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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Revelation 17:1 - 17:1
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Rev 17:1-18. The harlot Babylon’s gaud: The beast on which she rides, having seven heads and ten horns, shall be the instrument of judgment on her.
As Rev 16:12 stated generally the vial judgment about to be poured on the harlot, Babylon’s power, as the seventeenth and eighteen chapters give the same in detail, so the nineteenth chapter gives in detail the judgment on the beast and the false prophet, summarily alluded to in Rev 16:13-15, in connection with the Lord’s coming.
unto me - A, B, Vulgate, Syriac, and Coptic omit.
many - So A. But B, “the many waters” (Jer 51:13); Rev 17:15, below, explains the sense. The whore is the apostate Church, just as “the woman” (Rev 12:1-6) is the Church while faithful. Satan having failed by violence, tries too successfully to seduce her by the allurements of the world; unlike her Lord, she was overcome by this temptation; hence she is seen sitting on the scarlet-colored beast, no longer the wife, but the harlot; no longer Jerusalem, but spiritually Sodom (Rev 11:8).