Texts in Conversation
Baruch describes the city that oppressed Jerusalem as burned and left empty, a ruined place where demons live. Revelation echoes this in its vision of Babylon’s fall, portraying it as a desolate wasteland inhabited by evil spirits after divine judgment.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Baruch 4:35
Deuterocanon
30 Take courage, O Jerusalem, for he who called you by name will comfort you. 31 Miserable are those who afflicted you and rejoiced at your fall. 32 Miserable are the cities which your children served. Miserable is she who received your sons. 33 For as she rejoiced at your fall and was glad of your ruin, so she will be grieved at her own desolation. 34 And I will take away her pride in her great multitude and her boasting will be turned into mourning. 35 For fire will come upon her from the Everlasting for many days; and she will be inhabited by demons for a long time. 36 O Jerusalem, look around you toward the east, and behold the joy that comes to you from God. 37 Behold, your sons come, whom you sent away. They come gathered together from the east to the west at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing in the glory of God.
Date: 200–50 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Revelation 18:2
New Testament
1 After these things I saw another angel, who possessed great authority, coming down out of heaven, and the earth was lit up by his radiance. 2 He shouted with a powerful voice: “Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great! She has become a lair for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detested beast. 3 For all the nations have fallen from the wine of her immoral passion, and the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have gotten rich from the power of her sensual behavior.” 4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, so you will not take part in her sins and so you will not receive her plagues, 5 because her sins have piled up all the way to heaven and God has remembered her crimes.
Date: 92–96 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... It is also possible that there is an allusion here to Jeremiah 51:37 (LXX 28:37), a possibility made more likely by the presence of seven other allusions to Jeremiah 51 in Revelation 18 ... The same topos is used to gloat over the destruction of Tyre in Isaiah 23:1 and Edom in Isaiah 34:11–15 (nb. that Edom eventually became a code name for Rome in Jewish tradition; see 4 Ezra 6:7–10; Genesis Rabah 65.21). The emptiness and aridity of the location of a city punished by Yahweh is mentioned in Jeremiah 50:12; 51:43. In Baruch 4:35 it is predicted that the enemy of Israel will be destroyed by fire and inhabited by demons. Demons were associated with unsettled and desolate places (Isaiah 13:21; 34:14; Tobit 8:3; Matthew 12:43 = Luke 11:24; Mark 5:10). The threat of desolation is a frequently occurring theme in prophetic denunciations of nations and cities, including Judah and Jerusalem ..."
David E. Aune, Word Biblical Commentary: Revelation 17-22 (Dallas: Word, 1998), 146.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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