Week 46 - Ezekiel 29-32, Revelation 17 (Nov. 12-18)

Notes

EZEKIEL 29:2: Egypt

EZEKIEL 29-32: EGYPT

Last week we read the first four chapters of Ezekiel’s prophecy against the nations and covered six different kingdoms. This week we’ll read the last four chapters of Ezekiel’s prophecy against the nations and they will all be dedicated to one kingdom. Egypt was Judah’s most powerful neighbor in this period, and Judah had allied with them against Babylon. This alliance ends in complete disaster. God condemns it, not necessarily because it was a bad military/diplomatic maneuver, but because Judah is failing to recognize the true source of their own ruin. They are not facing invasion, exile, and destruction because they don’t have the right earthly alliances, but because their heinous sinfulness is bringing God’s wrath. Now they are trying to substitute God’s approval/forgiveness - with the help of a powerful neighboring heathen nation. God condemns his people for this, and Egypt for playing this role.

When Babylon overtook Assyria in the east, Egypt rose and attempted to take control of the Levant. However, Nebuchadnezzar’s first westward campaign defeated the Egyptians in the decisive 605 BC battle of Carechemish. This was not the end of Egypt’s attempts to control the region. Early in the 6th century, the Egyptians were allying with Phoenicia, Ammon, and Judah, and encouraging them them to rebel against Babylon. In this alliance, Egypt was the muscle - like America in NATO. Judah put their trust to protect them from Nebuchadnezzar’s wrath. It was this uprising that led Nebuchadnezzar to march west and punish those three states. In the first year of Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem, Egypt dispatched an army to Palestine to support their anti-Babylonian co-conspirators, but they were quickly defeated by Nebuchadnezzar and the siege of Jerusalem resumed. Ezekiel prophesied defeat for Egypt at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, and this prophecy would be realized in the year 568, just a few years before his (Nebuchadnezzar’s) death.

This was the last in a series of episodes where God’s people trusted Egypt for protection and had that backfire. Not trusting Egypt was a main theme in Isaiah way back in our February reading. That is why we get these words in chapter 29:

6 Then all who live in Egypt will know that I am the Lord.
“‘You have been a staff of reed for the people of Israel. 7 When they grasped you with their hands, you splintered and you tore open their shoulders; when they leaned on you, you broke and their backs were wrenched.

Revelation 17: The Harlet Babylon

Everything John now says by way of metaphor - because 'Babylon the whore' is a metaphor, as we shall see - depends on his perception, rooted in his Jewish and Christian belief in the goodness and God-givenness of the created order, that men and women are called either to celibacy or to married fidelity, and that this is one of the central motifs within the creator's purposes for his whole world. That is why, of course, the final great image in the book is the marriage of the lamb and his bride in the garden city, echoing but far transcending the union of Adam and Eve in the original garden. The rich whore who's in it of her own voltion can dress up fine, can put on a great show, and (not least) can hold out a wonderful golden goblet as though she’s inviting you to a rich banquet. But the eye of faith, not merely of cynicism, recognizes that the goblet is full of urine, dung and blood. Sorry about the nasty words; but perhaps I should have used even nastier ones. The phrase 'abominations and the impurities of her fornications’ (verse 4)' doesn't quite catch, for most of us, the full force of what John is saying. His point is that the outward appearance of the whore is magnificent, but the inner reality is disgusting, stomach-churning filth.

Why, then, does John use the image of the whore to display Babylon in all its horrible reality? First, because his whole book is about the creator nd his creation, which reaches its full glory in the coming together of the lamb and the bride, the husband and wife, in loyal and loving faithfulness, and what he sees in Babylon is the deepest and darkest parody, the thing like the monster's 666 as opposed to the perfect 777 or the lamb's 888) which is so near to the truth and yet so far. The best and most successful lies are those that are so like the truth that it only takes a little blink to be deceived.

Second, because one of the great images of Israel and YHWH in the Old Testament is that of Israel as YHWH's bride, and one of the saddest prophetic images for when that relationship goes wrong is Hosea's picture, based on his own tragic experience of marriage, of Israel playing the whore and going off after idols. This is probably the root of John's particular vision. The point about Babylon is that it has worshipped idols: the quick-fix pseudo-divinities that promise the earth, take all you have to give, and then leave you with nothing. Babylon, in fact, has become such a pseudo-divinity in itself.

Third, because, like all great imperial systems ever recorded, the Roman world which John knew thrived on sexual irregularity. Whoredom was not simply a metaphor for Rome's idolatry and social and economic oppression, but also metonymy: illicit sex was a further symptom of the problem. When you have power and money, why not? John, like Paul, and like Jesus himself in Mark 7 and 10, sees this behaviour, and the corruption of God's ideal of male-female marriage, as an accurate telltale sign of the corruption of the human heart which, springing from the worship of idols, can only be cured by the heart-changing operation which results in worshipping the true God.

Fourth, and finally, John uses the image of whoredom as an appropriate metaphor for Babylon's oppression because there is something uncannily like prostitution going on when the rich empire lures others into its den. Here, says the great empire, is luxury beyond your wildest dreams! Here all your fantasies can be fulfilled! You don't have to work hard for them, you don't have to organize your own country wisely, justly or humanely to achieve them; all you have to do is to come to me, and I'll share them with you. Oh, yes, of course, there's a price, but you won't mind paying that, will you? And the rulers of the world, captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, industrial lords and petty contractors, queue up eagerly, not knowing that they are all going into the dark. By the time the folly is exposed for what it is, it is too late. Once you take the golden cup offered by Babylon, you have to drink it.

NT Wright, Revelation for Everyone, 151

Revelation 17: The Kings of Revelation 17

If your head is spinning at this point, it may not be because you are slow on the uptake about either ancient history or first-century symbolic writing, but because John wasn't expecting you to make that sort of identification. The numbers, too, may well be symbolic. The seven kings stand for the apparent perfection of the monstrous kingdom, with the eighth (though one of the seven) a king who will appear to take the kingdom forward into a new day, but who will instead lead it to its destruction. In other words, don't try to match up the emperors precisely. What matters is that the monster's kingdom looks perfect and impregnable, but forces from within its own ranks will destroy it.

But then there come ten more kings. This is another clue to indicate that John is not expecting us to work our way through lists of emperors. However late we date Revelation, it cannot be as late as the end of the second century, which is what we would have to say if we were to add another ten emperors to the seven (or eight) already listed. It is far more likely that the 'ten kings' who are part of the monstrous system, and who eventually round on the whore herself and destroy her, are different ruling elites within the larger Roman empire - kings and princes from the far-flung corners of the Western world - who will finally tire of Mistress Rome herself, and will use the bestial, monstrous power of Rome's own empire to attack the city that has for so long scooped up and sucked in all the wealth and glory that was going.

All this may seem to be complex beyond the point of comprehensibility. But the abiding and overriding lesson for the church, then and now, should nevertheless be clear. The brutal but seductive 'civilizations and national empires, which ensnare the world by promising luxury and delivering slavery, gain their power from the monster, the System of Imperial Power. Some have called this 'the domination system, a system which transcends geographical and historical limitations and reappears again and again in every century. John's readers already know that this system itself gains its power from the dragon, the accuser, the satan. Those who are caught up in the resultant battles need not feel that they are merely part of a dangerous confusion, of ignorant armies clashing by night. They are part of the lamb's victorious army, who will conquer the monster in the usual way, by his blood and by the word of their faithful testimony. Thus it has been, and thus it will be.

NT Wright, Revelation for Everyone, 157