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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 17:3, into a wilderness
John sees Babylon in a wilderness though she sits on many waters, because Isaiah 21 joins wilderness and sea in an oracle on Babylon's fall.
Revelation 17:3, in every translation this tool compares.
A riddle that seems to contradict itself often hides a clue. The woman sits on many waters, yet John is taken to a wilderness to see her. Isaiah 21 opens with an oracle about the wilderness of the sea and goes on to cry that Babylon has fallen. By putting desert and water together, John points to that oracle. The scene is about Babylon.
A wilderness (eremos) tied to a vision of Babylon's fall. The Greek of Isaiah 21:1 heads the oracle the vision of the wilderness (eremou). Revelation 17:3 has into a wilderness (eis eremon). Isaiah 21:9 has fallen, fallen is Babylon, which Revelation repeats in 14:8 and 18:2.
In Isaiah the vision comes out of the desert. John, by contrast, is brought into the desert to see his. The Hebrew of Isaiah 21:1 reads midbar yam, wilderness of the sea, joining desert and water; the Greek in the vault has only wilderness. John's waters come from Jeremiah 51:13 (17:1). He sets the two images side by side without explaining them.
Beale says Isaiah 21:1 alone joins desert and sea and ties them to Babylon, and Revelation 17 does the same. The desert is a place of evil spirits and judgment. Babylon herself will become a desolate haunt (18:2). Heiser reads both pictures as anti-Eden: the desert where you die and the sea where no one can live.
Not a geography mistake. Beale calls it symbolic geography, and Heiser and Keener also read the clash of water and desert as deliberate.
Beale says being taken into the desert alludes to Isaiah 21:1-2, a vision coming from the desert. It is not coincidental, he argues: Isaiah 21:1-10 is a vision of judgment on Babylon, and fallen, fallen is Babylon (21:9) appears in 14:8 and 18:2. Isaiah 21:1 alone joins desert and sea in its heading, in the Hebrew and some Greek copies. Later Jewish writings read the sea and wilderness of Isaiah 21:1 as the place the beastly kingdoms of Daniel 7:3 would rise from (Midrash Rabbah on the Song of Songs 3.4). Beale grants Beckwith's point that a desert is a common place for visions but finds more here. The Hebrew of Isaiah 21:1 reads massa midbar yam; the Greek in the vault reads to horama tes eremou, the vision of the wilderness. Walton notes the Hebrew may mean wilderness by the sea, the marshland of southern Mesopotamia near Babylon. Keener suggests the woman who thought she sat on many waters would end desolate like the desert. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cites Isaiah 21:9. The grade is drawn here: Beale says allusion, and the pairing of desert and sea is Isaiah's.
Heiser reads Beale and McDonough: John takes two items from Isaiah 21, verses 1 and 9, and uses both, because only there are the desert and the fall of Babylon found together. That tells readers the subject is Babylon, not Jerusalem. He adds Isaiah 17:12-13, which Beale does not mention, where many nations roar like many waters. The desert and the sea, he says, are both anti-Eden: places of death, a recipe for chaos.
Beckwith, as Beale reports, treats the desert as a common setting for visions with no special meaning. Beale reads it as a place of judgment and evil, though also of the saints' protection, as in 12:6. The ESV Study Bible reads it as a place of protection where John can see through Babylon's beauty. Keener links it to the woman's coming desolation. MacArthur says the Spirit carried John to a lonely, desolate wasteland, perhaps so that he could understand the vision better.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 17:3a
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 17:3
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 17:3
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 17:3
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Isaiah 21:1
- Septuagint, Isaiah 21:1 and 21:9, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Hebrew text of Isaiah 21:1, Miqra according to the Masorah (Sefaria)
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 17:3
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 17-18: The Fall of Babylon the Great, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 17:3
