Revelation 18:20, rejoice over her, heaven

Jeremiah has heaven and earth rejoice; John keeps heaven and replaces earth with the saints, apostles and prophets, the new people of God, Beale says. Jeremiah's reason is that destroyers come from the north; John's is that God has judged Babylon for her treatment of them. The verb changes from future to command.

Beale says the joy is not revenge but delight in God's justice, which shows the saints' faith was right. It answers the martyrs' cry of 6:10, and the rejoicing reverses the world's glee over the two witnesses (11:10). The section closes with Jeremiah 51:49 in 18:24, about blood shed.

Beale says the segment opens with an allusion to Jeremiah 51:48, heaven and earth shouting for joy over Babylon's destruction, and ends with Jeremiah 51:49, persecution as a reason for judgment. He says believers in general are meant, as heaven and earth in Jeremiah meant all Israel. He hears secondary echoes of Isaiah 44:23 and 49:13, where heaven rejoices at the release from Babylon, and of Deuteronomy 32:43 in the Greek, with its double call to rejoice because God avenges the blood of his sons. The difficult clause, God judged your judgment from her, may allude to a reading of Jeremiah 50:34 (27:34 in the Greek). He reports six possible translations. Keener reads it as God applying to Rome the verdict its courts passed on Christians. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cites Jeremiah 51:48. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible lists Deuteronomy 32:43, 2 Kings 9:7, Psalm 79:10 and Joel 3:21 for vengeance on those who shed his people's blood. Wright reads it as the law of malicious witness in Deuteronomy 19:16-20. The grade is drawn here: the verb and the object follow Jeremiah's Greek.