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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 18:5, her sins are piled up to heaven
Babylon's sins have reached heaven, as Jeremiah said Babylon's judgment reached to heaven and as Sodom's outcry rose to God.
Revelation 18:5, in every translation this tool compares.
A pile of unpaid bills eventually reaches a height no one can ignore. Jeremiah said Babylon could not be healed, because her judgment had reached to heaven and risen to the clouds. John says Babylon's sins are stacked as high as the sky. God has not forgotten what she did. Jeremiah's word judgment becomes John's word sins, the cause behind the sentence.
Something of Babylon's reaching up to heaven. The Greek of Jeremiah 51:9 says her judgment has drawn near to heaven (eis ouranon). Revelation 18:5 says her sins have reached up to heaven (achri tou ouranou). Genesis 18:20 speaks of Sodom's great outcry and very great sins.
Jeremiah says judgment; John says sins. Beale says Jeremiah put judgment, the effect of sin, for the sin itself; John goes back to the cause. John's verb (ekollethesan) means clung together or piled up, a different picture from Jeremiah's drew near. John adds that God remembered her wrongs.
Beale says the sins in heaven remind God to punish them. Because Babylon multiplied her sins, God multiplies his judgments to keep his justice. The call to leave her (18:4) makes sense: the reckoning has come.
Not a picture of God forgetting until reminded. Remembering sins is an Old Testament way of speaking of judgment (Psalm 109:14; Hosea 9:9), Beale notes.
Beale says appeal is again made to Jeremiah 51: Babylon's judgment has reached to heaven and is lifted up to the skies (51:9), with Genesis 18:20 and 19:13 also in view. Being lifted up was an idiom for an extreme level of corporate sin (Jonah 1:2; Ezra 9:6). He confirms the Jeremiah allusion from the neighboring allusions to Jeremiah 51:7 in 18:3 and 51:45 in 18:4, and reads the aorist verbs as prophetic perfects. Keener notes the Jewish belief that God stores up judgment until sin reaches its full measure (Genesis 15:16). The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cite Jeremiah 51:9, and the CSB Study Bible's cross-references give Jeremiah 51:9. Wright compares Lot near Sodom (Genesis 18). The Greek of Jeremiah 51:9 in the vault reads engiken eis ouranon to krima autes. The grade is drawn here: the setting is the same chapter of Jeremiah, the wording reworked.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 18:5
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 18:5
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 18:5
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 18:5
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 18:5
- Septuagint, Jeremiah 51:9, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 18:5
