When Sunday school teachers or pastors stress the fact that you have to read the Bible in its context to understand it, they generally mean that you need to look at the verses before and after for an accurate interpretation. In fact, “context” is a rather broad term that encompasses many aspects surrounding a given passage. As an example, I would like to look at Revelation 18 concerning the fall of Babylon.
Literary Context
This area alone is comprised of several different types of contexts.
Genre: It is self-obvious that you do not approach a historical book of the Bible as you would Psalms, for example. And in this case, “apocalyptic” constitutes its own separate type of literature, which is even distinct from prophetic writings, though there is a certain amount of overlap between the two categories. They both may deal to some extent with events of the future. But whereas the classic OT prophets wrote mainly in a poetic form (using figurative language such as metaphors, similes, hyperbole, etc.), apocalyptic language goes even a step further in that many of the nouns used are actually symbols for something entirely else. Therefore, any attempts to explain the details in a woodenly literal manner are doomed to miss out on what the author is really trying to convey.
Thus, in Revelation 18 it is more than a mere possibility that “Babylon” actually stands for something other than a once grand, or even rebuilt, city located in the Middle East. As to what it does stand for, that would take a long discussion in itself. And it is not just the first verse of the chapter that is likely to be symbolic. In v. 21, as Ruiz points out, we have a “symbolic action representing the total destruction of the city,” not the exact manner in which the city will be destroyed.
The Book of Revelation is composed of both prose and poetry, and so is Revelation 18. In poetic language, subsequent lines within a given verse tend to repeat the same basic thought, not describe a new idea. In this manner, the “dwelling place of demons” and the “haunt of every foul spirit” are one and the same thing (v. 2). Similarly, when verse 3 says “the nations have drunk the wine, etc.,” “the kings have committed fornication,” and the merchants “have grown rich from the power of her luxury (NRSV), all of these are similar descriptions of how the rich and powerful have benefited in the past from all that Babylon had to offer. Finally, verses 4 and 5 are a matched pair that can be pictured as below:
Don't partake of her sins
or you will share in her plagues.
She is filled with sin
and God has remembered her iniquities.
In that manner, you can more clearly understand that God “remembering” her sins means that He will visit her with plagues.
Organization of the Book: This is a key factor in deciding where Chapter 18 fits into the scheme of the whole of Revelation. Concerning the overall book, there are at least five completely different ways to view the book, and not all of them are incompatible. But there is one school of interpretation which conflicts with all the other four: the chronological view. Unfortunately, it is also the most popular view among evangelical Christians.
Critics have pointed out many problems with treating the revelations in the book as if they follow one another in the order in which they are described. But it is probably best to quote from one of the proponents of this view to see what he has to say first regarding Revelation 17-18, both dealing with the fall of Babylon. John Walvoord starts out with this admission: “These chapters do not fall chronologically within the schemes of the seals, trumpets, and bowls of wrath, and expositors have had difficulty in determining precisely the meaning of the revelation in these chapters.”
But in attempting to explain where they do fit in, he runs afoul of several problems which he has to talk his way around. For one, consider the number of times Babylon appears to fall if one takes a chronological view of that one event:
Revelation 14:8 – “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!”
Revelation 16:19 – “God remembered great Babylon and gave her the wine-cup of his wrath.”
Revelation 17:16,18 – Concerning the Harlot, “The beast and the ten horns...will devour her flesh and burn her up with fire...The woman you saw is the great city.”
Revelation 18:2 – “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!”
Revelation 18:21 – “With such violence Babylon the great city will be thrown down.”
Note that the first, second, and fourth passages above say that Babylon has already fallen while in the third and fifth passage that fall is pictured at some future time. That alone would cause a reader to seriously question whether the chronological view is the best.
Walvoord confidently places the events of Chapter 17 within the first half of the seven years preceding Christ's Coming. (Elsewhere in the same commentary he locates it at the midpoint of those seven years.) But, he goes on, Chapter 18 takes place at the end of the seven years. The reasoning behind these conclusions is not given. To explain why chapters 17 and 18 appear to both describe the same destruction, he states that the woman of chapter 17 is not really the power of Babylon, only its religious aspects (in clear contradiction to Revelation 17:16-18). By contrast, the fall described in chapter 18 has to be an entirely different event since different people are mourning the two happenings (as if the two descriptions of the same event have to mirror one another in every detail). As to what exactly is falling in Chapter 18, Walvoord's heading to this chapter describes it as “political Babylon” even though the whole chapter actually centers on its economic power instead.
But where do chapters 14 and 16 fit in? He says that 14:8 “apparently is in anticipation of the description of that city” in chapter 18 and treats 16:19 in the same manner. He passes over the fact that, according to the verb tenses, the fall has already happened in chapter 14 and 16 while somehow it remains a future event in 18:21.
By the way, it is not just the case of Babylon's fall where a certain event appears to happen multiple times. It also occurs with the Battle of Armageddon, the rising of Satan from the pit, godly reigns on earth being set up, a third of the stars being swept down, people being tormented but not repenting, and Paul bowing down to an angel (even though he had been told not to do it the first time), two Second Comings of Christ, and up to seven different “last judgments.”
As I have explained in more detail in my post “Book of Revelation: Sequence of Events,” there are four other ways to order the book rather than the rather dubious chronological scheme. These are: alternating scenes between events on earth and in heaven, parallel cycles which tell the same series of events seven different times utilizing different imagery each time, progressive recapitulation (as is clearly used in the OT apocalyptic writings) which is similar to parallel cycles but advances the action chronologically each time, and a chiastic structure in which sections with similar themes are matched up symmetrically from the first and last literary units working toward the center of the book.
Note that it is really impossible to derive a chronological scheme of future events from any of these organizations. That should only be a problem for those Christians who are intent on being in on all the secrets of God's plans for the future rather than concentrating on living according to God's will in the present.
Organization of the Chapter
One tool to determining how the author intended his work to be read is to divide it into separate paragraphs (sections) by looking for obvious break-points in the text. In the case of Revelation 18, consideration of who is talking in each case, who their audience is, and the subject of the verses is the best, but not only, way to accomplish that goal. Thus:
A vv. 1-3 “another angel” announces that Babylon has fallen
B vv. 4-8 “another voice” addresses believers regarding the future fall of Babylon
C1 vv. 9-10 “the kings of the earth” lament the fall
C2 vv. 11-17a “the merchants of the earth” lament the fall
C3 vv. 17b-19 “seafarers” lament the fall
B' vv. 20 an unknown voice tells believers to rejoice over the fall
A' vv. 21-22 “a mighty angel” demonstrates how Babylon will fall
The suggestions for the speaker in v. 20 has been variously identified as the prophet himself (Bruce, Beasley-Murray), the angel (Phillips), perhaps God himself (Ford), or the angel of 18:1 (Beale). Assuming that this speaker came from heaven, we can now proceed to define the structure of the chapter a little more precisely, as indicated by the letters before each section above. They form a regular pattern called a chiasm, where there are clear parallels between A and A' as well as between B and B'. The central section C consisting of laments is divided into three parts, and together they form the point of emphasis of Revelation 18.
Another thing to note from this literary analysis is that as you work your way through the various sections, there is absolutely no chronological order within the section. If you go from verse 1 to 22 in order, the time scheme for the fall of Babylon is: past, future, past, past, past, past, and future. If you view it from the bounds of the chapter to the center (A-A' to B-B' to C), the time indicators make even less sense. This should be one of many indicators that the whole of Revelation is not to be taken as a chronological account of future events.
The above discussion does not exhaust the number of different contexts one must consider in looking at a given passage in the Bible. But I will save this further analysis of Revelation 18 for a companion post.
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