Friday, December 6
Luke 22:54-71: If Simon Peter could deny Jesus, any one of us could do so. Simon, after all, had not believed himself capable of such a thing. “Even if all are made to stumble,’ he boasted, ‘yet I will not be” (Mark 14:29). He was so utterly resolved on the matter that, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the garden, Simon had attacked them with violence. Alas, he was neither the first man nor the last to confuse human excitement with divine strength, nor to mistake the pumping of adrenaline for the infusion of grace. Within a very short time after he swung his sword at the unsuspecting Malchus, we find Peter backing down embarrassed before the pointing finger of a servant girl.
The Holy Spirit took particular care that Christians throughout the ages would never forget that falling away remains a real possibility for any of them. In the words of yet another converted sinner, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12).
Revelation 14:1-13: Now we come again to the sealing of the followers of Christ, first spoken of in Chapter 7. With respect to the “following” of the Lamb (verse 4), of course, the image is found also in the Gospels. When Jesus calls on His disciples to “follow” Him, the context is the Cross. The Lamb to be followed is the Lamb of sacrifice (Mark 8:34-38; John 21:18-19).
There are three angels in this text, representing three dimensions of the final age, the proclamation of the Gospel, the judgment of God on the city of man, and the eternal, wrathful exclusion of idolatry. First, the angel of the everlasting Gospel (verse 6), whose mandate, like the mandate at the end of Matthew, is directed to all nations. These are all called to repentance and conversion to the true God (verse 7; cf. Acts 14:15). Remember that in John’s view, the judgment of God is now. The judgment of God takes place in the very proclamation of the Good News (cf. John 3:19; 18:37). The Gospel here is called eternal; it is the proclamation of the eternal mind of God, His eternal purpose of salvation, the “Mystery” of which the Epistle to the Ephesians speaks.
Second, the angel who proclaims the fall of Babylon (verse 8). This, too, pertains to the Gospel. In biblical thought, the fall of Babylon means that the true Israelites can now go home, because the exile is over. Babylon is whatever enslaves and alienates the people of God. Babylon is the city of false gods, the city that dares to raise up its tower against the face of God; it is the monument to man’s achievements without God. Babylon is the city where men do not understand one another, because each man, as it were, speaks his own private meaning. The downfall of this city certainly is Good News, which is the meaning of the word Gospel. Christians are called to leave Babylon (18:4).
Third, the angel who proclaims the eschatological outpouring of God’s wrath, to the exclusion of all idolatry (verses 9-11). This text is important because, like certain sayings of our Lord in the Gospels, it insists on the eternity of damnation. Unlike many modern men, the Bible believes that the definitive choice of evil lasts forever.
Saturday, December 7
Revelation 14:14-20: On the image of harvest as judgment, see Joel 4:13-14 (3:9-14). The Son of Man on the cloud is, of course, from the Book of Daniel, an image that Jesus interprets of Himself in each of the Synoptic Gospels.
Unlike ourselves, men in antiquity actually experienced harvesting with a sickle and treading grapes in a vat, both actions characterized by a distinct measure of violence. Even these relatively benign images of harvest season, therefore, strongly suggest that the “end of time” will be more than slightly daunting. It should not surprise us that the harvesting with a sickle and the trampling of a wine vat are associated with the feeling of God’s definitive wrath.
The harvesting and threshing of grain are violent activities. The latter is accomplished by pounding the grain repeatedly on a stone floor with a shovel or a flail, in order to separate it from the husks which enclose it. The discarded husks are called chaff. When this beating of the grain has been done, the thresher uses his shovel to throw it into the air, so that the wind will carry away the light and useless chaff, leaving the heavier kernels to fall once more to the threshing floor. This latter action is called winnowing.
Yes, threshing and winnowing are violent activities; they are likewise, if one may say so, very judgmental activities. Threshing and winnowing are emphatic, even ferocious ways of asserting “this, and not that.” The thresher addresses the grain and the chaff, as it were, “You stay put, but you get out of here.” The separation of the two things is truly final. The grain and the chaff grew up together, but they will never be together again.
Likewise, the association of anger with the treading of the grapes was hardly new (cf. Isaiah 63:1-6), and it will appear again (Revelation 19:13-15). The grape harvest arrives in September, as the seasonal period of growth comes to an end. It is natural to think of death at this time of the year.
The amount of blood in this text (verse 20) is rather dramatic. The Greek stadion being six hundred and seven feet, sixteen stadia is about two miles. A horse’s bridle is about five feet off the ground. Thus we are dealing with a great deal of blood. This must be one of the most unpleasant passages in the New Testament.
The rising pool of blood becomes a kind of Red Sea. Indeed, the following chapter will be full of imagery from the Book of Exodus: plagues, the cloud of the divine presence, the tent of testimony, Moses, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the destruction of the pursuers.
Sunday, December 8
Luke 1.26-38: The Holy Spirit is the active agent in the Incarnation, but this action is not forced on the young Galilean woman. Her assent and cooperation are required by the very nature of salvation. The most significant fact about Mary was her consent to God’s invitation. Absolutely everything else recorded in the four gospels depended on that consent. Without human consent there was no salvation. Without Mary’s response to the angel, we would still be in our sins. Without Mary’s response to the angel, there would be no Sermon on the Mount, no walking on the water, no healing on the Sabbath.
Apart Mary’s response to the angel, the blind man of Jericho would still be blind, the widow’s son at Nain would still be dead, and Zacchaeus would never have climbed the sycamore tree. The sisters of Lazarus would still be weeping at his tomb. All of these things came from Mary’s consent to the angel.
Revelation 15.1-8: Revelation 15:1-8: This shortest chapter in the Book of Revelation introduces the imagery of the seven bowls of plagues, which will be poured out in the next chapter.
The ocean of blood, with which the previous chapter ended, has now become a kind of Red Sea (verses 1-3), which also inserts the theme of the Exodus. This theme itself is appropriate to the outpouring of the plagues. Other components of the Exodus theme likewise appear in this chapter: the Song of Moses, the cloud of the divine presence, the tent of testimony, and so forth.
The “sea of glass”?(verse 2) we have already considered in Chapter 4. Beside this sea stand God’s people who have passed over it in the definitive Exodus. They are musicians—harpists to be exact—identical with the one hundred and forty-four thousand whom we saw with the Lamb in the previous chapter; there was harp music in that scene too.
These elect have “overcome,” the very thing to which John had called the seven churches in Chapters 2-3. They are now beyond the power of the beast to harm them.
John sees in heaven the tabernacle of testimony from the Book of Exodus, the traveling tent of the divine presence that Moses and the Israelites carried through the desert. This tent, however, is “heavenly,” which means that it is the original model, the very pattern that Moses copied (Exodus 25:9,40; ?Acts 7:44; Hebrews 8:5).
Since the tent is a place of worship, we are not surprised that John sees seven angels coming out of it, clothed in priestly vestments (verse 6; cf. Exodus 28:4; 39:29), very much as Jesus was clothed in the inaugural vision (Revelation 1:12-13). ?
The tent itself is full of the cloud of the divine presence, the very cloud that led the Israelites through the desert of old. When that tent was dedicated in the desert, the divine cloud took up residence within it? (Exodus 40:34-38). That cloud later took residence in Solomon’s temple (I Kings 8:1-12), where Isaiah beheld it (6:1-4). In prophetic vision Ezekiel ?saw that cloud return to the second temple built in 520-516 (Ezekiel 44:4). ?
The hymn in verses 3-4 should be compared with Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple, as recorded in 2 Chronicles 6:14-42. Both prayers, to begin with, are offered “at the sea” (verse 2; 2 Chronicles 6:12-13). ?Both prayers thank God for His mighty works, invoke His righteous judgments, and request the conversion of all the nations. Finally, in response to each prayer, fire comes down from heaven (verses 5-8; 2 Chronicles 7:1-2).
Monday, December 9
Revelation 16.1-11: Three of these four plagues are right out of the arsenal of Moses. Sores on the flesh of the bad guys (verse 2) were his sixth plague. As in the account in Exodus, the intent of this plague is that the idolaters should repent, but in neither case does it happen. The second and third plagues here (verses 3-4)—the changing of water into blood, are identical to Moses’ first plague—which was regarded, we recall, as a rather easy plague, in the sense that even Pharaoh’s magicians could do it (Exodus 7:22).
Here in Revelation, these two plagues are related to the great bloodshed of persecution caused by the enemies of God’s people (verse 6; 16:5-7). This crying out of the altar puts one in mind of the earlier scene where the souls (that is, the blood) of the martyrs cried from the altar (6:9-10). In that earlier scene the saints prayed for justice to be done on earth, for the righteousness of God to be vindicated in history. Now, in the present instance, the voice from the altar praises God that such justice has been done, that God’s fidelity has been made manifest.
The fourth plague does not appear in Exodus at all; Moses had been able to blot out the sunlight, but not even he was able to make the sun hotter. Even this plague, nonetheless, does not bring the idolaters to repentance (verse 9).
The final three bowls of plagues stand parallel to two other biblical texts: the plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus and the trumpets from earlier in the Book of Revelation.
The darkness of the fifth bowl (verse 10) corresponds to the ninth plague in the Book of Exodus (10:21-29).
Psalm 101 (Greek & Latin 100): A house is an intentionally structured reality; it is quite different from dwelling in a cave or abiding under the branches of a tree. A house is designed; it is shaped according to a pattern, and the integrity of the house depends on its adherence to principles and laws. And what is true of the house is true likewise of the household, which is also structured according to principles and laws.
A household, moreover, is “hierarchical,” a Greek word indicating that its structure, its ordering, is sacral and stands under the aegis of heavenly prerogative. Founded on divinely sanctioned authority, families are hierarchical realities. Family homes are eminently prescriptive institutions, the loci of inherited wisdom and the transmission of identity and culture. It is in homes that we learn to speak, and therefore to think. It is in homes that we learn to relate to other people and are thus cultured into human beings.
Proper, godly governance of one’s house is called “economics,” another Greek word that literally means “house law.” Perhaps most often understood nowadays solely in terms of the material resources of a household, economics certainly means a great measure more. A house is a human institution, after all, and a properly human existence involves dimensions far beyond the maintenance of physical and material conditions. If man is truly to be man, he does not live by bread alone. Indeed, with respect to those material and physical things needed for the household, our unique Economist affirmed that, if we will seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice, all these other things would be given to us as well. The standing or falling of houses has less to do with the material than with the moral, for the pursuit of justice is the true foundation of a house.
So, what sorts of things are banished from this well-ordered house? “Transgressions” and “any unlawful deed.” And who will not be welcomed in this house? The one “who slanders his neighbor in secret.” And just who will not be invited to sit at table in this house? “The man of proud eye and greedy heart.” This is not, in other words, an “open house”; the door thereto is narrow, and there are specified conditions for entrance. A house is a measured structure, and there is no such thing as measure without the acceptance of limits.
The house in this psalm is also, of course, the house of God, the great hall of the supper of the Lamb, to which, once again our Economist tells us, many are called but few are chosen. This psalm describes what it means not to be clothed in that proper wedding garment, the wearing of which saves a man from being ejected into the outer darkness: “No perverse heart has been my companion. . . . The man who speaks unjust things will not abide before my eyes.”
Tuesday, December 10
Isaiah 45: It is truly remarkable that God spoke of a pagan ruler, a Persian emperor, as “My anointed Cyrus” (Isaiah 45:1) and called him “My shepherd” (44:28). Perhaps the extraordinary distinction accorded to Cyrus by these references is set in greater relief if we recall that the Hebrew word for “anointed” is messiah (in Greek christos) and that when God otherwise speaks of “My Anointed” in the Old Testament, the reference is to David (Psalms 132 [131]:17). The designation of Cyrus as “my shepherd,” likewise, puts the attentive reader in mind of David (cf. 2 Samuel 5:2; Psalms 78 [77]:71). Who, then, was this Cyrus, of whom the Lord God speaks in these messianic and covenantal terms?
He was Cyrus II of Anshan, an ancient territory found in modern Iran; it lies to the northeast of the Fertile Crescent, just under the Caspian Sea. After the fall of Nineveh in 612, Anshan, traditionally subject to the Assyrians, became a vassal state of the Medes. In 550 Cyrus II, defeated the Medes, thus becoming ruler of the entire empire of the Medes and Persians. In order to accomplish this, he had accepted the help of the Babylonians, who did not sufficiently reflect that Cyrus would soon prove to be a greater threat than the Medes themselves had been.
When this notion did finally dawn on the Babylonians, they promptly formed a defensive pact with Lydia, a kingdom situated in the west of the large peninsula we now call Turkey. Before invading Babylon, therefore, Cyrus decided to attack Lydia. Accordingly, the king of Lydia, Croesus, having received assurances of military help from Egypt and Sparta, prepared to move east against Cyrus.
Prior to making that move, however, King Croesus determined to seek an oracular word from the god Apollo, whose shrine was at Delphi, and from other oracular sources (Herodotus 1.46-47). It was apparently in reference to all this oracular activity that the Book of Isaiah commented that God “frustrates the designs of babblers and drives diviners mad” (44:25).
On the strength of what Croesus learned, or (alas!) thought he learned, from Apollo, he prepared to attack Cyrus. At the time, many predictions were being made about the struggle soon to ensue (Herodotus, 1.53-54; Isaiah 40:8; 47:12-13; 55:10-11). Cyrus himself did not wait for Croesus to arrive. In the winter of 546 he launched his own attack, catching Chroesus by surprise, taking his capital city of Sardis, and incorporating Lydia into his own growing empire.
The fall of Lydia struck panic in the Greeks (cf. Isaiah 41:5-6), who realized that rather soon they too would have to face the Persians. (This latter encounter would take place early in the following century, in the unforgettable battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea.) The panic of the Greeks, however, was nothing to that of the Babylonians!
To the Jews and other peoples oppressed by the Babylonians, however, the recent victory of Cyrus over Lydia portended their own deliverance, so they watched his military progress with no little excitement (cf. Isaiah 41:1-4). Over and over, Israel was told not to fear, because God was about to deliver them (41:8-15; 43:1,5; 44:8; 51:7,12; 54:4,14). They did not have to wait very long. On October 13, 539, Cyrus captured Babylon by a tactical maneuver that immortalized him in military history (Herodotus 1.190-191).
As we know from a record he left to posterity, an inscription on a clay barrel called the “Cyrus Cylinder,” this Persian ruler of Babylon promptly proclaimed himself a servant of the Babylonian sun god, Marduk. In the Bible, nonetheless, Cyrus is ever regarded as the historical instrument of the true God, Israel’s God. It was Cyrus who brought the Babylonian Captivity to an end in 538, authorizing the return of the Chosen People to their homeland, along with the return of the sacred vessels of Jerusalem’s temple, which he ordered to be rebuilt (2 Chronicles 36:22-23; Ezra 1:1-8; 4:3; 5:13-17; 6:3). Even as Holy Scripture describes the Emperor Cyrus in messianic terms otherwise associated with King David, he is rightly regarded as another type and foreshadowing of the true Messiah and Shepherd, Jesus the Lord, who delivers His people from a captivity more bitter than Babylon and builds for them a temple better than Solomon’s. He is the true Cyrus, the Lord’s Anointed and His Shepherd.
Wednesday, December 11
Revelation 17:1-6: John’s vision of the woman on the scarlet beast is better understood if one bears in mind certain features of his cultural and religious memory:
First, Israel’s prophetic tradition had fought against ritual prostitution, one of the standard religious practices of Canaanite religion, which Israel’s prophets for centuries struggled to replace. This tradition frequently spoke of idolatry under the metaphor of fornication, a metaphor further suggested by the prophetic perception of Israel as bound to God by a spiritual marriage. This perception is well documented in two prophets of the eighth century, Hosea and Isaiah.
Second, a century earlier Elijah had opposed the immoral cult of Baal, which was sponsored by the Phoenician princess Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab. For this reason, Jezebel came to personify, in Israel’s memory, the witch, the wicked woman of loose morals. As in the instance of Naboth’s vineyard, as well as the death of many prophets, she was also remembered as a woman responsible for the shedding of innocent blood; Elijah complained that she had put a price on his own head. All of this has been on John’s mind; he has already described a certain woman at Thyatira as a Jezebel (2:20-23). The memory of Jezebel is certainly part of the picture of John’s image of the woman on the scarlet beast.
Third, Israel’s wisdom tradition, especially as found in the Book of Proverbs, spoke of Wisdom as a man’s true bride, in intimacy with whom he was to spend his whole life. Opposed to this bridal wisdom was the “loose woman,” Dame Folly, personified in the prostitute. This opposition undoubtedly arose from the simple observation that a good marriage to the right woman teaches a man, if he is teachable, how to conduct his life well and wisely, whereas that same man is brought to ruin if he consorts with a meretricious woman. The whore, then, was as bad a figure in Israel’s wisdom literature as she is in the prophetic literature.
Fourth, John seems also influenced by certain infamous and profligate women in the more recent history with which he was familiar. In the previous century, for example, there had been the famous femme fatale, Cleopatra, while in his own lifetime John knew of Herodias, whose success in murdering John the Baptist surpassed even Jezebel’s efforts against Elijah.
Even more recent to John’s time there was Berenice, the daughter born to Herod the Great in A.D. 28. If any woman of John’s era could be seen as a whore of international fame, it was Berenice, of whose activities we know chiefly from the historian Josephus. By the year 48 she had been widowed twice, once from her own brother, to whom she bore two children. For several years she lived in incest with another brother, Agrippa II, in whose company we find her at the trial of St. Paul in Acts 25:13,22-23; 26:30.
Shortly after this, Berenice was married to King Polemo of Cilicia, but she did not stay long with him. During this period of her life she was mocked by the poet Juvenal (Satires 6). Later on, according to Tacitus (Histories 2.2) and Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars, “Titus” 7), she was the mistress of Titus, who was obliged to abandon her in order to become emperor, Dio Cassius tells us (66.15). When John described a “loose woman,” in short, none of his readers were at a loss to know what sort of woman he had in mind.
Fifth, the woman in this vision is certainly the personification of the city of Rome, sitting on her seven hills. John did not have to personify Rome; it was already done by Rome’s political endorsement of the goddess “Roma,” in whose honor John knew of temples at Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamos. In the east, Roma had also been assimilated with certain local and traditional fertility goddesses.
The woman here is not only a whore; she is also a drinker of innocent blood, in the tradition of Jezebel and Herodias, the latter remembered especially in the Asian churches as the one responsible for the death of their beloved John the Baptist. Clothed in scarlet and adorned with gold, she appears as a sort of queen, whom John calls Babylon, much in the style of Jeremiah 51:12-17, a text that must be read in connection with John’s vision.
Thursday, December 12
Luke 23.35-43: Referring to the two thieves who died on either side of Jesus, St. Mark records that “those who were crucified with Him reviled Him” (15:32).
At least they did so for some time. During the course of the afternoon, however, one of them came to think better of the matter, as he watched our Lord hang there in patience, praying for His enemies. St. Luke describes the scene:
Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him,
saying, “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.” But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said to Jesus, “Lord,
remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
This profoundly moving scene is best considered, I believe, within both its immediate and its wider context in the Gospel of Luke. Three considerations suggest themselves with respect to Luke’s immediate context.
First, this scene with the thieves is the second of three times that Jesus is pronounced innocent. The first pronouncement was made by Pilate and Herod (23:14–15), and the third will issue from the lips of the centurion under the Cross (23:47). This verdict of the second thief, then, is added to the chorus of those who profess Jesus to be executed unjustly (23:41).
Second, the blasphemy by the unrepentant thief is the third and culminating instance in which the crucified Jesus is reviled in identical terms. First, there were the Jewish rulers who challenged Jesus to save Himself if He was the Messiah (23:35). Then the Gentile soldiers defied Him to save Himself, if He was a king (23:37). Finally, the unrepentant thief challenges Jesus to save Himself, adding “and us” (23:39).
We observe that the same verb, “save” or sozein, is used in all three
instances. The thief ’s reviling of the Lord thus forms a climax to the theme.
This sequence prepares for its foil, the scene’s culminating irony, in which only one man, the “good thief,” perceives the true path to salvation. He boldly grasps the salvific meaning of Jesus’ death. He is the “good thief,” indeed. In his final and defining act of theft, as it were, he extends his soul and clutches hold of eternal life.
Third, the encounter with the two thieves immediately precedes the death of Jesus, so that Jesus’ words to the second thief, promising to meet him that day in Paradise, are His last recorded words to another human being during His earthly life. The good thief represents the repentant Church gathered at the Cross, and the words that he hears are the last thing that Jesus has to say to His people on earth.
With regard to the wider context of Luke’s Gospel, there are two points particularly worthy of note in this story of the thieves. First, in drawing a contrast between the two men, Luke follows a pattern of antithesis that he has employed throughout his entire narrative. For instance, it is Luke who immediately opposes the Beatitudes with the Woes (6:20–26). It is Luke who elaborates in detail the differences between the Pharisee and the woman who came into his house (7:44–47).
It is Luke, likewise, who contrasts two men who went up to the temple to pray (18:9–14), the two sons of the same father (15:27–32), the rich man and the pauper (16:19–22), the faithful and unfaithful servants (12:35–39), the leper and his nine companions (17:17), the rich donors and the poor widow (21:1–2). Luke’s opposition between the two thieves, then, is the climax in a lengthy series of contrasts.
Second, Luke’s good thief is the final example of individuals who confess their guilt in the hope of obtaining divine mercy. Earlier instances include the Publican in the Temple (18:13), the Prodigal Son (15:21), and the repentant woman (7:36–50). In all of these examples, Luke’s narrative resonates with the Pauline emphasis on justification by faith. While in each of these examples the characters come to God with no justifying works of their own, this note is especially obvious in the thief on the cross, who turns to Jesus for mercy with literally no time left to do anything except repent and die.
Finally, this thief seems to ask for so very little. Sensing that our Lord is about to go to some destiny different from his own, he modestly pleads, “Remember me.” Ah, but “the grace shown is more abundant than the request made,” commented St. Ambrose. That very day the dying thief will be with Jesus. Here the Sacred Text employs the very expression, with, habitually used by St. Paul to describe eternal life.
Everlasting glory consists in being with the Lord (Romans 6:8; 2 Corinthians
5:8; Philippians 1:22–23; 1 Thessalonians 4:17; 5:10). It has been justly remarked that the good thief was canonized even before his death. In the words of St. John Chrysostom, “The thief, after doing so many evil things, entered into Paradise before everyone else, because he did not become discouraged.”
Friday, December 13
Revelation 18:1-20: This chapter deals with the city of sin, Babylon. It is not a prophecy of the downfall of Rome, such as that of A.D. 410 for instance, but an affirmation of hope for the downfall of what the pagan Roman Empire stood for.
In this vision a bright angel is seen; the very earth is illumined by his brightness. He appears with a message of concern for everyone who suffers oppression. His message (verse 2) is a direct quotation from Isaiah 21:9, and the imagery reminds us of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. The overthrow of this city is related to its place in the world of economics and commerce (verse 3), which John sees to be idolatrous (cf. Colossians 3:5).
John’s complaint against the economic and commercial idolatry of his time should be regarded against the background of the Bible’s prophetic literature, especially the prophecies of Amos and Isaiah, who spoke out frequently against the unjust practices of the business world that they knew: price fixing, monopoly, widespread unemployment, and so forth. Actually, such considerations are among the most common in the Bible.
John’s exhortation is that the believers get out of Babylon (verse 4), which is a direct quotation from Jeremiah 51:45. In that latter text the Jews were being exhorted to flee Babylon so as not to share in that ancient city’s peril. “Going out of” a place in order not to share its destruction is a theme that appears rather often in Holy Scripture. One thinks of Noah and his sons “getting out” by building the Ark, for instance. Lot and his family are led out of Sodom by the angels, and the Israelites flee Egypt, and so forth. In Chapter 12 the woman in heaven was given two eagle’s wings so that she could flee to the desert, and in the gospels Jesus tells His disciples to flee Jerusalem prior to its destruction. The spiritual message in all this is that those who belong to Christ must put some distance between themselves and those elements of existence that are inimical to man (cf. John 17:6,11,14-16).
And why is the fall of Babylon so bad? Because it is bad for business! Babylon’s overthrow means very low profits on the stock market. Verses 12-13 list various products that won’t sell any more. The “futures” in frankincense and chariots are down by sixteen points, and the shekel is in free fall!
Everyone calls it a “crisis,” and they are right. In fact, John uses the Greek word krisis (“judgment”) to describe it (verse 10). The crash, when it comes, comes quickly, in a single hour (verses 10,17,19). John says that those who weep over Babylon do so from a distance (verse 10). That is, Babylon has mourners, but no helpers. At this final hour of her career, no one will stand with her. No one wants to be associated with her. She was part of an order in which true friendship had no place. It was an order founded on shared interests and profits, not on love. Babylon is bewailed, not for herself, but for her lost investments. In short, the fall of Babylon is bad for business, and John borrows heavily from Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 27 in order to describe her plight.
We observe that John does not see Babylon fall. An angel tells him that it has already happened. John, that is to say, has no violent vision. There is no projection, here, of a vindictive spirit; it is, rather, the divine resolution of a cosmic problem. The fall of Babylon is not seen; it is revealed to John in a vision of light. John is not interested in revenge but in justice, in the setting right of the world order, and the right order of the world requires the overthrow of Babylon and idolatry, and materialism, and the hedonism for which Babylon stands as a symbol.