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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 19:2, the city that ruined the earth
Babylon is the one who corrupted the earth, in words that Beale traces to Jeremiah's oracle against Babylon, the mountain that destroys the whole earth.
Revelation 19:2, in every translation this tool compares.
A judge who reads out the same charge that sank an old gang is telling the new gang how its trial will end. Jeremiah called Babylon a destroying mountain that ruins the whole earth. John says the great prostitute corrupted the earth. Beale hears Jeremiah in this charge. Old Babylon fell for wrecking the world, and the new Babylon will fall for the same crime.
The verb to corrupt or destroy (phtheiro, diaphtheiro) with the whole earth as its object. In the Greek of Jeremiah 51:25 (28:25 in the Greek numbering) Babylon is the mountain that corrupts all the earth. John has the prostitute who corrupted the earth.
Jeremiah speaks to a mountain; John to a woman, the prostitute. Jeremiah's Greek doubles the verb, the corrupted mountain that corrupts. John uses the plain verb and adds by her immorality. Beale says the verb carries both senses, ruin by vice and ruin by violence, since the next clause speaks of blood. Revelation 11:18 uses the same Jeremiah wording for those who destroy the earth.
Old Babylon's fall becomes the pattern for the new one. Beale reads the new Babylon as the empire of John's day, which will meet the old city's end. The charge is twofold: it corrupted the nations with its ways and it destroyed the earth.
Not a quotation of Jeremiah's oracle. John borrows one charge, ruining the whole earth, and lays it on the great prostitute. He leaves out Jeremiah's picture of a mountain set on fire.
The vault's Greek of Jeremiah 51:25 reads to oros to diephtharmenon to diaphtheiron pasan ten gen, the corrupted mountain that corrupts all the earth. Revelation 19:2 has hetis ephtheiren ten gen en te porneia autes. Beale says both 11:18 and 19:2 depend on this verse, which he calls an almost identical phrase used of historical Babylon's judgment. Keener points instead to Jeremiah 51:48-49, heaven rejoicing over Babylon's fall, for the same vindication theme. The CSB Study Bible's table of Jeremiah in Revelation links Jeremiah 51 to Revelation 14, 18 and 21 in several places, though not to this verse. The grade is drawn here by Beale's definitions: a phrase traceable to one oracle, with a shared verb but not identical wording. Beale's category is analogical use: old Babylon as the pattern for the new.
Beale and Keener read Babylon in chapters 17 to 19 as the whole world system set against God, and Beale sees it first in the Roman empire of John's day. MacArthur reads Babylon as the Antichrist's kingdom across the world, at once political, economic and religious, still to come, with a capital city at its center. He says it is not the old city on the Euphrates, and that no city in history so far fits John's details.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 19:2
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 19:2
- CSB Study Bible, Allusions to Jeremiah in Revelation (table at Jeremiah 51)
- Septuagint, Jeremiah 51:25 (28:25), Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 19:2
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), notes on Revelation 14:8, 17:5 and 17:18
