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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Revelation 17:1 - 17:1
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
I will show thee (deixō soi). Future active of deiknumi. It is fitting that one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls should explain the judgment on Babylon (Rev 16:19) already pronounced (Rev 14:8). That is now done in chapters Rev 17; 18.
The judgment of the great harlot (to krima tēs pornēs tēs megalēs). The word krima is the one used about the doom of Babylon in Jer 51:9. Already in Rev 14:8 Babylon is called the harlot. Pornēs is the objective genitive, “the judgment on the great harlot.”
That sitteth upon many waters (tēs kathēmenēs epi hudatōn pollōn). Note triple use of the article tēs. In Jer 51:13 we have eph' hudasi pollois (locative in place of genitive as here). Babylon got its wealth by means of the Euphrates and the numerous canals for irrigation. Rome does not have such a system of canals, but this item is taken and applied to the New Babylon in Rev 17:15. Nahum (Nah 3:4) calls Nineveh a harlot, as Isaiah (Isa 23:16.) does Tyre.