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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 18:24, in her was found the blood of prophets and saints
Babylon falls because the blood of the saints and of all the slain is found in her, as Jeremiah said Babylon must fall for Israel's slain and the slain of all the earth.
Revelation 18:24, in every translation this tool compares.
A crime scene is closed only when the evidence is found. Jeremiah said that as Babylon made Israel's dead fall, so the dead of the whole world would fall in Babylon. John gives the last reason for Babylon's ruin. The blood of prophets, of God's people and of everyone killed on earth was found in her. The city that hid nothing will be found no more, because blood was found in her.
Babylon held to account for the slain of Israel and of all the earth. The Greek of Jeremiah 51:49 has the slain of Israel and the slain of all the earth (pases tes ges). Revelation 18:24 has the blood of prophets and saints. It adds everyone slain on the earth (epi tes ges).
Jeremiah speaks of Babylon's fall matching the fall of the slain; John speaks of blood found in her. Jeremiah's victims are Israel's; John's are prophets and saints. John adds the verb was found, playing on the refrain will never be found of 18:21-23, Beale says. Nahum 3:1 calls Nineveh a city of blood; John fixes that charge on Babylon.
Beale says Nineveh and Babylon, both judged for bloodshed, foreshadow the end of the last corrupt world system. Nothing will be found in her again, because her guilt was found in her. The verse answers the souls under the altar (6:10).
Not Jeremiah's verse repeated. Jeremiah counts Israel's slain. John counts prophets, saints and all the slain on earth, and says their blood was found in her.
Beale says the city fell for the same reason as Nineveh, which was skilled in sorcery and a city of blood (Nahum 3:1, 4). Historical Babylon came to an end because of Israel's slain (Jeremiah 51:49a), and 51:49b, which speaks of the slain of the whole earth falling, probably helped shape 18:24b, with secondary echoes of Ezekiel 24:7 and Matthew 23:35, 37. The section opened with Jeremiah 51:48 in 18:20 and closes with 51:49. He reads blood and death as figures for all persecution. Keener cites Jeremiah 2:34 and Matthew 23:35. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says Babylon would fall for killing God's people, as she had killed many throughout the earth (Jeremiah 51:49), and the CSB Study Bible notes she bears the guilt of all the martyrs. The grade is drawn here: the slain of all the earth is Jeremiah's phrase.
Keener notes that Rome took on the guilt for the slaughter as the present form of the oppressing empire. Beale reads the blood as every kind of persecution by the world system, foreshadowed by Nineveh and old Babylon. MacArthur reads the blood as the atrocities that the religious and commercial systems of the coming Babylon will commit against God's people, which God will avenge (19:2).
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 18:20 and 18:24
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 18:24
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 18:24
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 18:24
- Septuagint, Jeremiah 51:49 and Nahum 3:1, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 18:24
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 18:24
