Revelation 17


Revelation 17 is the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse to John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is traditionally attributed to John the Apostle, but the identity of the author remains a point of academic debate. This chapter describes the judgment of the Whore of Babylon.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 18 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are among others:

New Testament references

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The vision of the harlot (17:1–6a)

After being mentioned only briefly in Revelation 14:8 and, Babylon is given a full description in this section.

Verse 1

The words "to me" do not appear in Codex Alexandrinus or in the Vulgate translation.

Verse 2

Lutheran Pietist theologian Johann Bengel notes a parallel with Tyre, which "committed fornication with the kingdoms of the earth" in.

Verse 5

The King James Version, New King James Version, and Young's Literal Translation include the word 'mystery' within her title, but in many other English translations the word is descriptive of the name: "a name of mystery", "a name that has a secret meaning".

Verse 6

This verse contains two descriptions of Christians which seem to refer to the same group of people.

The interpretation of the harlot (17:6b–18)

In response to John's astonishment at the vision of the harlot, an interpretation is given as much about the beast as about the harlot, because 'her fate is closely related to the career of the beast'.

Verse 8

Whereas one of Revelation's key designations for God is the term 'the one who was and who is and who is to come', in this verse the beast is twice described in a similar term, but with the significant different in the middle which is negative: 'is not', because unlike God, the beast is not eternal and his second coming "will prove a fraud" and "go to destruction".

Verse 9

  • "Seven mountains": The definition of the mountains with the seven heads makes an unequivocal identification with Rome, 'which is famous for its seven hills'.

Verse 10

  • "Seven kings": is better to be recognized as the number of completeness, because the attempts to use this passage to identify the ruling Roman emperor when the Book of Revelation was written fail due to the impossibility to know 'from which emperor the counting should begin or whether all emperors should be counted'. It represents 'the complete sequence of kings', but not yet quite at the end because there is 'one short reign' still to come.
  • "A short time": or "a little while": is 'the conventional period of eschatological imminence'.

Verse 11

  • "Perdition": or "destruction".

Verse 16