17:1-18. “…mystery, Babylon the Great,…”
“‘The inhabitants of the land of Israel hated the Babylonians; every one, therefore, carrying himself irreverently and indecently, they called by their name.'” [1:80]
On the other hand, there are references to the close relationship between Babylon and Israel. The dead of Babylon were mourned in Israel. [1:147]
Babylon is called ‘Sheshach’, in some instances in the Talmud. [1:147]
In the Samaritan Pentateuch, “Places of themselves pretty well known are there called by names absolutely unknown. Such are…Chatsphu, for Assyria, …Lilak, for Babel…Salmaah for Euphrates,…Naphik for Egypt….” [1:356]
The Jews who did not return from Babylon became so acculturated that they considered themselves more ‘Jewish’ than those that returned to Palestine.
“…The Babylonish dispersion was esteemed by the Jews the more noble, the more famous, and the more holy of any other. ‘The land of Babylon is in the same degree of purity with the land of Israel.’ ‘The Jewish offspring in Babylon is more valuable than that among the Greeks, even purer than that in Judea itself.’ Whence for a Palestine Jew to go to the Babylonish dispersion, was to go to a people and country equal, if not superior, to his own: but to go to the dispersion among the Greeks, was to go into unclean regions, where the very dust of the land defiled them: it was to go to an inferior race of Jews, and more impure in their blood; it was to go into nations most heathenized.” [3:318-9]
There was a synagogue in Tsippor called ‘The synagogue of Babylon’. Tsippor was one of the greatest cities of Galilee. The Talmudists mention the great university situated there. [1:163]
Towns were often called by the name of something characteristic of that town. “…very many towns in the land of Israel were called by the name of Rama, namely, because they were seated in some high place; by the same reason very many are called by the name of …Tyre, because they were built in a rocky place.” Is it not, then, by the same token, that the city of Jerusalem should be called ‘Babylon’ when it took on the characteristics of that wicked city? [1:175]
“… Peter was the minister of circumcision without the land of Israel, but James within….
“Peter was the minister among the circumcision of the purest name, namely the Hebrews, when John was among the Hellenists: yea, among the Hebrews of the purest blood, viz. the Babylonians: yea, among the circumcision taken in the largest sense, viz. among the ten tribes, as well as among the Jews….” [4:174] The Babylonian ‘jews’ called themselves ‘jews of the purest blood.’’
17:1, 15. “And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters:
15: “And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.”
“… ‘The sea of Apamia’ is reckoned the seventh among those seas that compass the land of Israel.…” Lightfoot goes on, however, to show that this word may be another spelling for the word ‘Pamias’ which referred to the collection of waters at the head of the Jordan river. Whatever it might have been, it reflects the Rabbinic tradition that Israel was encompassed by seven seas. [1:140].
17:2. “…the inhabitants of the earth…” (See 6:10 above).
17:5. “…Babylon the great, the mother of harlots….”
“…’Whosoever dwells in Babylon is as though he dwelt in the land of Israel.’ ‘All foreign land is called … heathen, except Babylon.’ Where by … Babylon they understand all those countries unto which the Babylonian captivity was carried and led away.
“And these passages they have of Syria. ‘In three respects Syria was like to the land of Israel. It was bound to tithes, and the seventh year; you might go thither in purity: and he that bought a farm in Syria was as though he bought one in the suburbs of Jerusalem.’ And again, ‘Syria as to some judgments is as the land of Israel.’ And again, ‘They bring out [the fruits of the seventh year] into Syria, but not without the land.’ Note, that Syria was not reputed ‘without the land,’ but in divers things to be united with Palestine. And many passages of that nature may be produced both of Syria and of Babylon.” [4:286-7]
“…Our Saviour calls the generation … an adulterous generation, Matt. xii.39: See also James iv.4, which indeed might be well enough understood in its literal and proper sense.
“‘From the time that murderers have multiplied amongst us, the beheading of the heifer hath ceased: and since the increase of adultery, the bitter waters have been out of use.’
“… ‘Since the time that adultery so openly prevailed under the second Temple, the Sanhedrim abrogated that way of trial by the bitter water; grounding it upon what is written, ‘I will not visit your daughters when they shall go a whoring, nor your wives when they shall commit adultery.'” [3:327]
“… It was the custom of the women, and that prescribed them under severe canons, that they should not go abroad but with their face veiled.
“‘If a woman do these things, she transgresseth the Jewish law; if she go out into the street, or into an open porch, … and there be not a veil upon her as upon all women, although her hair be rolled up under a hood.’ … And the tradition of the school of Ismael is, That the daughters of Israel are admonished hence not to go forth with their head not veiled.’ And ‘Modest women colour one eye with paint.’ The Gloss there is; ‘Modest women went veiled, and uncovered but one eye that they might see, and that eye they coloured.’ ‘One made bare a woman’s head in the street: she came to complain before R. Akiba, and he fined the man four hundred zuzees.” [4:231]
The great whore of Revelation 17 was not veiled, as she was drinking and also that her forehead was visible.
17:6. “And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus….”
Commenting on the apostles’ decree given in Acts 15:20, Lightfoot says: “… By the prohibition of blood, … I make no question but that caution is given against the eating of blood; which is more than once prohibited in the law: and there could hardly any thing except an idol be named that the Jew had a greater abhorrence for than the eating of blood.
“… The Jews distinguish between … the member of a living beast, and … the blood of a living beast. The former is forbidden by that, ‘Flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat.’ The latter also is forbidden, ‘Thou shalt not eat blood let out by the cutting of a vein, or any other way, from any beast,’ saith R. Chaninah …. ‘Wherefore is blood forbidden five times in Scripture? [Gen.ix.4, Lev.iii.17, vii.26, xvii.10, Deut.xii.16.] That the blood of animals that are holy might be included, and the blood of animals not holy, and the blood that was to be covered in the dust, and the blood … of the member of a living beast, … and the blood that is let out,’ by the cutting of a vein or otherwise. God himself adjudgeth him that eats blood to be cut off, Lev.vii.27, &c. But as to this matter there are wondrous nice and subtle questions and distinctions laid down in Maimonides; I will only transcribe this one: ‘As to the blood that is let out, and the blood of the members, viz. of the spleen, the kidneys, the testicles, and the blood gathered about the heart in the time of slaying, and the blood found about the liver, they are not guilty of cutting off: but whoever eateth of any of that blood, let him be scourged: because it is said, Thou shalt eat no blood. But concerning being guilty to cutting off it is said, Because the life of the flesh is in the blood. A man therefore is not guilty of cutting off, unless he eats of that blood with which the life goes out.'” [4:133-4]
17:9-10. “…the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth…”
This verse is often used to prove that Babylon the Great represents Rome, which was, according to tradition, built upon seven mountains. However, the traditions of the Jews was that Jerusalem was also built upon seven mountains. [1:50-1]
A more sane discussion of these ‘seven hills’ is given by Josephus. Lightfoot [1:50-7] interprets Josephus thus:
“The city itself…was built upon two hills, divided with a valley between, whereby, in an opposite aspect, it viewed itself; in which valley the buildings, meeting, ended….”
“Of these hills that, which contained the Upper City was by far the higher, and more stretched out in length: and because it was very well fortified, it was called by king David The Castle:…but by us it is called ‘the Upper Town.’“[The ‘Upper Town’ is identified as ‘the Castle of David’ and ‘Sion’ by Josephus. Lightfoot, 1:52.]
“….But the other, which is called Acra, bearing on it the lower town, was steep on both sides.”
“Against this was a third hill [Moriah], lower than Acra, and disjoined from it by a broad valley. But when the Asmoneans reigned, they filled up the valley, desiring that the Temple might touch the city; and they took the top of Acra lower, that the Temple might overlook it.”
Lightfoot goes on to say that Bezetha and Ophel were other little hills also. The fourth hill, counting Sion, Acra and Moriah as the first three, was Ophel, or Ophla, as mentioned in Neh. 3:26.
The fifth hill was called Bezetha, meaning ‘The New City,’ probably the outgrowth of the city by population expansion beyond the old walls. It was on the north of the tower of Antonia and helped to fill up “that space where Sion ended on the east, and was not stretched out so far as Acra was.”
Then there is the mysterious mention of ‘Millo’, (2 Chron. 32:5), which translators and interpreters have simply left in its original form, not fully understanding what it was. Lightfoot says: “…when in truth, Millo was a part of Sion, or some hillock cast up against it on the west side.” (p. 56). If it were indeed a hill/ock, then it would have been the sixth. There are so many references where valleys were filled up either to make a more level building place or to make a way to scale the walls in wartime that the millo, literally meaning ‘fulness, or that which fills’, may indicate where the top of one hill was pulled down into the valley to fill it up.
Where, then, could the seventh have been? If one must have a seventh literal hill for Jerusalem to occupy, the best candidate is Mount Calvary, or Golgotha, on the outskirts of the city, and indeed outside the gates. Lightfoot relates it to the hill of Gareb. [1:60] It is mentioned in Jer. 31:39 as a hill near Jerusalem to which the city would expand in time to come.
It is my opinion that none of these is that ‘Holy Hill’ as mentioned in Psalm 15:1 and numerous other references. Psalm 48:2 describes Zion as: “Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.” In context, this ‘mountain’ is ‘the mountain of his holiness’. (Psalm 48:1).
Isaiah 57:15: For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name [is] Holy; I dwell in the high and holy [place], with him also [that is] of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. (Isaiah 57:15) That “High and holy place” is not literal, it is spiritual.
Many of the prophets were carried away into a “high mountain.” (Ezek. 40:2; Revelation 21:10.) Jesus took His disciples into a “high mountain,” Matt. 17:1. In fact, the devil took Jesus up into “an exceeding high mountain,” (Matt. 4:8). There are many references to “the mountain of the Lord/God”. In Genesis 22:14, it is Mount Moriah. In Exodus 18:5, it was literally Mount Sinai, also called Horeb. In Isaiah 27:13 the Holy Mount is at Jerusalem.
Jesus answered the question of the woman at the well as to the proper place to worship: “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father…But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worhip Him in Spirit and in Truth.” (John 4:21-24). This is the definitive answer. The Mountain of God is that spiritual height in which we meet and commune with God. It is not to be found on maps of the literal world.
17:14: “… And they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful.”
Davies,[82]: “… Secondly, the growth of belief in the eternal relation between Israel and God…. In the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha we can trace an ever-increasing emphasis on the unique relation between Israel and her God. Israel is the Lord’s portion;8 the sole abode of Wisdom (Law);9 the chosen of Yahweh,10 which shall never be cut off; the everlasting heritage of Yahweh;11 his first-born;12 and the same ideas persist down to the first century AD Thus in Psalms of Solomon we read:
Thou didst choose the seed of Abraham before all the nations
And didst set Thy name upon us O Lord
And Thou wilt not reject us for ever.13“
{Note 8, p. 82: “Cf. Ecclus. 17.17f.; Ap. and Ps. vol. II, p. 376. Note 9: “Ecclus. 24.4-10.” Note 10: “Ecclus. 47.22; Judith 7.30.” Note 11: “Susanna 16.5.” Note 12: “Susanna 19.29.” Note 13: “Psalms of Sol. 9.17f.”}
17:16. “…shall make her desolate…”
“…All they of whom it is said,…These shall be …without children; they shall have no children. And those of whom it is said…They shall die without children; they bury their children.” [2:13-14]
17:18. “And the woman that you saw is that great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth.”
“….That was called a great city in which was a synagogue….’That is a great city in which are ten men at leisure to pray and read the law.'” [1:186]
“If there be less than this number, behold, it is a village.” [2:89]
Jesus had told his disciples that “nation shall rise against nation”, and the historians of that day bear out the fact that the entire Roman Empire was wracked with wars: “Besides the seditions of the Jews, made horridly bloody with their mutual slaughter, and other storms of war in the Roman empire from strangers, the commotions of Otho and Vitellius are particularly memorable, and those of Vitellius and Vespasian, whereby not only the whole empire was shaken and…'(they are the words of Tacitus), the fortune of the empire changed with the change of the whole world, but Rome itself being made the scene of battle, and the prey of the soldiers, and the Capitol itself being reduced to ashes. Such throes the empire suffered, now bringing forth Vespasian to the throne, the scourge and vengeance of God upon the Jews.” [2:311]