great?
Let’s take a look at one verse we mentioned earlier.
“I will show you the judgement of the notorious prostitute who is seated on many waters.”
Before we do any more work on the rest of chapter 17 I want us to take notice of a common theme in the Bible. This theme is of the writers or prophets using the imagery of the cities or nations it is talking about as brides or prositutes.
In the story of Hosea, Hosea is a prophet who is told by God to marry an unfaithful woman. This unfaithful woman goes back time and time again to her old ways even though she had been set free. This story was a way of communicating this message that Israel as God’s people were like Hosea’s unfaithful wife. Israel no matter how many times it had been set free, kept going back to their old way of living. They kept being like an unfaithful bride. They kept going back to a life of prostitution.
The Bible uses this imagery of God’s people either being like a prostitute who lives a life of unfaithfulness or the life of a newly wedded bride who is pure. In the book of Revelation we are dealing with two different cities. One being Babylon and the other being this New Jerusalem. Now it is important to also note that Babylon is gone by the time of writing this and the image of Jerusalem is one that is more grand than Jerusalem had ever been. It would be a new Jerusalem that is to come. Which means, John is not talking about literal Babylon or literal Jerusalem. He is using the language of imagery to capture your imagination.
Which brings me to our verse we highlighted from earlier about the prostitute sitting on many waters. The Gentiles of the day often portrayed their cities as women. We would see this either on artwork or coins. The image they would use is one of a woman, a goddess sitting next to a river.
One coin in particular that many scholars point out is one of the goddess Roma who is sitting on seven hills. Roma is where the city Rome got their name. She is considered the founder of the city Rome. But in large part she is the personification of the city itself. She represents all the values and characteristics of who the city of Rome is.
This begins our search into why when John is talking about Rome he calls it Babylon. Or in the case of this prositiute, she has the name written on her forehead:
BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH(Rev. 17:5 NIV)
How To Read The Text
As you read through chapter 17 of Revelation there would be a few key charaeristics that would have stuck out to the original audience of this letter. It is important to note the reason why understanding what the original audience read matters.
When we read any text of the Bible but especially texts like in the book of Revelation that are deeply complicated and will no doubt stump you even with the best study Bible’s available; we must understand our intentions when approaching the text.
Our intentions can not be as we have gone over previously: to unravel conspiracy theories, or to predict the second coming of Jesus, or to create timelines on when the rapture will happen.
None of those are good intentions in line with the heart of Jesus. They actually contradict what Jesus said about those things. As Jesus said:
“Now concerning that day and hour no one knows- neither the angels of heaven nor the Son- except the Father alone.”
If no one knows, not even the Son, may I suggest that maybe we are not suppose to know so we should thus end all our efforts in trying to predict the exact days and times as Jesus himself said that you will not figure it out. Maybe knowing the exact day and time is missing the point.
Our intentions should therefore should be as we apporoach these texts to read them the way the original audience would have read them. Which requires us to not merely pick up our leather crafted Bibles that have no study notes so that we can just read the text by itself with no commentary, rather we must embody ourselves into that culture. We must understand the nature, the time, the atmosphere of the people of this day and what was going on. We must read like they read. We must hear what they heard. This requires more than just your average study Bible, you need a scholar’s study Bible. Here is where I would recommend the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible that will ground you on the floor of the original audience so you can stand there with them.
This study Bible is what I am going to be pulling from to point out the few characteristics of Babylon that would make the connection for the original audience to think of Rome as the new Babylon.
How is Rome the New Babylon?
1.) The first commonality between Rome and Babylon is that the original Babylon destroyed the temple of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and enslaved many in Israel. Rome likewise destoryed the second temple in 70 AD and held Israel captive. This commonality sets up Rome as the new version of Babylon. They are a new oppressor of God’s people.
2.) The Jewish world believed Babylon to be the first Kingdom in Daniel’s vision. Here we read in Daniel 2:36-45:
“That was the dream. Now we will tell the king what it means. Your Majesty, you are the greatest of kings. The God of heaven has given you sovereignty, power, strength, and honor. He has made you the ruler over all the inhabited world and has put even the wild animals and birds under your control. You are the head of gold. “But after your kingdom comes to an end, another kingdom, inferior to yours, will rise to take your place. After that kingdom has fallen, yet a third kingdom, represented by bronze, will rise to rule the world. Following that kingdom, there will be a fourth one, as strong as iron. That kingdom will smash and crush all previous empires, just as iron smashes and crushes everything it strikes. The feet and toes you saw were a combination of iron and baked clay, showing that this kingdom will be divided. Like iron mixed with clay, it will have some of the strength of iron. But while some parts of it will be as strong as iron, other parts will be as weak as clay. This mixture of iron and clay also shows that these kingdoms will try to strengthen themselves by forming alliances with each other through intermarriage. But they will not hold together, just as iron and clay do not mix. “During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness, and it will stand forever. That is the meaning of the rock cut from the mountain, though not by human hands, that crushed to pieces the statue of iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God was showing the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its meaning is certain.”(NLT)
Where Babylon is believed to be the first Kingdom, Rome is believed to be the last kingdom in this vision. During the reign of Rome, God will set up a new kingdom. This Kingdom will “be with you always to the end of the age.” This kingdom is unlike other kingdoms. It is not literal in the sense of God set up a literal Kingdom to conquer Rome, rather this kingdom is not of “flesh and blood.” This Kingdom stretches past the walls of Rome and Israel and reaches out to the farthest parts of the earth.
3.) In Revelation 17:9 we get this description of the woman:
“The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.”
Remember how Roma was depicted on the coin? Roma was the personification of the city Rome sitting on seven hills. Every year Rome had a massive celebration of its founding on seven hills. Thus this verse would point those original listeners to think about Rome.
4.) The leader of Babylon will be a new Nero. Nero was one of the worst emperors to have ruled.
The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up from the abyss and go to destruction. Those who live on the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast that was, and is not, and is to come. This calls for a mind that has wisdom. “The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated. They are also the seven kings: five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he comes, he must remain for only a little while. The beast that was and is not, is itself an eighth king, but it belongs to the seven heads and is going to destruction. (Revelation 17:8-11 CSB)
Nero is the Emperor in Rome who first brought about persecution to the followers of the Way. Nero died on June 9th, AD 68 and though he was the original persecutor of Christians in Rome, he was not the last. Nero was the fifth emperor in Rome, after Nero
Whore Vs. Bride
John is using this language of imagery here to capture your imagination. But not in the way of taking you away to a blissful fantasy where you can escape all reality. Rather John is using this language of imagery to capture the hearts and minds of those original hearers so that they can see the story they are in and rest in the hope that God has bought for them.
Rome is this new whore. Rome is this new archetype of Babylon from the Old Testament. Rome like Babylon and like Egypt were the personification of an empire taking the place of Yahweh.
When we are introduced to Jesus in Matthew, the author is trying to help connect the dots for a Jewish audience that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah, the new King in the line of David. The reason why Matthew is having to do so much work is not because Jesus lived a life unconnected from the Old Testamnet writings about the future messiah but rather because the messiah the Jews were expecting was one who would take out Empire. The Jews had this long history of continually being conquered and oppressed by the major empires of the day. These empires using their power and authority to call Israel away from the worship of Yahweh. The twist that was so unexpected about the new messiah though was that this new messiah would not have any care in the world for bringing in a new empire to conquer the oppressive ones.
Jesus did not come to fight “flesh and blood” like we seen earlier when Jesus was depicted as a slaughtered lamb and not a ruthless lion. Jesus came to build a kingdom not of this world and by that, the oppressive empires of this world would be no more.
This is a radical idea. John is playing off of this imagery and connecting those dots for these 7 churches who started to look a little more like Babylon(Rome) than they did like the New Jerusalem Kingdom they were here to bring about on earth.
Calling the goddess Roma a whore was not necessarily about Rome’s sexual ethic though the biblical writers had plenty of critique about Rome’s sexual ethic.
Rather in the language of imagery, this is how John describes Rome’s influence.
Whore is a sexual term. But in Revelation 17-18, the Great whore image is not about sex, it is a metaphor for worship gone wrong. St. John has nothing to say about the sexual conditions in the late first century; his business is with the conditions of faith. His pastoral responsibility is to prevent his Christians from quitting the enduringly arduous life of worship in favor of something which appears just as religious, looks a lot better, and is a lot easier. He tells them about the Great Whore to open their eyes to the differences between the worship of the Lamb and this other worship, which is not worship at all, but keeps us from worship.
-Eugene Peterson(Reversed Thunder)
Babylon Worship
In Daniel there is a story of three Hebrew boys refusing to bow down to a statue made in the image of the King. These three Hebrew boys, top of their class was commanded and expected to fall down and worship. To be apart of this unified nation. These three Hebrew boys were a long way from home, their customs and traditions were no longer valued and in fact their identities now, were erased and replaced with new Babylonian identities. Their customs were now Babylon’s customs. Their purpose was now Babylon’s purpose. These three Hebrew boys were exiles in Babylon.
What was so wrong about Babylon?
Babylon in its earliest conception goes all the way back to Genesis with the story of the Tower of Babel. In this story found in Genesis 11, we see the people of earth decide they will come together and make a stairway to heaven. This stairway to heaven though is not meant for man to use to get to God, rather it would be used to make it easier for God to come down to bless man.
Essentially, the tower would be built on man’s authority. The tower would be a way for man to save himself by calling God to come down. The tower would be man’s effort to produce a kind of salvation for the people on his own terms. Man would be in charge of God.
The word “babel” means confusion. And that is exactly God’s response to this unified effort from man to determine god’s plan of action. God responds by confusing the people, disunifying them in a way to show them they are not the supreme who will be calling the shots. When they call the shots there has already been a long line from Genesis 3-11 of what we call the fall of mankind. When man calls the shots, they lie, the blame, their steal, they kill. The way for salvation to come is not from man, but from God. And yes, God will come down, but on his own terms and in his own way. He will provide the salvation we actually need. He will serve us in a way that is actually helpful.
Babylon is what happens when empires take the place of God. We seen this in Egypt with the Exodus story, we see it in Daniel with Babylon, and now we see it in Rome throughout the New Testament.
Governments do not save. Building empires are not where we find our hope. Our hope is not in this world.
Babylon as an idea in the Bible is this city that is “anti-Yahweh.” This comes across in its actions, decrees, and the culture. When you start off reading the book of Daniel you immediately come across that exile narrative. Four Hebrew boys are whisked away to a pagan city named Babylon where they would be trained up in the ways of this pagan city and expected to disciple(train up) the rest of their people to follow suit. The goal for Babylon once they conquered Israel was to turn Israel into Babylon by removing the Spirit of Israel and replacing it with the spirit of Babylon.
It can be hard to distinguish just how counter cultural Babylon was compared to God’s chosen people at the time, but we get a glimpse at it in the beginning of Daniel and his friend’s time there. The first bit of conflict Daniel and his friends have is with the food they are consuming. The Hebrew boys were on a very strict diet(not a lose weight diet but a diet in the sense of eating a specific type of food). Babylon though, was feeding the boys all kinds of food. They were being fed the way Babylonians eat. When Daniel raised concerns and wanted to change what he and his friends were eating, the chief eunuch was concerned that if Daniel and his friends did not consume what the the Babylonians consumed it would be obviously detrimental to them and the King would notice which would cause a whole plethora of problems. But the character of Daniel had already spoken into the interactions he had with those different than him. Daniel raises a challenge. He asks for him and his three friends to be tested compared to the rest of the schoolboys.
“Please test your servants for ten days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then examine our appearance and the appearance of the young men who are eating the King’s food, and deal with your servants based on what you see.” (Daniel 1:12-13 CSB)
What happened next set Daniel and his friends up to be more than exiles living in a foreign land. They became dissidents. Daniel and his friends because of the difference between how they were treating their bodies in service to the Lord, gained “knowledge and understanding in every kind of literature and wisdom.” They excelled past the students who adapted to Babylon. They lived in a such way that you not help but notice the difference and because how they lived, it actually helped Babylon in the long run. How they lived went contrary to what Babylon wanted, but it also blessed Babylon greatly.
John when he is writing to the seven churches is writing to them because they have started to look a little more like Babylon than Jesus. When we look like Jesus it benefits those around us. It may cost us to lived contrary to the world. It cost Daniel and his friends multiple times. All four of them faced death and persecution. But all four of them came out in the end proclaims God’s greatness in a way that Babylon could not stand against.
How Did The Seven Churches Look More Like Babylon?
The dissident disciples of the seven churches had to learn to see how Babylon was impacting and influencing them. Like a fish in the water, the way of Babylon is nearly invisible for the one swimming in it.
– Scot McKnight
Scot McKnight in his book ‘Revelation for the rest of us’ presents four ways the seven churches had started to look a little more like Babylon.
1.) Their love had become disordered(2:4).
2.) Their teachings were distorted(2:14-15,20-23).
3.) Their worship was corrupted(2:14-15,20-23).
4.) Their behaviors grew inconsistent with the way of the Lamb(3:1-2,15-18).
This is all stuff we have discussed earlier in our study. The churches in Asia Minor fell into the trap that many before them fell into, and many after them will continue to fall into.
That trap being, embracing empire(Babylon) in a way that as a follower of Jesus you simply cannot.
Daniel and his friends lived in Babylon. They obeyed the King’s orders a good bit of the time. They may have challenged the empire’s diet but they still learned about the culture and rose up the ranks, eventually to the point to where they were working right under the King.
The difference between these Hebrew boys and us a lot of the time is they never bowed down. They were willing to die worshipping Yahweh and living in accordance with His truth than they were to live worshipping the Empire and going along with its sins.
Empire is a dangerous enemy. Many in the church today have begun worshipping the empire without even realizing it. We see this in the actions of the January 6th rioters who stormed the capital with signs claiming the name of Jesus even though their actions have nothing to do with Jesus.
One of the examples I find myself going to time and time again is the example of Jesus being arrested in the Garden and his response to being unlawfully arrested compared to his disciples response.
Where Jesus is willing to die for the cause in a peaceful way because he knows “to live is anointed, to die is gain”; his disciple acts in a way contrary to his rabbi’s teaching. His disciple pulls his sword out and goes for the ear. He actively brings about violence. Why? because where we see empire as a threat that we have to physically fight against, Jesus knows that violence is the way of empire.
Jesus knows that Empires come and go and he is here to build a new one. America is not a christian empire and the idea that it could be goes against exactly what Jesus’ mission was. Jesus mission was to break down walls not build them up. Jesus walked across dividing lines because the Kingdom he is building operates on a different playing field. This new kingdom sees all of creation as God’s, so there is no stake in the ground claiming one country as God’s.
Not only that, but Jesus knows that to build his kingdom, it will look differently than how Babylon builds there’s. Babylon is the archetype for the kingdoms of this world. The kingdoms of this world that need war to stay on top. The kingdoms that are built on the backs of the underprivileged. The kingdoms that priorities the wealthy and oppresses the poor. The kingdoms that care more about the bottom line than about doing what is right. The kingdoms that have bought into the lies of our flesh that screams selfishness.
Where Babylon and all the empires throughout history have built themselves up by violence, oppression and greed; Jesus’ Kingdom is not of this world and refuses to operate accordingly. That’s what makes it dangerous. it also makes it effective. Because where Rome eventually falls, the Kingdom of God never does.
Next we will take a look at the fall of Babylon.
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