Revelation 17 explained: Babylon Rides the Beast

The great prostitute (vv. 1-2)

Old Testament prophets pictured trading cities like Tyre and Babylon as prostitutes, so the kings' sexual sin with her stands for sharing in her wealth, trade and false worship. 'Many waters' echoes words once spoken to ancient Babylon on its rivers (Jeremiah 51:13), and verse 15 explains them as the peoples she rules.

The woman on the beast (vv. 3-6)

Dressed in royal purple and jewels, she rides the beast from chapter 13, usually read as imperial power, and bears the name Babylon, a code name early Jews and Christians used for Rome. Being drunk on the blood of Jesus' followers means she has killed them, and the sight leaves John stunned.

The beast that returns (vv. 7-8)

The angel says the beast existed, then did not, and will come again from the abyss (the deep home of evil) before going to destruction. This sounds like a dark copy of the book's description of God as the one who is, was and is to come (1:8), and many scholars link it to a rumor that the dead emperor Nero, who had killed Christians, would return, while others see evil that seems beaten but keeps rising.

Seven hills, seven kings (vv. 9-11)

Rome was famous as the city on seven hills, so most scholars think the woman is the Rome of John's day, though some read the hills as symbols of power in general. The seven kings may be emperors or empires, but no list fits neatly, and no one agrees who the eighth king, somehow connected to the seven, is meant to be.

Ten kings fight the Lamb (vv. 12-14)

The ten horns are rulers who share the beast's power for 'one hour,' meaning a short time. Who they are is uncertain, and ten may simply mean a full number. They make war on the Lamb, the book's name for Jesus as the one who was sacrificed, and he defeats them as King of kings, with his faithful followers beside him.

Destroyed by her allies (vv. 15-18)

The beast and its allies turn on the woman, stripping, devouring and burning her, a brutal image borrowed from the prophets (Ezekiel 16 and 23) of the ruling city (v. 18) destroyed by its own partners. The text says God moved them to do it (v. 17), and many readers find this violence against a female figure hard to read.

Key verse: Revelation 17:18

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether Babylon is the Rome of John's day, a city or world system still to come before the end, or a picture of any power that seduces and persecutes in every age; in the past some Protestants also identified her with the Roman Catholic Church, a view most scholars today, Protestant and Catholic alike, reject.

Something to think about

What makes wealth and power so attractive that people go along with them, even when they can see who is getting hurt?