Biblion Bible Commentary
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Come Out of Her, My People
Revelation 18:4-8
4 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, · WEB
Heaven's last call assumes God's people are still inside Babylon, the exodus-summons carries two reasons, and the queen's boast meets one day.
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."
The most important sentence in the chapter, and its premise is its tenderness: my people — present tense, still inside her. To the end, God has people within the Babylon-system: believing, misled, worshiping in her courts — his, and addressed as his. The call is the Bible's oldest evacuation order in its final form — Lot summoned out of Sodom Genesis 19:15, Israel out of Babylon: flee out of the middle of Babylon... for it is the time of Yahweh's vengeance Jeremiah 51:6 Jeremiah 51:45 Isaiah 52:11 — and its two reasons are exact: participation and plagues. Stay, and her sins become shared enterprise; stay, and her judgment becomes shared address. The gathering-out of God's scattered people from the falling system is the last work the book's messages perform Revelation 14:8 — the door of the second angel's cry, held open by name.
For her sins have reached to the sky, and God has remembered her iniquities Revelation 18:5 — Babel's tower inverted Genesis 11:4: she built toward heaven and her sins arrived there, piled like bricks; and the remembering of the seventh bowl Revelation 16:19 is restated as the funeral's legal ground.
Return to her just as she returned, and repay her double as she did... In the cup which she mixed, mix to her double Revelation 18:6 — the lex talionis of the cup Jeremiah 50:15 Jeremiah 50:29: her own vessel Revelation 17:4, her own recipe, served back with the fullness her long impunity accrued.
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' Revelation 18:7.
The boast is quoted from Isaiah's Babylon word for word Isaiah 47:7–8 — the security of the system at its height: enthroned, espoused to the world's kings, mourning impossible. The judgment is measured to the boast — proportioned not just to her deeds but to her self-glorification: pride audited at its own valuation.
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 Revelation 18:8 — Isaiah's sentence completed: the two things she denied, in one day Isaiah 47:9. The system that outlasted centuries falls inside a day — and the closing clause answers the only question left: her judge is strong, stronger than the strength that held the world amazed Revelation 13:4.
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