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Babylon the Great: Seduction, Luxury, and the Blood of the Saints
Revelation 17:1–6 portrays “Babylon the Great” as a richly adorned prostitute seated on many waters and on a scarlet beast, intoxicating kings and nations and drunk with the blood of saints. Revelation draws on prophetic city-as-woman and harlot imagery to depict a corrupt, persecuting world power whose luxury and influence conceal spiritual unfaithfulness and violence.
Revelation’s Babylon develops the Babel/Babylon pattern of self-exalting human civilization organized around fame, power, and resistance to God, while later prophetic Babylon traditions remain the more immediate literary sources.
Nahum’s seductive, violent city-woman contributes to the biblical trajectory that culminates in Revelation’s harlot Babylon.
Peter’s closing greeting from “Babylon” belongs beside Revelation’s later symbolic Babylon language. The comparison helps explain why Rome became the dominant historic reading of 1 Peter 5:13 while preserving the fact that Peter never explicitly writes “Rome.”
Revelation's prostitute Babylon sitting on many waters with a golden cup directly reworks Jeremiah 51's Babylon imagery.
Revelation 17's beast with ten horns and its interpretation as kings directly draws on Daniel 7.
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This passage has 3 research dossiers examining ancient writings, historical interpretation, material evidence and specialist source comparisons. Full sources and explanations require Deep Study.