William Burkitt's Expository Notes

Revelation 18:21

Observe here, 1. Babylon's utter desolation represented by the type and sign of. millstone cast into the sea; like. millstone she had ground and oppressed the church of God, and now, like. millstone thrown into the sea, she sinks into the pit of destruction.

Almighty God, by this sign or symbol, signified to St. John that Babylon's ruin should be violent, irrecoverable, and irreparable; she falls never to rise more. The casting of. stone into the sea was anciently the emblem of everlasting forgetfulness.

Observe, 2. The amplification of Babylon's ruin particularized in several instances.

1. That nothing should evermore be found in her that belonged to pleasure or delight: no voice of harpers, musicians, or trumpeters.

2. Nothing which belonged to profit or trading, no artificers or craftsmen.

3. Nothing belonging to food, no noise of. millstone for grinding corn and making provision for bread.

4. Nothing to relieve against the darkness and terror of the night; as the light of. candle.

5. No means for the propagation of mankind by marriage; The voice of the bride and the bridegroom shall be heard no more.

All which expressions do imply extreme destruction and utter desolation: intimating, that Babylon shall be. place utterly abandoned and forsaken.

Observe, 3.. three-fold cause assigned for all this, to wit,

1. Damnable covetousness: Her merchants were the great ones of the earth. Her sinful way of merchandising, by dealing in spiritual commodities peculiar to Rome, seems to be here pointed at; her making merchandise of the souls of men, as we have it, Revelation 18:13.

2. Her bewitching idolatry, called here sorceries, whereby she enticed people to join with her in her superstitious worship.

3. Her cruelty and bloodshed: In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that were slain upon earth.

Quest. But how can the blood shed by others be laid to her charge?

Ans. 1. Because the doctrines which caused their blood to be shed were with her.

2. Because her jurisdiction gave commission to slay the saints which were slain in other kingdoms.

3. Because by the influence of her example at home, much blood had been shed abroad.

God will charge upon others, as he did upon Babylon, not only the sin which they have acted, but all the sin which they have been accessary to.

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William Burkitt's Expository Notes

Revelation 18:21

Old Testament

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