Lyrics · Revelation
Babylon Is Fallen
Revelation 17:1–18:24
LyricsPlaying next
About this song
About this song
This song belongs to the Revelation collection. One recording is available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.
- Bible book
- Revelation
- Collection
- Revelation
- Musical styles
- Alternative Rock
Named in this songBabylon
About the passage
Revelation 17: Babylon's allies become the agents of her fall
One of the bowl angels shows John Babylon as a richly adorned woman riding a scarlet beast. Purple, scarlet, gold, jewels, and pearls create a dazzling exterior, while her cup contains abominations and her intoxication is the blood of saints and Jesus' witnesses. The angel then interprets the imagery through waters, mountains, kings, and the beast's strange pattern of appearing, disappearing, and returning. Some details remain disputed, but the beast's destination does not: perdition. Ten kings unite their authority with him and make war against the Lamb, only to be overcome by the one called Lord of lords and King of kings. Then the alliance turns inward. The same horns that support the beast hate Babylon and destroy her. The Book of Revelation reveals the instability beneath her glamour: the powers that carry the city become the agents of its collapse within the larger fulfillment of God's words.
Study Revelation 17 in depthRevelation 18: Babylon's customers mourn a city heaven judges
Babylon's fall is announced as settled before the chapter allows kings, merchants, and seafarers to describe what the city meant to them. A heavenly voice calls God's people out of complicity with her sins, and her claim to permanent queenly security is answered by sudden death, mourning, famine, and fire. The mourners stand at a distance. Kings grieve lost luxury, merchants grieve vanished buyers, and sailors grieve a trading center whose wealth enriched them. Revelation's detailed cargo list finally reaches slaves and "souls of men," exposing human beings inside the inventory. Heaven then tells a different account. Babylon's end is vindication for apostles, prophets, and saints, and the city's sounds disappear one by one until music, crafts, mills, lamps, and wedding voices are gone. The Book of Revelation closes the chapter by naming the blood found in her, a cost none of the commercial mourners included.
Study Revelation 18 in depth


