Notes on the book of Revelations/Chapter 17

by John Nelson Darby

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The apostle is now called away to a fuller description of the woman and the beast, not called up to heaven at all now, for her place and her judgment are on earth. He is called by one of the angels or messengers of judgment, that had the seven vials of the wrath of God. These angels had the character of perfect righteousness both Divine and human—the golden girdle in which the certain energy and pure power of Divine righteousness is maintained and vindicated—and white robes, in which the spotlessness of human sanctity and faultlessness, as of God, is expressed. One of these now comes to shew the prophet the judgment of the great whore that is seated, in her malignant influence, on the masses of peoples. That is, the revelation is made according to the character and estimate of this judgment.

The interpretation of this chapter is clearly of the greatest possible importance, as to the form of the corporate power of man, as apart from God, and setting up for independence of Him in the latter days. However, the judgment (though much information be given of her, and of the beast that is found to carry her) is definitely of her in one character—the great whore. She is judged as such, though much thereon depends; and this f certainly conclude to be mainly her ecclesiastical character, just as the bride, the Lamb’s wife, with whom she is in eminent contrast, is the Church; though heavenly glory be her portion, as false earthly glory is the great whore’s. But the union with the Lamb is the real distinction of the one; her meretricious conduct (ecclesiastical corruption) is of the other; doubtless the glory of the world is eminently and intimately associated with this. Had she not this in play, much of her grandeur and influence would be lost, and she would cease to have this character. Her union with the world was her whoredom. Babylon may have a king over it—so it is spoken of in the Old Testament; but this is not its character here—she rides the beast. In the Old Testament she is never, accordingly, spoken of as committing fornication; for in a certain sense, though perhaps, through him, an evil one, she belonged to the king of the earth: he had made her end builded her for his majesty and his glory;—here she rides on the beast, using him, though afterwards hated and impoverished, &c. by the ten kings. Babylon, of old, had deceived the nations by the multitude of her sorceries and her enchantments; but that is another thing:—evil or good, she belonged to the king of Babylon; she rose by him, and fell with him:—here she has no king, but lives in evil, her own mistress, with the kings of the earth. Israel was an adulteress,^[1] not Babylon, then.

For this she is judged, though other things and all worldly eclat might surround her, and give her influence over the minds of others.

In the Old Testament, fornication is attached, not to Babylon but to Tyre, with reference to her merchandise.

The material feature here is, that Babylon is no: the seat of earthly power, ruled over and headed ab any time by him who exercises apostate royalty upon the earth, but an independent woman; so was Tyre in the world, as thus spoken of: and where the prince of Tyre^[2] is spoken of, it is no in human earthly language, but the highest character of apostasy, such as can be reached in its full character only by the great enemy, and it would seem to me connected with a Church or religious standing a character and apostasy far more terrible than the apostasy of the world, headed by its king, in its full form builded by him. Worldly association then this has, and wide extent of merchandising and wealth,—a great system of worldly prosperity; but its character for judgment is her fornication, not her purple, her scarlet, and the like, though all these were connected with it, and: designated her. And this is always the case,—the becoming worldly,—and by this spirit, and to gain this wealth, pandering to the passions of the kings of the earth, is just the very cause of this. But, as in old. time the blood of all righteous men was found in God’s house, then apostate,—not in the world’s or the wicked one’s outwardly; judged in Jerusalem, not in heathen Rome;—so, ever; the ecclesiastical form of wickedness takes the lead, not the worldly. The gainsaying is recorded as the gainsaying of Kore, not of Dathan and Abiram, though the earth might swallow them up too; and the beast may be judged as well as Babylon, but not presented in the same sad terms in God’s moral judgment, in the sight of men. Moral corruption is ever worse than evil power. Babylon was also the mother of harlots, and of the abominations or idolatries of the earth. The invocation of a demon under the name of Paul, was worse than under the name of Hercules or Theseus; and the uprooting of the mediation of Christ more fatal and destructive (as of the remedy itself), than that of the unity of the one true Jehovah. She was here a mystery. The apostasy of worldly power and grandeur was no mystery in the escaped remnant of Babylon, and the Patmos prisoner of Domitian. That the church which the apostle watched over, should assume this form was a mystery indeed, ruling that which he was suffering under, as a poor despised follower of the crucified Jesus, and corrupting a world of which the church properly was the only true light. She was the mother of the abominations of the earth; but her sway was over the many waters, peoples, and tongues, and nations, and languages. Rome, I cannot help believing, was the centre of this system. The golden cup was in the whore’s hand, not she a golden cup in the Lord’s;—she governed and rode the ten-horned beast, that was her long general character, but not her final one: she became the prey and spoil of the kings which had their power with the beast. They gave their power not to her any longer, but to him. In another character and under another form, she doubtless guided the beast himself; but the power of the ten horns was given to him. She, not the beast, was drunk with the blood of the saints, and that, as seen sitting, in her full ease and comfort there: and this was matter of deep astonishment to the apostle, that she who connected herself in his mind with such a character and pretension, should be such. Thus far the vision: but the interpretation follows, and, as has been elsewhere remarked of Daniel and the parables, the interpretation carries the facts of the prophecy into a further scene, altogether consequent upon that in the prophecy. “The beast which thou sawest.” The interpretation takes up the time of the passage into this further scene, which did not exist in the actual vision of the apostle; which saw (in order to give her her full character), the woman in all her splendour. “The beast which thou sawest, was” (to wit, the fourth great empire), “and is not;” i.e. had not, at the noticed period, its united formal character:—shall resume this formal character, under the direct influence of Satan—shall ascend out of the bottomless pit—and then be destroyed; and all within the prophetic range of his power (the earth—the woman’s influence extended further, “she sat on the waters,”) should be amazed when they thus saw it. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman, not the whore, sitteth, “but that great city which reigneth.” This cannot mean merely Babylon; for that was the whore’s name already on her forehead, and therefore not an explanation to be given; that was her symbolic character, this her local explanation. There are also seven kings; these are not the horns, they were not moreover contemporaneous, “five are fallen, one is” (I take this from the ninth verse, to be a direct present explication to the apostle), “the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” This made the seven. One brief-lived head of the beast was to arise before the last, after the apostle’s days. The Spirit of God has not thought it material to give a special designation of this or the previous heads, as not in the present scene affecting the church or purposes of God, but merely identifying the beast, and not suffering the Church to be led astray. But there is that which is more distinctly noted, after all this is completed, and all that properly formed the beast is full:—an eighth head^[3] (which is the beast itself—as arising directly from Satan’s power and influence) arises, which is yet of the seven, which is connected with and takes its place among the other heads and forms of the Roman Empire, but is also a distinct, definite power, the resurrection-beast of Satan’s power; and in this form it is that it goes into perdition. We have now the woman, the beast and its heads described. We have then the conduct of the ten horns, the ten kings. These properly belong to the beast: they had received no kingdom at the time of the vision, formed no part of the then system, but would receive power contemporaneously with the beast. I do not see that this states that they would exist all the time along with the beast, but that they would not be a power supplanting or without connection with the beast, but that they would exist themselves, contemporaneously, and while the beast existed. They would give their power to the beast. I have no doubt that mainly the beast in its last form is here spoken of, but it is their character generally. They give their kingdom and power to the beast—they have one mind as to this. But though they did this corporately, they had a mind of their own, or at least practically in action. These shall make war with the Lamb—this shall be their conduct and end. The Lamb shall overcome them, for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and then we have His companions the Church and armies of Heaven anticipatively brought forward. He is not alone—they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful.” This was the history and the end of the ten kings, but still characteristically; for, if we consult Daniel, three of them fall: their victor is then declared, and his companions. As the confederacy of the kings gave (for it was man’s will) their power to the beast, the Lamb’s companions were, on the contrary, called and chosen and faithful. The “waters” are then explained so as to need little comment, save as reminding of the extent of general moral influence beyond the prophetic earth: she had her seat there, though she sat on the beast too Another characteristic was, that she had this influence and place on the peoples and multitudes and nations; all this was an independent influence, proper to the woman, and this in her evil character as the whore.

Another incident of much importance in the history, is then brought forward. These ten kings are to give their power to the beast, so “God hath put into their hearts to fulfil His will,” and “these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate, and eat her flesh” (devour her wealth and fatness), “and burn her with fire.” It was not specifically with these kings she had committed fornication, that had been her general character with the kings of the earth. These ten kings, however, desolate her: the will at this time acts in them, not in the beast—they are the prominent and existing actors, that they may give their power to the beast, whose final character and end we have already seen. This goes on “until the words of God shall be fulfilled.” The woman, not the whore, is then designated as that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth (the predominant associated power of the earth):^[4] but if acting by corrupt religion, not doing so here as a false prophet, but as a city—a system in her secular, carnal and worldly and wealthy character—yet that secularity and wealth, the meretricious secularity^[5] and wealth of an active, corrupting will—“the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.”

1. Fornication seems to consist in living in wealth and luxuries, through intercourse with others, not the cultivation of her own resources; therefore it is referred to union with, and dependence on, the world, in the case of the Church, and to enriching commerce with other nations in the case of a city, as Tyre. Jerusalem is termed “adulteress,” not whore, because she was married to the Lord; but in all these cases there will be found, I conceive, a worshipping of Satan, in this world, as its God, a seeking the power, τοῦ αιῶνος τοῦ κόσμου τούτου. Power national or imperial is a distinct thing; though it may be abused: it is given of God, and in itself is always of God, though it may end in open rebellion.
2. The prince and king of Tyre, are, however, different; it is the king of whom the position is so astonishingly traced by the Divine band.
3. I feel that probably this has passed—if we take the protracted course, in Charlemagne; if the closing scene, in Buonaparte, because the Roman Empire had been destroyed in its full character before Charlemagne; and his was a renewal of what was not: nominally it continued until Buonaparte, who, as the agent of the French Republic, broke it to pieces and renewed the Imperial power for a little season.
4. Such as Rome, for example, before even Imperial times.
5. I know that many take Babylon as merely a great worldly system. That it is a great worldly system is freely admitted; but the exclusion of the ecclesiastical character in this place seems to me a great error: it is the virus of her active will in this place, though clothed with the world. She is not viewed here as the city of the apostate king at all, though in the worldly sense, she may be the beginning of his kingdom. He comes in here as the eighth head of the beast, supplanting the woman. The kings lay her waste to give their power to him; for power, not wealth, is the last form of evil presented, and that against the Lamb, which is true, active rebellion, and more than mere apostasy. God therefore judges Babylon; and the destroyers of her wealth and importance are those who give their kingdom to the beast: thereupon and then, the war against the Lamb comes. I have no doubt the principles of Babylon were manifested in her,—not royal power. Though Babylon was the beginning of his power in whom royal power was first displayed, yet it was specially what the confederate will of man had done; its first form was confederate will in independence of God. This is shewn in the character which constituted the whore, yet had its development by her corruption and fornication: and the effects of this are supplanted by another confederacy, which is not only apostasy, as all human will apart from God is, but active war against God’s king, the Lamb. As to the ten kings, I would here also notice, what, not being the direct subject of the book, I have not noticed hitherto.—It appears to me a mistake to include the Grecian or Eastern part of the Roman Empire in the ten kings or direct power of the beast, though he may seek to possess himself of it, as his dominion, and in a measure may do so. The little book of the eleventh chapter takes up the beast in his last satanic character, in order to complete the scene of the final catastrophe and woe; but the two first woes seem to me to embrace the Eastern or Grecian part of the great scene of the prophetic earth. When we come to the geographical divisions and actings at the close (for all are aware that the catastrophe of all the powers of the earth, is in the east, in Judea), then the king of the north and the king of the south seem to me to occupy the Grecian part, not the ten kings, though the beast may be seeking to possess himself, as of old, of their territory, and may in part succeed. I allude here to Daniel xi, as may be readily seen.