‘And there were lightnings, and voices, and thunders, and there was a vast earthquake such as there was not since there were men on the earth, so great the earthquake, and so mighty. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and Babylon the Great was remembered in the sight of God to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found, and great hail, about the weight of a talent comes down from heaven on men, and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, for the plague of it is immensely great.'
Herein we have another solemn picture of the final judgment of God. The whole world is caught up in it. ‘The great city' collapses, every city is destroyed, Babylon the Great receives its final judgment. She who has the golden cup (Revelation 17:4) will find it replaced at the last with the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath.
‘There were lightnings, and voices, and thunders and a vast earthquake.' Similar descriptions are found elsewhere, gradually increasing in intensity. In Revelation 4:5 ‘lightnings, voices and thunders' proceed from the throne after the description of the One on the throne accompanied by the twenty four elders on their thrones. In Revelation 8:5 ‘lightnings, and voices, and thunders and an earthquake' follow the appearance of the angel at the altar of incense as he offers up prayers which went up before God, and then casts them down on the earth. ‘An earthquake' is added to demonstrate that it is now connected with earth. In Revelation 11:19 ‘lightnings, and voices, and thunders, and an earthquake and great hail' follow the opening of the Temple of God to reveal the Ark of His covenant. God's final judgment has come on the world. And now lightnings, and voices, and thunders and the greatest of all earthquakes, accompanied later by the great hail (v. 21) accompany the voice from the Temple and from the throne. All is now over.
It will be noted that each time the description appears there is reference, direct or indirect, to the Temple and to the One on the throne. First the One on the throne and the twenty four priestly elders before the throne, then the angel at the altar of incense offering prayers before the throne, then the ark of His covenant which is beneath the throne, and finally the great voice out of the Temple and from the throne. The lightnings and voices and thunders proclaim the mighty activity of God.
We note also the advancement in God's purposes. The twenty four priestly elders before the throne plead on behalf of God's people at the time of the visions, the angel at the altar of incense pleads on behalf of God's people in the holy place at the beginning of the judgments, the Ark of the covenant in the holy of holies is revealed at the time of the final judgment. And now the voice of God declares the end of all things. Thus the lightnings and voices and thunders herald the presence of God in His heavenly Temple at the opening of the seals, at the sounding of the trumpets, at the revelation of the basis of judgment (the Ark and the covenant it contains) and at the final word of judgment. In the end all is of God.
‘The great earthquake.' This destroys ‘the great city' and it destroys the cities of the nations. It is seemingly worldwide. These are clearly aspects of the great final day of judgment.
‘The great city was divided into three parts'. But which is ‘the great city'? In Revelation 11:13 ‘the great city' is Jerusalem and one tenth of ‘the great city' of Jerusalem (Revelation 11:8) falls in an earthquake, a symbol of God taking His firstfruits prior to the whole, thus this earthquake following immediately after could then be seen as Jerusalem partaking of the final harvest. That ‘great city' is described as Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8) rather than as Babylon, so we should not link the great city directly with Babylon the Great. It is the earthly Jerusalem which in spite of its great claim to be the centre of religiousness has turned out to be, like Sodom, the centre of wickedness and worldliness.
However, in Revelation 14:8 ‘Babylon' is called ‘the great', and in Revelation 17:18 we have reference to ‘that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth', which is called ‘Babylon the Great' in Revelation 17:5, while in Revelation 18:16; Revelation 18:18-19; Revelation 18:21 the great city's destruction is described in terms of Babylon the Great (Revelation 18:2). Thus some would refer ‘the great city' to Great Babylon.
But if ‘the great city' does refer to Babylon we have in these verses a double reference to Babylon as ‘great' with the cities of the nations in between. It seems far more likely that the intention is to compare the judgments on the great city which is like Sodom and Egypt, that is, on Jerusalem, with the judgments on the cities of the nations, and finally with the judgment on Babylon the Great itself. ‘The great city' here is then Jerusalem in contrast with Babylon, in which case we have the portrayal of the destruction of religious but inherently wicked Jerusalem, the destruction of the cities of the nations, and the destruction of the worldly Babylon the Great with all they signified.
As we are to have a new Jerusalem we should perhaps expect a description of the destruction of the old Jerusalem. This would tie in with this suggestion, as would the contrast between ‘the great city' and ‘the cities of the nations'. The fact that the only description of a ‘great city' up to this point had reference to Jerusalem, and that great Babylon and her fate is mentioned separately, would also seem to confirm this.
Alternately we could take the great city as Babylon. However, as her judgment is in fact mentioned separately in this very place, and in view of the different way in which she is seen as destroyed in chapter 18, this appears less likely. (Although it must be admitted that there is nothing to stop it being seen as destroyed by an earthquake while it is still languishing in the previous misery brought upon it).
But what is finally important is that the destruction of Babylon the Great is linked with the destruction of all cities, for Babylon the Great is more than Babylon, it is more than Rome, it is the final fruition of Babel, the very idea of ‘cityness'. It represents worldly ‘civilisation' over against God.
‘Into three parts.' Compare Deuteronomy 19:3 where the land was to be divided into three parts, each to have a city as a refuge for the manslayer. Is this seen as an ironic division of the city in a similar way? Israel having failed in its ministry to provide places of refuge for the world, is now divided into three as a commentary on its failure? Or is it ironically seen as divided between the monster, the beast and the false prophet, mentioned as a trio in Revelation 16:13, to whom it has given its obedience (Revelation 11:2)? Alternately there may be behind it the idea that just as ‘three' is a symbol of completeness, this division into three parts is a rending of that previous completeness. It is no longer whole.
‘And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found, and great hail, about the weight of a talent (a hundredweight) comes down from heaven on men.' This description is similar to that in Revelation 6:14. Here the islands disappear and the mountains become level. This is not just a great earthquake, it is a huge cataclysm. The great hail is reminiscent of huge hailstorms which have been known in the Mediterranean region where hailstones weighing more than twelve pounds have been known to fall, but these are huge even by that comparison, weighing a hundredweight (twelve times as much), hailstones such as have never been known before. This vast shaking of the earth and the huge hailstones can only signify the end of time, which is what we saw in Revelation 11:19.
‘And men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail.' It is surely significant that the only place where the final hour causes men to give glory to the God of Heaven is in Jerusalem (Revelation 11:13). That supremely religious city is depicted as seeing things differently from the remainder. But its end is the same, for the great day of judgment has arrived, and its religiosity is not sufficient. It too has rejected Christ. That this is one more vivid way of describing the final judgment is clear once we consider what is stated.
‘And Babylon the Great was remembered in the sight of God to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.' Babylon the Great is singled out because of the idea she represents. It is not said that she is destroyed as such in the earthquake. Indeed God has already dealt with her (Chapter s 17-18). And yet she is involved in the earthquake for she in reality sums up all those cities.
But what is meant by Babylon the Great? It is an idea that has come from the mists of time, the symbol of all that is worst in the cities of the world. When Cain left the presence of the Lord and went to live in the desert regions he ‘built a city'. It was only a tent encampment, but it contained the seed of an idea. It was the beginnings of men gathering to live together to produce ‘civilisation', and a multiple society for belligerence and protection, away from the presence of God (Genesis 4:16-17 with Genesis 4:20-24).
The next growth we learn of is when Nimrod, the mighty warrior, so great that even God saw him as great (‘before the Lord') founded his empire in the land of Shinar. It is significant that an element of that empire was Babel (Genesis 10:9-10). This then resulted at some stage in the building of the tower in the city of Babel, probably a religious ziggurat, in order that men may ‘make a name for themselves' (Genesis 11:4 with 9). In other words they established idolatry as against the worship of the One true God, they began to expand by conquest in order to build up an empire, and they wanted to prevent others doing the same. They wanted ‘world-wide' control. So from the beginning Babel (possibly ‘babilu', the gate of god) signifies empire building, idolatry, and rebellion against, and replacement of, the living God.
When later Babylon, its namesake, came into the picture it took over this image in the minds of the prophets. It was prominent through the centuries, but it came into its greatest prominence when it defeated the Assyrian empire and subjugated Jerusalem. Of all nations it alone conquered Jerusalem and took its inhabitants into captivity, destroying the Temple in the process (2 Kings 25:9). For this alone it would be remembered for ever and was seen as finally doomed to be destroyed by God (Psalms 137:8; Isaiah 13:19; Isaiah 14:22; Isaiah 21:9; Jeremiah 51:24; Jeremiah 51:29; Jeremiah 51:64). We can also consider Nebuchadnezzar's cry, ‘Is not this great Babylon that I have built?' It was the perfect example of the pride and arrogance that made Babylon a symbol of such pride (Daniel 4:30), compare ‘Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans' pride' which will be made like Sodom and Gomorrah (Isaiah 13:19).
Babylon was also the first of the four wild beast empires in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the ‘head of gold', the supreme empire (Daniel 2:38-39) which along with the other empires would be destroyed by the stone without hands (Daniel 2:45) which represented the setting up of God's kingdom. And its king was famed as the one who had himself set up a golden image, representing either himself or Babylon (compare the golden head of the great image - Daniel 2:32), and demanded that all nations should worship it (Daniel 3:1; Daniel 3:4-5). Indeed the king of Babylon was the one who declared that he would ascend to the throne of God and be like the most High (Isaiah 14:13).
Thus Babylon had become synonymous with overweening pride, with arrogance, with rebellion and blasphemy, with idolatry, with ambitions of empire, above all with setting itself against God. It had became a symbol of all such empires. Any similar empire which arose, filled with pride at itself, could thus be looked on as the continuation of ‘Babylon', without being the whole of it. So John in Revelation sees the last great world empire in terms of Babylon. It must be so, for all that Babel and Babylon stood for has to be destroyed.
No doubt, looking from his standpoint, if asked, John would have thought in terms of Rome as probably representing that empire (how could he not?), but he says enough to demonstrate that he did not limit it to Rome, as we shall see. The very idea and nature of Babylon has to be destroyed, and it is nowhere stated to be only Rome.
In the next chapter the destruction of Babylon comes slightly before the end. But that is due to the symbolism. ‘Babylon' has first to be dealt with, destroyed by those it sought to nurture, and then comes the final day of Judgment. The central feature in that final day is to be the defeat of Satan himself, and thus the destruction of Babylon the Great is first to be seen as accomplished at his hands. First Babylon, then Satan. Ironically He who raised her, destroys her, and then moves on to his own defeat. Satan is self-destructing. We must not literalise the detail too much for its purpose is theological to bring out the many aspects of the judgment and those involved around it.