Looks like this is turning into at least a three-parter. I’ll post the next instalment this coming Sunday, LW. Meantime, we should have a look at three significant Old Testament passages that almost surely informed the writings of Peter and John about what we might call “mystery Babylon”, the spiritual descendant of the Chaldean-controlled city that was both the enemy of Israel and the enemy of her God.
The writers of the New Testament were comfortable with the idea of Babylon as a spirit, temperament or idea, one that promotes the glory of man rather than the glory of God.
The Spirit of Babylon
That spirit traces its origin from Satan through Babel, then through Chaldean Babylon and all the subsequent empires of this world: Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome and the hodgepodge of Roman-influence that the iron and clay admixture of Daniel’s dream image depicts, which I believe may even prefigure the ethnically-adulterated empires of today’s West. After all, these had their cultural origin in Roman Europe. Countering the globalist spirit of Babel, God made nations more or less ethnically and culturally distinct, and gave each their own territory. Empires are how Satan responded: always bigger, better, more powerful and more glorious, and always with humanity as their true object of worship.
John’s “Babylon” in Revelation is the concluding chapter: a great whore alluring our entire world over centuries, notwithstanding that the original Babylon and the empire that made it so glorious are long, long gone. Today, let’s have a look at the Old Testament figurative uses of “Babylon” and related terminology.
Psalm 87
Psalm 87, written by the sons of Korah, is the first passage of scripture I believe uses the word “Babylon” in a non-literal sense. It’s a short seven verses set in the millennial reign of Christ, perhaps dating from as early as David’s reign, though Korah’s descendants were also prominent in the temple service under Ezra and Nehemiah in the aftermath of the captivity. Verse 4 name-checks Babylon as a place where millennial Jews may be born.
Chances are the psalmists refer not to literal Babylon, which remains a ruin, but rather to some nation or nations in which the spirit of Babylon now reigns. Yesterday we looked at the intellectual and spiritual legacy with which Babylon seeded the empires that conquered and replaced it, and through which its self-willed spirit continues to haunt humanity. The American belief in a “manifest destiny” and its willingness to project power across the world for decades echo the Babylonian will to power, as I have pointed out here. Habakkuk writes concerning that Babylonian spirit, “Their justice and dignity go forth from themselves.” That is to say, the Babylonian spirit defines its ethics, such as they are, without reference to God or his will. Might makes right.
The psalmists strengthen the impression they are using Babylon figuratively by pairing it with Rahab, in scripture a monstrous, dragon-like symbol for Egypt conquered by God in the Red Sea. If one place name is symbolic (and it is), the other likely is too.
Zechariah 2:6-7
In his second chapter, Zechariah paints a picture of millennial Jerusalem glorified and protected by the Lord Jesus, following which he offers this very direct advice to Israelites still dwelling abroad:
“Up! Up! Flee from the land of the north, declares the Lord. For I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heavens, declares the Lord. Up! Escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon.”
Certain commentators take the command to flee from the land of the north as applying to the time of Zechariah, though we have no record of either diaspora Jews or Israelites exiting Babylon during that period in numbers that remotely approach the scale of the return under Zerubbabel and Joshua described in Ezra. What we see there after the initial two or three waves from Persia is barely a trickle. We should remember that when Zechariah wrote, Babylon had already fallen to the Persians decades previously, so there was no need for Jews to flee Babylon for safety. Diaspora Jews would live comfortably both in Babylon and throughout the Persian Empire until the reign of Artaxerxes, which was still decades away, and then again afterwards. The city itself did not became a ruin until 323 BC, long after Zechariah’s time. That was thanks to Alexander the Great.
No, once again I think we are looking at a call for the exodus of all Israelites of every tribe from the north during the early days of the millennial reign of Christ, a return to Zion foretold by many other prophets. Bear in mind that it is not an appeal to leave the literal city of Babylon, but to those who “dwell with the daughter of Babylon”. It’s a command to Jews living in the sphere of, and under the authority of, the literal or spiritual descendants of Babylon, wherever they might currently reside.
So then, in this context at least, I believe “daughter of Babylon” is a figurative expression denoting not the sphere of influence of the Chaldeans per se, but that of a subsequent empire in which the Babylonian spirit persisted, whatever that might mean geographically.
Zechariah 5:9-11
Mystery Babylon appears once again in Zechariah’s seventh vision:
“Then I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, two women coming forward! The wind was in their wings. They had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven. Then I said to the angel who talked with me, ‘Where are they taking the basket?’ He said to me, ‘To the land of Shinar, to build a house for it. And when this is prepared, they will set the basket down there on its base.’ ”
I will pass on the question of what the two women with stork wings signify. Commentators are split on whether these are agents of heaven or servants of Satan, and I’m not sure much turns on the answer. Sometimes God works through angelic powers, sometimes he works through people, and sometimes he glorifies himself and accomplishes his purposes through the most unlikely agents, very much against their expectations. What is evident is that the Lord is behind the removal of institutionalized idolatry from Judah to the land of Shinar, and at very least allows it to have a home there. The woman in the basket will have a house built for her far away from the people of God. She is still a spiritual threat to the world, but one we will not see directly affecting the nation of Israel again until the time of the end.
The Land of Shinar
The term Shinar is relatively rare in the OT compared to Babylon or Babylonia. It goes all the way back to the table of nations in Genesis 10, where Nimrod made his kingdom, and again in Genesis 11, where construction on the Tower of Babel began. The robe that so successfully tempted Achan was from Shinar. It’s also the millennial designation for the area, at which point Babylon the great will be no more. We must remember that Chaldean Babylon had already fallen to Persia, and the Spirit of God through Zechariah may have wanted to avoid any potential confusion with one of the two contemporary Persian seats of power. The vision has nothing to do with empiric Persia. Its significance is spiritual, not political.
Referring to the land of Shinar suggests, perhaps, that the Lord is having false religion taken out of Judah and tucked quietly away in a far-off place, to reappear as a major player in Israel’s storyline at a future date. While Christ is building his church, Satan is hard at work extending the influence of his own.
A House on a Base
The winged women were going to build a house for the woman and set the basket down on its base. The word translated “house” is a very common one in Hebrew, but frequently refers to a temple, and this is how we should probably think of it. The word translated “base” is yet another religious term, used frequently in the chapters that detail the construction of Solomon’s temple. Altars, pillars and lavers all had “bases”. This plethora of blatantly religious terminology makes it extremely difficult to identify the “wickedness” of the woman in the basket with any sin other than idolatry. This woman symbolizing false religion will have her place in the years to follow Zechariah’s visions, but it will not be in Israel. Moreover, she will not be associated with literal, empiric Babylon of the recent past, but rather with mystery Babylon of the future.
Let’s cut to the chase. I think Zechariah saw a spiritual allegory for the rise of mystery Babylon, the great whore whose fall Revelation 17-19 depicts. By the time we find her in Revelation, her sphere of influence has greatly expanded: from her origins in Assyria and her corruption of God’s people, to being spirited away to Shinar, and from there, teaching all nations to drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality. To me at least, this suggests something much more pervasive than merely the ungodly aspects of Catholicism (the fact that some call Mary “the queen of heaven” is unfortunate but not conclusive), or even Islam. A false religious system that corrupts all nations and that is responsible for shedding the blood of God’s servants is something we have yet to see explicitly revealed in the world in its final form, where its ultimate object of worship will be indisputably male. Or perhaps bestial.
Mystery Babylon’s Judean Origins
What should not be lost in all this imagery is the intimation that mystery Babylon will have a strong Jewish influence. That is what I think Zechariah is telling us. In Revelation, we see this in the person of the second beast, who rises “out of the earth”. (As in the Zechariah passage, I believe that is better translated “land”, meaning Israel, in contrast to the first beast, who rises “out of the sea”, meaning the nations or rest of the earth. In Greek, gē has the same ambiguity as its Hebrew equivalent.)
This beast is a false prophet, the religious energy behind the first beast’s political power. He has two horns like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon. All this suggests a Jewish connection to the worship of the beast, who starts as a political figure and ends as a religious one. In 2 Thessalonians 2, we discover this man of lawlessness takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
This will be the ultimate idolatrous temptation for the Jews of the future: bow to the man of sin and acknowledge him as God, or take your chances with the persecuted and occupied remnant of faithful Israel praying for the return of Messiah. It will be the dividing line between spiritual life and death, between who belongs to Christ in future Israel and who belongs to Satan and his agents.
It’s all been in the works for 2,500 years or so, since God took idolatry out of Israel and gave it a house in Shinar. On Sunday, we’ll take a look at what type of monstrosity that Babylonian seed will produce in the end times.
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