‘And one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me saying, “Come with me. I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication”.'
The idea of nations and cities as prostitutes is common in Scripture. Nahum, speaking of Nineveh speaks of ‘the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts who sells nations through her whoredoms and families through her witchcrafts' (Nahum 3:4; Isaiah 1:21). Isaiah says of Tyre, ‘she shall return to her hire and play the harlot with all the kingdoms of the world on the face of the earth' (Isaiah 23:17). Samaria and Jerusalem are depicted as harlots because they doted on idolatry and made treaties with idolatrous nations (Ezekiel 23:5; Ezekiel 23:7; Ezekiel 23:11; Ezekiel 23:16). And all these idolatries were accompanied by sexual deviations and the occult. Thus the great prostitute (harlot) who sits on many waters is an idolater and partaker in uncontrolled sexual activity, just like the Jezebel of Revelation 2:20. And they will share the same fate.
‘Sits on many waters'. This was a prophetic description of Babylon, with its river and network of canals, it was the city which ‘dwells on many waters' (Jeremiah 51:13). Thus the prostitute represents idolatrous religion and its accompaniments as personified in the city of Babylon. Great Babylon is seen as the source of idolatry and unrestrained sexual proclivities, from Babel onwards, something which she is now exercising through Rome. Compare how the woman who represented wickedness was seen as carried into the land of Shinar, the land where Babylon was, for that was the ‘home' of wickedness (Zechariah 5:5-11 and see Genesis 10:10). But John stresses that the many waters also have a special significance in that they represent ‘peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues' (Revelation 17:15). Thus the woman has an insidious influence over many nations.
‘With whom the kings of the earth committed fornication.' They submitted to the requirements of the woman, and of the beast who demanded they follow the ways of the great prostitute. The dwellers on earth did so also for they ‘were made drunk with the wine of her fornication'. The controlling influence of Babylon and Rome and similar great cities reached out to the world seeking to turn men to themselves and to their own divinity rather than to God.