Revelation 17:3

The messenger is “one of the seven angels which had the seven vials”, the angels who have just poured out the last plagues of God’s wrath in Revelation 16. That chapter ends with great Babylon remembered before God (Revelation 16:19), and now one of the same angels comes to explain who she is and why she is judged. This vision belongs with those judgments as their explanation, and it leads on into the fall of Babylon in Revelation 18.

The angel speaks to John directly. “Come hither” translates deûro, a command to come, and it calls John to a nearer place from which to see. “I will shew” is deiknýō, to show. What he will show is the kríma of the great whore, a word that means a decision, verdict or sentence. Here it is the sentence God has passed on her, and the rest of this chapter and all of the next set out what it is.

The verb porneúō means to act the harlot, and figuratively to practise idolatry, and the noun porneía means harlotry, which in the prophets above all means idolatry. The fornication of verse 2 is first of all spiritual unfaithfulness, where people who owe their worship and loyalty to God give them to other gods, to worldly powers and to gain. The prophets charged Israel with this very sin. Jeremiah speaks of Israel’s adulteries (Jeremiah 3:8–9), Hosea’s own marriage became a picture of Israel’s unfaithfulness (Hosea 1–3), Hosea says that “the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err” (Hosea 4:12), and Ezekiel says punishment comes because Israel went whoring after the nations (Ezekiel 23:30). James uses the same language for believers who love the world: “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?” (James 4:4).

“The kings of the earth” are the rulers of the world. In John’s day they would have included the Roman emperors with the client kings and governors under them. They join themselves to her and profit from her, giving her their allegiance and resources in return for power, wealth and influence. The word for earth, gē, means the earth or the land, and it can take in the people who live on it, so “the kings of the earth” and “the inhabitants of the earth” together reach from the throne to the common people.

The angel carries John away “in the spirit”, en pneumati. The word pneûma means breath or wind and, by analogy, a spirit, and here it means that God’s Spirit took hold of John and enabled him to see spiritual realities beyond ordinary sight. Ezekiel tells of the Spirit lifting him up and taking him away in the same way (Ezekiel 3:12–14). The place is the wilderness, eremos, which in Scripture is a place of desolation and judgment and also a place where God meets his people and speaks to them, as he did with Israel on its journey and with Elijah. There, away from the noise of her cities, John sees her plainly.

He sees “a woman”, gynḗ, the ordinary word for a woman or wife. The prophets used a woman as a picture of a city or a people, faithful or unfaithful, and this woman is soon named as Babylon the Great. She sits on “a scarlet coloured beast”. The word thēríon means a wild beast or animal, and in Daniel’s visions beasts stand for kingdoms and empires (Daniel 7). Her sitting on the beast shows a close alliance between them. She rides it, so she directs it, and she is carried along by its power. Its scarlet colour, kokkinos, speaks of luxury and royalty, and also of sin and bloodshed.

The beast is “full of names of blasphemy”. It openly defies God, speaks against him, claims for itself what belongs to God alone and demands the worship that is his. Paul describes the man of sin in similar terms, as one who exalts himself above all that is called God (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4).

The woman is “arrayed in purple and scarlet colour”. These were the colours of royalty and wealth, made with costly dyes and worn by the rich and powerful. She is “decked”, gilded or adorned with gold, chrysóō, “with gold and precious stones and pearls”. By the world’s measure she is glorious and desirable, and she appeals to every human longing for wealth and status. Ezekiel’s account of Jerusalem’s harlotry belongs beside this verse (Ezekiel 16:15–19).

In her hand is “a golden cup … full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication”. The cup is gold, and what it holds is repulsive. The word for full, gémō, means to be full or filled. “Abominations” is bdélygma, something detestable, an object of disgust, and in the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament it is often used of idols and idolatrous worship. “Fornication” here is porneía again, the unfaithfulness of verse 2, and its “filthiness” is the defilement it leaves behind. A golden cup in the hand also calls to mind the drink offerings poured out in pagan worship.

Jeremiah used this picture of ancient Babylon: “Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD’s hand, that made all the earth drunken” (Jeremiah 51:7). The wine she gives the nations in verse 2 comes from this cup, and its gold is the bait. What the world admires and desires can be detestable to God, which is why John writes elsewhere, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world” (1 John 2:15). All her splendour comes to its end when the cry goes up, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen” (Revelation 18:2).

“And upon her forehead was a name written.” In John’s day a mark on the forehead could show that a slave belonged to a master, that a priest was dedicated, or that a criminal or prostitute stood in public shame. This woman’s name is written where everyone can read it, so the mark that identifies her also declares her disgrace.

The first word of the name is “MYSTERY”, mystḗrion, a secret once hidden and now made known by God to those he shows it to. Human reason alone could never discern her true nature, and here God reveals it. Paul speaks in a similar way of “the mystery of iniquity” already at work in the world, which the Lord will reveal and destroy (2 Thessalonians 2:7).

“BABYLON THE GREAT”. Babylṓn comes from the Hebrew Babel, which carries the sense of confusion. Ancient Babylon was the empire that conquered Judah, destroyed Jerusalem and carried God’s people into exile (2 Kings 25), and its name stood for pride, idolatry and oppression. The prophets announced God’s judgment against it (Isaiah 13:1). In Revelation the name becomes the title of the whole world power that takes that city’s place against God, and “the great” marks the reach of her influence and the size of her wickedness.

“THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” makes her the source of all the spiritual unfaithfulness the prophets condemned, the harlotry of Hosea 1 and of Ezekiel 23. She brings it to birth and nurtures it, and from her come the idolatry, injustice, violence and moral corruption that defile the earth.

John sees “the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus”. The verb is methýō again. She made the nations drunk with the wine of her fornication in verse 2, and now she herself is drunk with blood. The picture is of someone who has drunk deeply and kept on drinking, utterly given over to the killing of God’s people. The word haîma, blood, stands for life violently taken, and it is said twice.

The saints are God’s people, set apart for him. The martyrs of Jesus are named alongside them. The word mártys means a witness and, by analogy, a martyr, so these are the people who bore witness to Jesus and paid for it with their lives, singled out because of their testimony. For John’s first readers this was close at hand, since testimony to Jesus could bring prison, torture and death under emperors such as Nero and Domitian. Jesus told his disciples, “ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake” (Matthew 24:9), and Paul wrote, “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12).

God has counted this blood. The souls under the altar, slain for the word of God, cry out for him to judge and avenge them (Revelation 6:9–11), and when Babylon falls, “in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints” (Revelation 18:24). To persecute God’s people is to attack God himself, and the sentence of verse 1 is his answer.

Over against the whore stand the Lamb and his bride. The beast is full of names of blasphemy, and Christ bears “a name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9–11). The beast and its kings make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb overcomes them (Revelation 17:14), for he is “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:16) and comes as the rider on the white horse to judge and make war (Revelation 19:11–16). He has already triumphed over principalities and powers at the cross (Colossians 2:15), and his victory ends in the great voices of heaven: “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ” (Revelation 11:15).

The kings of the earth sell their loyalty to the woman, and Christ remained faithful to his Father, obedient unto death (Philippians 2:8). The woman is dressed in purple and gold, and he came in humility, “not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). His kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36). She offers a cup of filth, and he offers living water that satisfies thirst for ever (John 4:10–14). Her deceptions keep the world in darkness, and he came as the light that exposes it (John 3:19).

The blood in verse 6 has its answer in his blood. Babylon is drunk with the blood of the innocent, and Christ’s blood was shed “for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28) when he “suffered without the gate” (Hebrews 13:12). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and he cleanses people from the very abominations her cup holds. The martyrs who die for him share in the fellowship of his sufferings (Philippians 3:10), and the slain Lamb, who alone is worthy to open the scroll (Revelation 5:6–10), will see that every drop of their blood is avenged.

The woman also has a counterpart. Christ loves the church and gives himself for her, to present her “not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:25–27). The marriage of the Lamb follows the fall of Babylon (Revelation 19:7–9), and John later sees the holy city, new Jerusalem, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2–3). The harlot’s jewels are paid for with unfaithfulness and blood, and the bride’s beauty is her husband’s gift. In that city “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4).

These verses teach us to see as God sees. Babylon still dresses in purple and gold, and her cup still looks precious, whether it holds wealth, power, comfort, the world’s approval or even a good cause that has become our ultimate concern. The angel shows us what is in the cup, so that we can recognise her offers and refuse them. Whatever asks for the loyalty that belongs to Christ is her wine, however good it looks, and Scripture calls us to be sober and vigilant (1 Peter 5:8) and to keep our devotion to him whole.

Her wine reaches kings and ordinary people alike, so each of us can ask where we have made peace with what God hates. The voice from heaven is plain: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins” (Revelation 18:4).

For believers who suffer for Jesus, verse 6 is a word of comfort. God sees every drop of his people’s blood, and he has already passed sentence on those who shed it. Babylon looks great, yet she rides a beast destined for destruction, and the Lamb shall overcome. Those who belong to him can stand firm and stay faithful, waiting for the kingdom that is surely coming.