Who is the Whore of Babylon?
Who Is The Whore Of Babylon?
(And Why Does It Matter?)
by Paul Carter
© Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
The Book of Revelation is like an art gallery filled with pictures painted in colours borrowed from Old Testament canvases. If you want to understand “the Whore Of Babylon” you have to go way back in the biblical story.
In the Old Testament, the city of Babylon gave birth to an empire that ruled the known world and imposed a worldview upon all of the peoples that she conquered. Those she did not destroy, she subverted. She could be brutal; callous and proud and she believed that she would reign over the earth forever. She said in her heart: “I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children” (Isaiah 47:8 ESV).
She spoke as a god and she thought herself secure.
Her destruction is announced in Isaiah 47. In response to her wickedness, arrogance, self-indulgence, and brutality towards the people of God the Lord announces sudden doom:
“But evil shall come upon you, which you will not know how to charm away; disaster shall fall upon you, for which you will not be able to atone; and ruin shall come upon you suddenly, of which you know nothing.” (Isaiah 47:11 ESV)
And so it was.
History tells us that the Babylonian Empire fell very suddenly and very unpleasantly to the Persians under Cyrus The Great in 539 BC. Later when Darius was King the Babylonians revolted unsuccessfully and as a consequence, they experienced many of the same brutalities they had previously inflicted upon the Jews. The Babylonians themselves strangled many of their wives and children to keep them from starving to death during the brutal siege of their capital city. When the city fell Herodotus says that the gates were pulled down and 3000 of the leading citizens were impaled upon the walls. The once great city – the Queen of the world – was defeated, devastated and despoiled.
Just like God said.
Babylon next appears in the biblical narrative about 630 years later. The former seat of empire is now a village surrounded and nearly swallowed by a sea of sand. And yet her name begins to reappear in the New Testament canon as a symbol of the world at war with the people God. Peter uses it as a sort of code. He ends his epistle to the churches of Pontus and Bithynia by saying:
“She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son. Greet one another with the kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ.” (1 Peter 5:13–14 ESV)
She who is at Babylon... Peter was nowhere near Babylon when he wrote that letter; Peter was in Rome, but he uses the word “Babylon” as a symbolic way of referring to the new world culture at war with the covenant community. Peter is saying: Rome is the new Babylon. Rome is the new mistress who would seduce and subvert the people of God.
The City had become a spirit.
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