Tag Archives: What I think I know about Revelation 17

Revelation 17 as a whole is an elaboration of the sixth and seventh bowl-plagues (Rev 16:12-21)

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This connection (between Rev 17 and 16:12-21) is signaled in the very first verse of chapter 17, ESV: “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me. . . .” This is a clear connection between chapter 17 and the content of chapter 16. But the question remains: Which of the seven bowl angels is interacting the Seer of Patmos here? A clue to the answer lies in the fact that the angel’s message has something to do with water: “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute, who is seated on many waters” (Rev 17:1, ESV). Three of the bowl-plagues have something to do with water. The second bowl falls on the sea (Rev 16:3), the third bowl falls on the rivers and springs (Rev 16:4-7), and the sixth bowl falls on the Euphrates River (16:12). Which of the three bowl-angels is the one we encounter in Revelation 17? Since the waters of verse 1 are associated with the great prostitute, and she is later defined as Babylon the great (Rev 17:5), the angel of the sixth bowl (the one associated with the drying up of the Euphrates River) is the one in view when you get to 17:1.

This makes sense in light of the Old Testament background to Revelation 17. The “many waters” is a striking verbal parallel to Jeremiah 51:13. There, Babylon is addressed as “you who dwell by many waters”. Ancient Babylon was a twin city located in the midst of an extremely dry desert. Its “many waters”, therefore, can only be a reference to the mighty Euphrates River, that passed through the very center of the ancient city (cf. Jer 50:33-38; 51:36). So I think I know that Revelation 17 is closely related to the sixth bowl-plague, in which the Euphrates River is dried up.

The parallel with Revelation 16 is also extend to the seventh bowl plague (Rev 16:17-21). The immediate introduction to the Babylon visions of chapters 17 and 18 is in 16:19: “God remembered Babylon the Great.” The details of what happens when God “remembers” Babylon are found in Revelation 17 and 18. In addition, the battle of Armageddon in 16:16 finds its counterpart in Revelation 17:14, where the ten horns, the counterpart to the “kings of the whole world” (Rev 16:14, ESV), make war with the Lamb. So I think I know that Revelation 17 is an elaboration of the sixth and seventh bowl-plagues in chapter 16.

What I Think I Know About Rev 17

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Revelation 17 is one of the most difficult parts of the Bible to interpret, particularly verses 7-11. When I was teaching at Andrews University, therefore, I decided to make Revelation 17:7-11 the topic of a PhD seminar class. Five PhD students signed up for the class. For the first fifteen hours of class time, I offered guidance from my experience in handling difficult Bible texts, and a basic overview of Revelation 15-18. I also led the students through the Greek of Revelation 17, word by word and sentence by sentence. The five doctoral students then selected topics related to portions of Revelation 17:7-11, after which they researched and wrote 40-60 page papers on their respective portions of the passage. Each student then took a three-hour segment of the class to share their paper and lead out in the discussion on that topic. The last class session we debriefed on what we had all learned from our intensive engagement with the passage. We all concluded that we were less certain about the meaning of Revelation 17:7-11 than we had been when the class began.

I take some implications from that experience: 1) My definition of a “problem text” is one where it is ten times easier to shoot down someone else’s interpretation of the passage than to create a compelling one yourself. 2) The more time you spend on Revelation 17 the more challenges you see in the text. 3) If the result of group study on a passage results in a total lack of consensus on the meaning of the chapter, that group has probably done their work well.

But let’s not linger on that negative note. I thought it might be helpful to point to several things in this chapter that can be stated with some confidence. Hence the title: What I Think I Know About Revelation 17. I share this as a culmination of more than 40 years of specialized study.