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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 14:8, the wine that made the nations drunk
Babylon making the nations drink the wine of her passion comes from Jeremiah 51, where Babylon is a gold cup that made the whole earth drunk.
Revelation 14:8, in every translation this tool compares.
A host who keeps everyone's glass full can make a whole room forget to ask questions. In Jeremiah 51 Babylon is a golden cup held by the Lord. Everyone on earth got drunk from it, and the nations went mad. Then Babylon suddenly fell. John says Babylon got every nation drinking the wine of her lust for unfaithfulness. Beale reads the wine as the lure of wealth and security that numbs the nations.
Babylon makes the nations drink her wine, and then she falls. The Greek of Jeremiah 51:7 has from her wine the nations drank; John has from the wine she made all the nations drink.
Jeremiah's Babylon is a cup in God's hand, God's tool of judgment. John's Babylon serves her own wine, of her passion for immorality, which the prophets used of unfaithful Israel. John drops the gold cup here and keeps it for 17:4.
Beale reads the wine as Babylon's offer of economic security for those who join her idolatry. Once drunk, people cannot resist her and do not fear judgment. In verse 10 God answers with his own cup.
Not mainly about drink or sex. Beale and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible read the sin as idol worship and selling out for money, as chapter 18 shows.
Beale says the metaphor of drunkenness comes from Jeremiah 51:7-8, joined with Jeremiah 25:15-16, which is also used in 14:10. He notes Jeremiah's madness comes from terror at Babylon's oppression, and he cites Hosea 4:11-12, where harlotry and wine take away understanding, and Isaiah 23 on Tyre as a harlot paid by the nations. Keener says the allusion here is to Jeremiah 51:7. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible notes Jeremiah warns God's people to flee Babylon. The CSB Study Bible cross-references Jeremiah 51:7-8, and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cites Jeremiah 51:7. The grade is drawn here: the picture is Jeremiah's, the wording John's own.
Some read the phrase as the wine of God's wrath on her immorality, Beale reports, but he rejects that as anticipating verse 10 too early. The ESV Study Bible reads the passion as society's lure of prosperity and pleasure.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 14:8
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 14:8
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 14:8
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 14:8
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 14:8
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 14:8
- Septuagint, Jeremiah 51:7-8, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 14:8
