Commentary on the Apocalypse

Section Nineteen

190 SECTION NINETEEN Chapter 55 About Another Angel Declaring the Fall of Babylon and the Heavenly Voice Commanding Flight From the City, and About the Discarding of the Delights Which it had Once Possessed 18.1. And after this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendor . ere is shown the brightness and radiance of the holy powers, a brilliancy surpassing the stars and luminaries by great measure. [193] 18.2–3a. 2 And he called out [in] a great mighty voice, saying, “Fallen! Fallen Babylon the great! And it has become a dwelling place of demons, a habitation of every unclean and detestable spirit. 3 For all nations have drunk of the desire of the wine of her fornication, Also in Isaiah, concerning the seizure of the Chaldean capital of Babylon by Cyrus and the Persians, things similar to these had been foretold,1 inasmuch as it was destined to be filled with wild beasts and unclean spirits on account of its complete devastation . For the custom is to banish both the beasts and the evil demons to the deserted places,2 both on account of the divine Economy, which has liberated humans from the harm from them, and on account of their characteristic hatred of mankind. How did the present Babylon water the nations with the wine of her own fornication? By becoming altogether 1. Is 13.21, 34.13–14. 2. Mt 12.43; Mk 5.10; Lk 11.24; Tb 8.3. SECTION NINETEEN 191 the leader in all these transgressions and by her sending to the cities subject to her, through gifts, rulers who were the enemies of truth and righteousness. 18.3b. and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich with the magnitude of her wantonness.” On account of the excesses from unjust riches, it says, extending to that which is far above necessity and behaving insolently toward those in need, it has become a matter of profit to the merchants of the earth. [194] 18.4–5. 4 And I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out [of her], my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you receive, 5 for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God remembered her iniquities. As was declared to Lot in Sodom, “Escape, saving your own life,”3 and in Isaiah, “Come out from her and be separate, and do not touch the unclean,”4 likewise he speaks here. For close association with those who provoke God is shunned. 18.6–7a. 6 Render to her as she herself has rendered to you, and repay her double according to her deeds; mix double for her in the cup she mixed. 7a As she glorified herself and was wanton, so give her a like measure of torment [and mourning]. These things are either those who are blameless in her and who have suffered under the worst wickedness of those ruling in her, it says, as being the cause, through their endurance in sufferings, of the punishment of those who impose these on them, or it signifies the alteration from [195] roles to roles, from those who have been wronged to some holy avenging powers who through piety have appropriated the sufferings passed on from her wickedness to her co-servants. And the double cup, it says, is either because the sinners and transgressors are tormented very much both here and in the future, or on account of the soul and body from which the deed was common against which the punishment will be, or 3. Gn 19.17. 4. Is 52.11. 192 ANDREW OF CAESAREA because the vastness of divine love for humankind delineated twice both her lack of pure righteousness on account of having sin and the torment in their conscience to be endured many times. 18.7b. In her heart she says, ‘I sit like a queen. I am no widow, and mourning I will never see,’ For it is customary for those in abundance to say, if there is no fear of God within them, “I will not be shaken ever,”5 which also he witnessed in her. 18.8. On this account her plagues will come in a single day, her plagues, death, and mourning and famine, and she will be burned...