Revelation 16:18

The conventional stormtheophany brings on an exceptionally severe earthquake, which (Revelation 16:19) shatters Jerusalem into three parts and entirely overthrows the pagan cities. Rome's more awful ruin is attributed in Revelation 17:16 to the invasion of Oriental hordes (cf. Revelation 16:12); here the allusion to her downfall is proleptic (= Revelation 17:2; Revelation 18:6 f.), as a climax to the foregoing catastrophe. Probably the great city is Jerusalem (sc e.g., Andr., Bengel, Simcox, B. Weiss, J. Weiss), as in Revelation 11:8. She is distinguished from the Gentile cities as Rome also is singled out from her allies and adherents. Being primarily guilty, Rome-Babylon is reserved for a special fate. The whole passage is enigmatic and obscure. Did the earthquake destroy the inhabitants of Jerusalem? and why? The allusion must be to some form of the tradition underlying Revelation 11:1-13 and Revelation 14:18-20, or to that of Zechariah 14:4-5. Both earthquakes and invasions had been combined already in the O.T. eschatology (cf. Isaiah 13:13 f.; Haggai 2:21 f.); both perils were real, at this period; and, in delineating both dangers with a free, poetic imagination, the prophet aims as usual at impressiveness rather than at any systematic regularity. For earthquakes in Jerusalem, cf. G. A. Smith's Jerusalem, i. pp. 61 f. ἐμνήσθη : neither magnificence nor age wins oblivion for an empire's crimes against the moral order.