Biblion Bible Commentary
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Fallen, Fallen Is Babylon the Great
Revelation 18:1-3
1 After these things, I saw another angel coming down out of the sky, having great authority. The earth was illuminated with his glory. · WEB
An angel bright enough to light the earth pronounces the double dirge, and the ruin is a haunted house built by three named appetites.
After these things, I saw another angel coming down out of the sky, having great authority. The earth was illuminated with his glory.
The funeral of Babylon opens with light. The messenger's glory floods the earth — the strongest illumination in the book before the city that needs no sun Revelation 21:23 — and the detail is the message's own claim: before the end, the truth about Babylon is broadcast at a brightness no one can miss Revelation 14:6. Ezekiel saw the same wattage when the glory of the God of Israel came from the east and the earth was illuminated with his glory Ezekiel 43:2: what lights the world here is the last message's unveiling of Babylon, so that her fall finds no one uninformed.
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 hated bird!" Revelation 18:2.
The doubled dirge is Isaiah's over the first Babylon, verbatim Isaiah 21:9, and the haunted-ruin imagery is Isaiah's too — the fallen city as the address of desert creatures and doleful spirits Isaiah 13:21–22 Isaiah 34:11: the system that trafficked in the demonic Revelation 16:14 Revelation 18:23 ends as its warehouse — habitation of demons, prison of every unclean spirit. What she summoned, she becomes; the medium is the tomb.
And the epitaph's charge-sheet names the three appetites that built her Revelation 18:3: all the nations have drunk of the wine — the world's intoxication, her doctrine swallowed at scale Revelation 14:8; the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality with her — the throne-and-altar liaisons of the whole era Revelation 17:2; and the third partner, introduced here and starring through the chapter: the merchants of the earth grew rich from the abundance of her luxury.
The merchants. The chapter about to unfold is the Bible's most sustained exposure of the economics of the false system — Babylon as market, her religion as the world's most profitable commodity, commerce and cult in one enterprise Revelation 18:11–13 Ezekiel 27:12–24. Three constituencies drank, courted, and profited; the same three will stand at a distance in this chapter and wail as the smoke goes up Revelation 18:9–19 — mourners whose grief, when it comes, is for their own portfolios.
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