Isaiah 21:9

Hebrew Bible

5 Arrange the table, lay out the carpet, eat and drink! Get up, you officers, smear oil on the shields! 6 For this is what the Lord has told me:“Go, post a guard! He must report what he sees. 7 When he sees chariots, teams of horses, riders on donkeys, riders on camels, he must be alert, very alert.” 8 Then the guard cries out: “On the watchtower, O Lord, I stand all day long; at my post I am stationed every night. 9 Look what’s coming! A charioteer, a team of horses.” When questioned, he replies, “Babylon has fallen, fallen! All the idols of her gods lie shattered on the ground! 10 O my downtrodden people, crushed like stalks on the threshing floor, what I have heard from the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, I have reported to you.

Revelation 14:8

New Testament

6 Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, and he had an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language, and people. 7 He declared in a loud voice: “Fear God and give him glory because the hour of his judgment has arrived, and worship the one who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water!” 8 A second angel followed the first, declaring: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great city! She made all the nations drink of the wine of her immoral passion. 9 A third angel followed the first two, declaring in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and takes the mark on his forehead or his hand, 10 that person will also drink of the wine of God’s anger that has been mixed undiluted in the cup of his wrath, and he will be tortured with fire and sulfur in front of the holy angels and in front of the Lamb.

 Notes and References

"... In the book of Isaiah, most references to Babylon have to do with the Lord’s judgment on it. Babylon becomes the prototype of empires that are corrupted by their own power. This corruption leads to their demise. In Jeremiah, where Babylon (including Chaldea and Chaldeans) is mentioned sixty-nine times in chapters 50–51, the root of the corruption is arrogance (50:31-32; being “proud,” RSV). Martens is justified in seeing Babylon as a symbol of evil in the OT (272; see TBC). References to Babylon occur twelve times in the NT. In Matthew’s Gospel (1:11, 12, 17) and in the Acts of the Apostles (7:43), Babylon refers simply to the site of the deportation, after Jerusalem’s fall in 587 BC. In the other New Testament references, however, Babylon serves as a pseudonym for Rome. These references are all in the Revelation of John (except one reference in 1 Peter 5:13). The angelic announcement of Babylon’s (Rome’s) fall in Revelation 14:8 and 18:2 echoes the announcement of Babylon’s fall in Isaiah 21:9 ..."

Friesen, Ivan Isaiah (p. 291) Herald Press, 2009

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