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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 17:16, they will hate the prostitute and leave her naked
The beast and the kings strip, devour and burn the prostitute, as Ezekiel foretold that Jerusalem's lovers would turn on her.
Revelation 17:16, in every translation this tool compares.
Partners in crime often end up turning on each other. Ezekiel warned faithless Jerusalem that her lovers would turn on her in hatred, strip her naked, take all she had and burn her houses. John says the ten horns and the beast will hate the prostitute, leave her ruined and naked, devour her body and set her on fire. Ezekiel's sentence on Jerusalem is carried out on Babylon by her own allies.
Former lovers who hate the harlot, strip her and burn. The Greek of Ezekiel 23:29 says they will deal with you in hatred (en misei) and you will be naked (gymne). Ezekiel 23:25 has fire devouring the rest. Revelation 17:16 says they will hate (misesousin) the prostitute, make her naked (gymnen) and burn her with fire (en pyri).
Ezekiel's harlot is Jerusalem, judged by God through Babylon. John's harlot is Babylon, destroyed by the beast and kings. Ezekiel has noses and ears cut off; John has her flesh eaten, which recalls Jezebel's end (2 Kings 9:36), Beale says. John adds that God put it into their hearts (17:17).
Beale calls this the mystery: evil destroys itself, the political side of the world system turning on its economic and religious side. Wright and Keener note that empires' allies often turn on them. God uses even the beast to carry out his word.
Not a quotation of Ezekiel. John follows the order of Ezekiel's scene, hatred, stripping and burning, without repeating its words, and he adds that God put it into their hearts.
Beale says the harlot's ruin is sketched on the outline of Ezekiel 23:25-29, 47, apostate Jerusalem's judgment: survivors devoured by fire, clothes stripped, dealt with in hatred, left naked and bare, houses burned. Ezekiel 16:37-41 adds lovers gathered against her, her house of harlotry broken down and her houses burned, and Ezekiel 23:31-34 even gives her a cup. Hosea 2:3, Jeremiah 41:22 in the Greek, and Nahum 3:4-5 about Nineveh add to the picture. Eating her flesh recalls Jezebel (2 Kings 9:36), whom Beale compares to the harlot in eleven ways. He reads three metaphors combined: a whore exposed, a victim devoured, a city burned. The ESV Study Bible cites Ezekiel 16:39-41, and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cites Ezekiel 16:35-42 and 23:28-30. The CSB Study Bible's cross-references list Ezekiel 23:22-35, and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible Ezekiel 16:39 and 23:26-29. Keener cites Ezekiel 23:9. Walton notes the Assyrian laws that let a husband disfigure an unfaithful wife. The grade is drawn here: the sequence of hatred, stripping and burning follows Ezekiel 23.
The sources weigh the Jerusalem background differently. Beale grants that the imagery once described Israel and that unbelieving Israel and the apostate church belong to Babylon in part. Some commentators, he reports, limit the harlot to apostate Israel, and Chilton reads Rome's destruction of Jerusalem here; Beale rejects both. Heiser and Keener see no Jerusalem reference in the harlot at all. MacArthur reads the Antichrist and his ten under-rulers turning on the false religious system they used to unite the world, plundering it and taking all worship for themselves, as God intends.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 17:16 and 17:17
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 17:15-16
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 17:16
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 17:16-17
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 17:16
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 17:16
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Ezekiel 23:25
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 17:9-18
- Septuagint, Ezekiel 23:25, 23:29 and 16:39, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 17:16
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 17:16
