Revelation 18:24

Verse 20 follows straight on from the long laments of Revelation 18:9–19, where kings, merchants and mariners stand far off and mourn the city that made them rich. The earth weeps over what it has lost, and heaven is told to rejoice. The two responses to the same event show two ways of seeing it. The world sees the end of its wealth, and heaven sees God’s justice done at last.

The verb euphraínō means to be in a good frame of mind, to be glad and merry. The first to be called to this gladness is “heaven”, ouranós, the word for the sky and for heaven as the dwelling of God. Here it means those who are with him, the angels and the redeemed. Then the call goes to the “holy apostles and prophets”. The apostles are the founders of the New Testament church, and the prophets include the prophets of the Old Testament and the prophetic figures of the early church. Together they stand for all of God’s faithful witnesses through history, and above all for those who suffered and died for their testimony, because they are the ones who bore the weight of Babylon’s persecution.

The reason for the joy is “for God hath avenged you on her.” The English “avenged” stands for the Greek verb krínō, to decide, judge, condemn or punish, together with the noun kríma, a decision, verdict or sentence. God has heard his people’s case, given his verdict and carried out the sentence. It is the act of the Judge of all the earth, setting things right according to his own justice.

This is the answer to a prayer that runs through the whole Bible. Moses sang, “Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants” (Deuteronomy 32:43). The psalmist cried, “O LORD God, to whom vengeance belongeth”, and asked the Judge of the earth to rise and repay the proud (Psalm 94:1–2). Jesus asked, “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him?” and promised that he would do it speedily (Luke 18:7–8). Earlier in Revelation the souls under the altar cry, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:9–11). Verse 20 is God’s answer, and the next chapter opens with heaven singing it: “true and righteous are his judgments”, for he “hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand” (Revelation 19:2).

In verse 21 the angel is ischyrós, strong, mighty or powerful. The strength of the messenger matches the force of what he is about to do, and it shows that the power behind Babylon’s fall is God’s. He takes up “a stone like a great millstone”, mýlos with mégas, “great” in size. Millstones were part of daily life, used to grind grain for bread, and a great one was a massive stone often turned by a donkey or an ox. Once a weight like that is thrown into the sea, it sinks and it is gone for good.

The angel’s act is a prophetic sign, an action that makes the spoken judgment visible and certain, as the Old Testament prophets often did. Jeremiah’s prophecy against ancient Babylon ends with a sign of this kind and the words of its sinking (Jeremiah 51:63–64). Jesus used the same picture of a millstone and the sea when he warned that it would be better for the one who causes a little one to stumble to have a millstone hung about his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea (Matthew 18:6). The image may also recall the old punishment of drowning a condemned man with a heavy stone. In Scripture the sea often pictures chaos and the abyss, and here it becomes the place where Babylon disappears.

“Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down.” The word “Thus” ties the sign to the event, and “violence” is hórmēma, from hormē, an impulse or a violent rushing motion. Babylon’s fall comes as one sudden, overwhelming act of God’s power. Then comes “and shall be found no more at all.” The Greek here is ou mḗ eti, a strong double negative joined to eti, “still” or “yet”, and it makes the end of Babylon absolute. Ezekiel had said the same over proud Tyre: “though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again” (Ezekiel 26:21).

Verses 22 and 23 let us hear Babylon’s ruin. The phrase “no more at all” rings through them again and again, each time over something that once filled the city. The word for “voice” is phōnḗ, a tone, sound or voice, and “heard” is akoúō, the ordinary verb to hear. A great city of John’s day was full of these sounds, and the list moves through the whole of its life.

First goes its joy. Harpers, musicians, pipers and trumpeters played at feasts, public gatherings and celebrations, and their music was the sound of a prosperous city. Then goes its work. The “craftsman”, technitēs, was any skilled artisan, from builders to jewellers, and “of whatsoever craft he be” takes in every trade that made Babylon rich. Then goes its daily bread. The sound of a millstone grinding flour was heard in homes every day, so its silence means that the city is empty of people and of the ordinary routines of life. The great millstone of verse 21 was the sign of her ruin, and the household millstone of verse 22 is one of the things lost in it.

Verse 23 adds the last two signs of life. The “light of a candle” is a lamp, which made it possible to live, trade and gather after sunset, so a city where no lamp shines is a city in total darkness. The “voice of the bridegroom and of the bride” is the sound of weddings, of new families and of the generations still to come. When it is gone, the city has no future.

The prophets spoke of God’s judgments in these same terms. Jeremiah warned that God would take away from Judah and from the nations “the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride” (Jeremiah 7:34, Jeremiah 25:10), and Jeremiah 25:10 adds the sound of the millstones and the light of the candle. Isaiah wrote, “The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them that rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth” (Isaiah 24:8). Zephaniah said that those who trusted in their wealth would build houses and never live in them (Zephaniah 1:13). Of ancient Babylon, Isaiah said it would never be inhabited again and would become a home for wild beasts (Isaiah 13:20–22), and God said to Tyre, “I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard” (Ezekiel 26:13). The whole picture of Revelation 18 draws on these prophecies against the great trading cities, Tyre in Isaiah 23 and Babylon in Jeremiah 50–51.

The silence shows how short-lived worldly power and glory are. Babylon’s music, wealth and skill all pass away in a moment, while God’s kingdom “shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44). From Sodom and Gomorrah to the empires of history, every power that has set itself against God has ended this way. A city that turns from its Creator becomes, in the end, a place empty of the life God meant it to have.

The end of verse 23 gives two reasons, and verse 24 gives a third.

“For thy merchants were the great men of the earth.” The word for merchants, émporos, means a wholesale trader, a merchant dealing in large quantities. Babylon’s traders had become the grandees of the world, and gē, earth or land, here means the earth where all the nations live. Her prosperity rested on commerce that gave her power over nations, and the chapter shows that it was gained by unrighteous means.

“For by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” The word pharmakeía, from which we get “pharmacy”, first meant the use of drugs and potions, and in the New Testament it means magic, sorcery and witchcraft, often bound up with idolatry. The verb planáō means to cause someone to wander from safety, truth or virtue, to lead astray or seduce. Babylon deliberately led the nations away from God by spiritual deception. Paul warns of the same kind of deceit in the coming of the lawless one, whose signs and lying wonders lead astray those who refuse to love the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:9–10).

Babylon the Great is introduced in Revelation 17 as a harlot riding the beast, and her fall is announced in Revelation 18:1. Before the laments, God’s people are called to come out of her, so that they share neither her sins nor her plagues (Revelation 18:4–8), and she is repaid double for what she has done (Revelation 18:6–7). The whole of Revelation 18 is given to her ruin.

The name looks back to ancient Babylon, which was known for idolatry, wealth and oppression and which destroyed Jerusalem. For John’s first readers it was also a veiled name for Rome, the empire of their day, rich, idolatrous, demanding worship of the emperor and persecuting Christians. Believers under that pressure heard in this chapter that God saw their suffering and would judge it. Beyond any one city, Babylon stands for every power, system and culture that sets itself against God, seduces people with wealth, leads them into idolatry and persecutes his saints.

Believers differ on whether Babylon will also be a particular city at the end of history. On one reading, the “great city” is the gathering of every anti-God power through the ages, and its fall is the end of all of them. On another, a real city or world power will take that role at the last. Both readings agree that the millstone and the sea are pictures, and that what they picture is real and certain: God will bring all evil to an end and establish his kingdom, as Revelation 19 goes on to show.

The hand that judges Babylon is finally the hand of Christ, for the Father “hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22). When he returns as the rider on the white horse, King of kings and Lord of lords, he carries out this justice in full (Revelation 19:11–16). He already holds “the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18), and by his cross he has spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). He came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) and to set at liberty those held captive (Luke 4:18), and that includes the nations Babylon deceived.

The Lamb was slain too. Christ is the innocent one whose blood was shed by the powers of this world, and his blood “speaketh better things than that of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24), bringing forgiveness and reconciliation to all who trust him. He also counts the suffering of his people as his own. When Saul was persecuting the church, Jesus said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4–5). The blood of the saints found in Babylon is the blood of Christ’s own body.

Everything that falls silent in Babylon is given back to God’s people in Christ. Her lamp goes out, and he is the light of the world (John 8:12), whose light shines in darkness (John 1:4–5). Her wedding songs end, and heaven prepares the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7–9), where Christ the Bridegroom receives the church he loved and gave himself for (Ephesians 5:25–27). Her merchants were the great men of the earth, and he is King of kings. Babylon’s fall makes way for the new heaven and new earth, where God dwells with his people and there is no more death, sorrow or pain (Revelation 21:1–4).

This passage gives the suffering church the view from heaven. Babylon’s power looks lasting, and her wealth and music fill the world, yet one throw of a stone ends her. God is the Judge who remembers the blood of every prophet and saint, and every innocent life taken on the earth, and he gives his verdict in their favour. The joy he commands is the joy of seeing his justice done.

It also shows us where lasting joy is found. The lamps, songs and weddings of Babylon all go silent, and the light, the song and the wedding of the Lamb last for ever. The call to come out of her in verse 4 still stands, and the God who judged her for his people’s sake is the one his people can trust to the end.