Read The Jewish Annotated New Testament Online
Authors: Amy-Jill Levine
6
because they shed the blood of saints and
prophets,
you have given them blood to drink.
It is what they deserve!”
7
And I heard the altar respond,
“Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty,
your judgments are true and just!”
8
The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire;
9
they were scorched by the fierce heat, but they cursed the name of God, who had authority over these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory.
10
The fifth angel poured his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness; people gnawed their tongues in agony,
11
and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.
12
The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order to prepare the way for the kings from the east.
13
And I saw three foul spirits like frogs coming from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, and from the mouth of the false prophet.
14
These are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.
15
(“See, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and is clothed,
*
not going about naked and exposed to shame.”)
16
And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.
17
The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!”
18
And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, such as had not occurred since people were upon the earth, so violent was that earthquake.
19
The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. God remembered great Babylon and gave her the wine-cup of the fury of his wrath.
20
And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found;
21
and huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds,
*
dropped from heaven on people, until they cursed God for the plague of the hail, so fearful was that plague.
17
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great whore who is seated on many waters,
2
with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk.”
3
So he carried me away in the spirit
*
into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.
4
The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication;
5
and on her forehead was written a name, a mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations.”
6
And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.
WOMAN AND THE SYMBOLISM OF POLLUTION
John of Patmos exhibits a concern with female sexuality that is unique among Jewish apocalypses. His rival “Jezebel,” a teacher of what seem to be Pauline teachings (cf. 1 Cor 7–8), is accused of engaging in
porneia
, impure sexual activity, and her followers’ attention to her John likens to adultery (2.20–22). His hatred of Rome/Babylon is subsumed into disgust for a giant
pornē
of kings’ pleasure (17.2), whose polluting fornication is likened to a disgusting liquid she holds in a golden cup (17.4b). The horror of her liquid impurities (menses do not lie far from John’s language here) is ramified through her drunkenness “with the blood of the saints” (17.6), an utter inversion of Jewish meal and sexual purity (cf. Gen 9.4–6; Lev 7.26–27; 15; 17.10–14; Deut 23.10).
John’s horror of women as sexual bearers of pollution extends to a critical detail of the 144,000 saints: that “they have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins” (14.4). In transcending marriage and sexuality the 144,000 are to be like angels, a kind of apocalyptic celibacy that many Jesus-believers were embracing (1 Cor 7.1), comparable to the stringent sexual purity of the Qumran Essenes (CD 12.1–2). Yet it is not just ritual celibacy that John is enjoining here, for he specifically imagines women as a source of “defilement [
molunō
].” John’s preoccupation with female fluids also emerges in the vision of the woman and the dragon (ch. 12). As the woman gives birth, almost directly into the dragon’s mouth (12.4b), so the dragon expels a flood of water (12.15), which is swallowed in turn by the helpful (and female) earth. The alternation of fluids, expelling, and swallowing amounts to a nightmarish image of female reproduction.
Much Jewish literature from the Greek and Roman periods is preoccupied with the boundaries of the Jewish community, and the penetration or breaching of these boundaries through either intermarriage or cultural influences is invariably discussed in terms of impure sexuality:
zenut
(Hebrew) or
porneia
. The most vivid example, projected into antediluvian myth, is the seduction of the Watcher angels by human women, through whose impure sexual congress all kinds of foreign customs, magic, and divination practices entered human culture, thus polluting Judaism (
1 En
. 6–9; cf.
T. Reuben
3.11–14). By the Roman period intermarriage and fornication had become the dominant language in sectarian Judaism for discussing priestly purity, Jewish communal purity, and the incorporation or rejection of foreign ideas and practices; and of course the image of women’s bodies, their orifices and sexuality, never drifted far from these discussions (cf. Prov 7).
It is important to recognize John’s preoccupations with female sexuality for what they are: one Jewish prophet’s way of addressing the halakhic necessity for eschatological celibacy, to maintain purity and angelic status when the Jesus Movement was shifting in a more sexually tolerant direction (cf. 1 Cor 7.3–5,9). John comprehends this threat in the most graphic terms his tradition offers: the sexuality and fluids of women.
When I saw her, I was greatly amazed.
7
But the angel said to me, “Why are you so amazed? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her.
8
The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the inhabitants of the earth, whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will be amazed when they see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come.
9
“This calls for a mind that has wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; also, they are seven kings,
10
of whom five have fallen, one is living, and the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain only a little while.
11
As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction.
12
And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast.
13
These are united in yielding their power and authority to the beast;
14
they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”
15
And he said to me, “The waters that you saw, where the whore is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages.
16
And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the whore; they will make her desolate and naked; they will devour her flesh and burn her up with fire.
17
For God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by agreeing to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled.
18
The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”
18
After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendor.
2
He called out with a mighty voice,
“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
It has become a dwelling place of
demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit,
a haunt of every foul bird,
a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.
*
3
For all the nations have drunk
*
of the wine of the wrath of her
fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed
fornication with her,
and the merchants of the earth have
grown rich from the power
*
of her
luxury.”
4
Then I heard another voice from heaven
saying,
“Come out of her, my people,
so that you do not take part in her sins,
and so that you do not share in her plagues;
5
for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
and God has remembered her iniquities.
6
Render to her as she herself has rendered,
and repay her double for her deeds;
mix a double draught for her in the cup
she mixed.
7
As she glorified herself and lived
luxuriously,
so give her a like measure of torment
and grief.
Since in her heart she says,
‘I rule as a queen;
I am no widow,
and I will never see grief,’
8
therefore her plagues will come in a
single day—
pestilence and mourning and famine—
and she will be burned with fire;
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.”
9
And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning;
10
they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,
“Alas, alas, the great city,
Babylon, the mighty city!
For in one hour your judgment has come.”