Revelation 18:1

4. Song of triumph over the accomplished destruction of Babylon, Revelation 18:1-24.

1. And After the full completion of the account both of Babylon’s fall and the harlot’s destiny, our seer finds the moment for giving the triumphal rejoicing upon the victory separately over each. This entire chapter is occupied with the triumph over the capital; nearly half of the next chapter over the harlot.

The fact that most of the verbs after Revelation 18:3 are in the future has beguiled the commentators into the idea that “the great city” is not demolished in chapter 16. Thus Alford says, “The seer does not see the act of destruction,” which is in itself antecedently a very improbable supposition, and contradicted by the whole narrative of that chapter, as our notes, perhaps, have shown. These interpreters overlook the dramatic character of this paean; the frequent preterites that remind us that the event is really past; the numerous instances in which the future tense really describes the long future desolation and woe consequent upon the past downfall; and that in a large share of the chapter the futures are uttered from the standpoint of the ancient prophets, and are simply the triumphant applications of the maledictions upon old Tyre and Babylon to Babylon the new.