Many people would probably be surprised to know that the most prominent subject in Revelation, based on the number of verses devoted to it, is Babylon. Revelation has 404 verses, and 44 of those verses (about 11 percent) deal with Babylon.
Babylon first surfaces in Genesis 10 –11, just after the flood, as the place of man’s first post-deluge organized rebellion against God. It was apparently the first city built after the flood. It was founded and ruled over by the world’s first dictator, a man named Nimrod. It was also the location of the famous Tower of Babel.
From its inception, Babylon was both a literal city and the wicked false religious system that emanated from it. It’s pictured as mankind’s city, and it is the second-most-mentioned city in the Bible, appearing about 290 times. Jerusalem holds the title of most mentioned (about 800 times).
Most of the Bible’s references to Babylon concern the Neo-Babylonian Empire that ruled the ancient world from 605–539 BC. King Nebuchadnezzar was the dominant leader of this empire, and he invaded Judah three times (605, 597, and 586 BC).
The Old Testament prophets repeatedly warned the people of Judah to repent or else God would send the Babylonians as an instrument of His discipline. After the final incursion in 586 BC, when the Babylonians destroyed the Solomonic temple, the message of the prophets turned from one of judgment on Judah to one of hope for the future. Part of this message of comfort and hope was that God would eventually repay Babylon for her sin. This message was intended to encourage God’s people. Indeed, we read detailed descriptions of the destruction of Babylon in three key Old Testament passages: Isaiah 13; Isaiah 46 – 47; and Jeremiah 50 –51.
The Babylon Prophecies
Isaiah 13:4-5 says,
Hear the noise on the mountains! Listen, as the vast armies march! It is the noise and shouting of many nations. The Lord of Heaven’s Armies have called this army together. They come from distant countries, from beyond the farthest horizons. They are the Lord’s weapons to carry out his anger. With them he will destroy the whole land (TLB).
Isaiah continues in 13:10-13:
The stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises and the moon will not shed its light. Thus I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold and mankind than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken from its place at the fury of the Lord of hosts in the day of His burning anger.
In this chapter, written by Isaiah in about 700 BC, it appears that the prophet is peering down the corridors of time to the far destruction of Babylon in the end times. The reason for this conclusion is that nothing even close to this description has ever happened to Babylon in the past. Jesus even quoted Isaiah 13:10 in Matthew 24:29 when He described the stellar signs that will accompany His second coming to Earth. This places the fulfillment of the Babylon prophecy in the end times.
Isaiah 13:19 even says that when Babylon is finally destroyed, it will be like what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah: “Babylon, the most glorious of kingdoms, the flower of Chaldean pride, will be devastated like Sodom and Gomorrah when God destroyed them.” The prophet Jeremiah says the same:
Behold, she will be the least of the nations, a wilderness, a parched land and a desert. Because of the indignation of the Lord she will not be inhabited, but she will be completely desolate…Come to her from the farthest border; open up her barns, pile her up like heaps and utterly destroy her, let nothing be left to her… Therefore the desert creatures will live there along with the jackals; the ostriches also will live in it, and it will never again be inhabited or dwelt in from generation to generation. “As when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah with its neighbors,” declares the Lord, “No man will live there, nor will any son of man reside in it” (Jeremiah 50:12-13, 26, 39-40).
It is apparent from both Scripture and history that these verses have not yet been literally fulfilled. The city of Babylon has never been destroyed suddenly and cataclysmically like Isaiah 13 describes. Babylon continued to flourish after the Medes conquered it under the leadership of Cyrus. When the Persians under King Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BC, the city wasn’t destroyed. Rather, it went into a long and steady decline. The city continued in one form or another until as late as AD 1000, and even then it did not experience a sudden, cataclysmic termination such as is anticipated in this prophecy.
So what does this tell us? Babylon has never been literally destroyed as prophesied by Isaiah and Jeremiah, which means their prophecies have yet to be fulfilled. Instead, the city died a centuries-long, drawn out, agonizing death. Even today, numerous small villages dot the area in and around the ancient city. In fact, during the time of the US military’s presence in Iraq, Camp Babylon was inhabited in the location of the ages-old city.
Commenting on Isaiah 13:20-22, prophecy expert John Walvoord said,
As far as the historic fulfillment is concerned, it is obvious from both Scripture and history that these verses have not been literally fulfilled. The city of Babylon continued to flourish after the Medes conquered it, and though its glory dwindled, especially after the control of the Medes and Persians ended in 323 B.C., the city continued in some form or substance until A.D. 1000 and did not experience a sudden termination such as is anticipated in this prophecy.
Because the city of Babylon has never known sudden and complete destruction in its long and storied history, and because the Bible is God’s Word and must be literally fulfilled, we must conclude that Isaiah and Jeremiah’s prophecies point to a future event. And there’s only one time in man’s history when all this will occur: at the end of the future tribulation period in conjunction with the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 14 seems to further confirm that the city’s ultimate destruction is related to the second advent of Christ and the final Day of the Lord. The timing of the destruction of Babylon is related to the period of final restoration for the Jewish people (Isaiah 14:1-3). When Babylon is destroyed, Israel is viewed as being restored to her land and forgiven of all her sins. This was hardly true of ancient Babylon; thus, its total demise is still future.
The final key Old Testament prophecy about Babylon is found in Zechariah 5:5-10. There, we see an indication that Babylon will be rebuilt in the end times. In Zechariah 5, the prophet Zechariah sees a vision of a basket or ephah that is full of wickedness, which is personified as a woman. Note that the ephah is a symbol of commerce, and Babylon is described in Revelation 18 as a great commercial city. Also note that Babylon is also personified as a woman in Revelation 17–18. A heavy lid is put on the basket to keep the evil in check. God doesn’t want the wickedness to get out. As Zechariah sees the basket being carried away, he asks where the basket is being taken. An angel replies, “To the land of Babylonia, where they will build a temple for the basket. And when the temple is ready, they will set the basket there on its pedestal” (NLT).
When Zechariah wrote those words, the Babylonian empire had already been conquered by the Medo-Persians about 25 years earlier. And there is no event after Zechariah’s prophecy that could be seen as the legitimate fulfillment of this prophecy. So what does this mean? It means that Zechariah’s prophecy is still future even today. It means that someday, when the necessary preparations have been made, wickedness will once again be concentrated in the land of Babylon. It will rear its ugly head in the place of its origin—Babylon.
The city has never been completely destroyed, as indicated in the prophecies in Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 50–51. These texts predict utter desolation like that which took place in Sodom and Gomorrah—no brick from the city will ever be used again, no one will ever live there. And the city will never be rebuilt, and the Jewish people will be fully restored to their land and forgiven by God. For Isaiah and Jeremiah’s prophecies to be literally fulfilled, Babylon must be rebuilt to all its former glory and then destroyed once and for all at the end of the time of great horror. To discover Babylon’s final destiny, we must turn to the end of the story in the book of Revelation.
Back to Babylon
Amazingly, as noted earlier, the book of Revelation has 404 verses, and 44 of these verses deal with Babylon (Revelation 17–18). When you add in Revelation 14:8 and 16:19, which also speak of Babylon’s future, the total number of verses dealing with Babylon goes up to 46. That’s 11 percent of the entire book of Revelation devoted to one subject—Babylon.
Think about that for a moment. In the final book of the Bible—God’s great apocalypse or unveiling of the future—more than one out of every ten verses concerns Babylon. Clearly, Babylon holds a central place in God’s final plan for the ages. But what does Revelation have to say about this great city?
Down through church history, most Bible interpreters have thought that in Revelation 17–18, Babylon was some kind of code word for some other entity, like the city of Rome, the Roman Empire, Roman Catholicism, Jerusalem, apostate Christianity, the United States, New York City, or Great Britain. However, I believe that just like Israel always refers to Israel in the Bible, so also Babylon always refers to Babylon. In Scripture, Babylon always means literal Babylon, with one possible exception: Many scholars believe that in 1 Peter 5:13, Babylon is used symbolically as a code word for Rome. But that appears to be the lone exception to the rule.
That being the case, and because the Old Testament prophets form the backdrop for Revelation, it would be strange for Babylon to mean literal Babylon every time it’s found in the Old Testament, yet for the meaning to suddenly change in the final book of the Bible, which draws so heavily from the ancient Scriptures.
Henry Morris supports a literal understanding of Babylon:
It must be stressed again that Revelation means ‘unveiling, ’not ‘veiling. ’In the absence of any statement in the context to the contrary, therefore, we must assume that the term Babylon applies to the real city of Babylon, although it also may extend far beyond that to the whole system centered at Babylon as well.
Babylon is clearly identified in Revelation 17:5 as the source or mother of all false religion—“the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.” What biblical city is the genesis or fountainhead of all false religion? Only one—Babylon.
In Revelation 17–18, the city of man is symbolized by a seductive harlot riding on the back of the Antichrist, who is depicted as riding a wild beast. This connection between Babylon and the beast, or the Antichrist, indicates that the two will be closely allied. Babylon in the end times, like Babylon in the beginning, will be both a false religious system and a literal city on the Euphrates River that will serve as an economic, commercial capital for Antichrist. It will be both a city and a system.
More specifically, Revelation 17 seems to focus on the religious aspect of Babylon, while Revelation 18 focuses on the city’s political and economic characteristics. The false religious system of Revelation 17 is probably a kind of religious amalgamation or world church that will pull together people of various religious backgrounds into one great ecclesiastical alliance after the disappearance of the true church at the rapture. And this world church will evidently have its center in the rebuilt city of Babylon.
Revelation 18, which describes the political and economic system based in Babylon under the rule of the Antichrist, prophesies the final destruction of the city of Babylon just before the second coming of Jesus Christ. Babylon, the pinnacle of human materialism and sensuality, will fall. The final act of God before His Son returns to Earth will be the destruction of Babylon, man’s city.
Then, a few chapters later, in Revelation 21–22, God introduces the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. The contrast is clear. Man’s city, Babylon, is a corrupt harlot; God’s city, the New Jerusalem, is a clean bride. Man’s city is eliminated; God’s city is enshrined. Man’s city is removed from the earth; God’s heavenly city will come to the earth. The call for God’s people is to live for that which is above, that which will last, as we await our Lord’s coming.
Excerpted from Mark Hitchcock’s book, The Revelation Answer Book (Eugene, OR: Harvest Prophecy, 2012, 2025), pages 213–220.
Mark Hitchcock is the author of 40 books related to end-time Bible prophecy, including Middle East Burning and Can We Still Believe in the Rapture? He earned a ThM and PhD from Dallas Theological Seminary and is the senior pastor of Faith Bible Church in Edmond, Oklahoma. He also serves as Research Professor of Bible Exposition at DTS, and he and his wife, Cheryl, have two married sons and seven grandchildren.