Revelation 18:2 Commentary and Bible Study

The announcement is made before it has happened, as if it is passed. This world will be destroyed and then recreated for the children of God, but Babylon is a figure showing how the world system collapses and takes on a new role as hell. The ‘hold’ or ‘cage’ – it is the same Greek word in both cases – is another word for a prison. The city is now derelict, ruined and all things creepy are in it; the words carry the hint of eternal judgement. We are asked to imagine a derelict city: empty palaces, crumbling ruins. It is not so much that this world is going to be judged, but that there will be ongoing scenes of dereliction. Although this is a vision, yet it focuses on the result of judgement. This world becomes a place of desolation, and the trappings of this world will become ongoing hell. It is not a literal picture of hell, but a comparison. Hell itself is probably beyond our understanding at present. What will hell be like? It will be composed of a godless race, devils and men together. Although the verses at the end of chapter 17 tell us that the great whore will be hated and burnt by the allies of the beast, chapter 18 requires that the she has a broader meaning. In this chapter she is viewed as having an ongoing existence, albeit one which is cursed by God. Babylon is a figure of this lost world in which, after it has been judged, the demons who loved to destroy and pervert will be imprisoned along with the hopeless products of their workmanship, lost mankind.The importance of the message causes the angel to cry with a loud voice. If all things are for the glory of God, then all his mighty works must be published. Both those who love the Lord and those who hate him and fight against him will know when he triumphs over the devil. His judgments will be a demonstration of his severity against his enemies, but chiefly these things are published for the relief of the saints. Right now we trust that God will act on our behalf, but we do not know when. We are taught to have patience, but patience cannot go on forever and all hangs suspended on the hope that God will eventually vindicate us. In the vision, it has now happened and it must not remain hidden. The Old Testament prophets use exactly the same symbolism when speaking of Babylon. Babylon to Isaiah was certainly a real city, which remarkably he foretold many years before it came to power. It was the capital city of that empire which would conquer Judah and take her into exile. But Isaiah also looked far beyond these literal events and spoke of something in the distant future. He used physical Babylon to speak of the kingdom of this world. Isaiah 14, dealing with the fall of Lucifer, is an example of this, where the king of Babylon is described as coming down to hell and being taunted for the reversal of his proud ambitions. An ideal peace prevails over the earth following his removal. The language setting forth his failed ambitions is reminiscent of what Paul says concerning the pretensions of antichrist. Similarly the language used here in Revelation is unmistakably connected with Isaiah 13:19-22. Babylon is no longer to be a place of human habitation but is to be inhabited by the beasts of the earth. This is its curse because of what it had tried to make itself. The birds named in this description in Isaiah 13 are those already designated as unclean in the ceremonial law of Israel (Leviticus 11:13-19). The owl, the ostrich, and others were to be regarded by Israel as unclean and not to be eaten, to teach the people the difference between clean and unclean in the moral and spiritual areas of life. But in Revelation, these birds are simply called unclean and hated birds and the passage gives deeper insight into their significance. They stand for demonic powers, which are the source of what is really unclean. The warning against uncleanness of the flesh was part of God’s education programme for Israel, but what lay behind it was a lesson about spiritual wickedness in high places. Eating unclean food does not make a man truly unclean, but what comes out of his heart, which is stirred up by hell and by the forces of darkness, this truly makes a man unclean. Babylon itself will, as a result of its judgment, be turned into a place inhabited by demons. Later verses in the chapter suggest that Babylon will become hell itself.