In this week’s study, I continue in Chapter 18 with verses 4&5. Before I get into the study, I discuss some news events about the global elite. I discuss the so-called terror attack in Moscow Russia. I read numerous quotes pertaining to liars. I talk about the so-called conservative ministers backing Donald Trump. I also quote from the book ‘Pawns in the Game.’
4. another = al'-los A primary word; “else”, that is, different
Come = Come forth.
My People. = See Jerm. 50:4-9, and compare Isa. 10:20, 24.
Jer 50:4 In those days, and in that time, saith Yahweh, the children of Israel (spiritual) shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek (in the Hebrew manuscripts we see the word ETH placed here) Yahweh their Elohim. They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to Yahweh in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten. My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their restingplace. All that found them have devoured them: and their adversaries said, We offend not, because they have sinned against Yahweh, the habitation of justice, even Yahweh, the hope of their fathers. Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the he goats before the flocks. For, lo, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country: and they shall set themselves in array against her; from thence she shall be taken: their arrows shall be as of a mighty expert man; none shall return in vain.
sins. = Here the Greek word is used as a noun. ‘hamartia’ = This word can be used in 3 different ways
1. a failing to hit the mark;
2. hamartema = ‘ham-ar-tee'-ah’ the actual sin.
3. paraptoma = ‘par-ap'-to-mah’a falling aside, when one should have stood upright.
Plagues = play-gay' From ‘place-so’; a stroke; by implication a wound; figuratively a calamity;
Babylon’s evil deeds reach heaven (Revelation 18:5)
5. her = Babylon/spiritual confusion
reached = The texts read "joined" or "built together". The idea is of a great heap firmly fastened, and towering, like another Babel, as far as heaven. The idea is more than that of the cry of sin reaching heaven, as in the case of Sodom ); the sins themselves, many and majestic, have touched the face of heaven. Yahweh has remembered her.
Iniquities = ad-eek'-ay-mah; a wrong done
This is a Hebraism. The length of time during which Babylon's sins have been accumulating is implied in this "remembrance." Compare chapter 16:19, "and great Babylon came into remembrance before Yahweh." This "remembrance" implies a former rebellion: a rebellion which was repressed by dispersion but is at the time of the end to find in re-union, another opportunity for outbreak.
Thirdly, we notice her deeds. In this verse we have the reasoning for this impending judgment. "For her sins have reached/piled up as high as heaven, and Yahweh has remembered her iniquities."
It is interesting, "reach-piled up." It could be translated even "joined." It is from a Greek word kollao (kol-lah’-o) and it literally means to glue together. And the idea here is that the sins of Babylon have been glued together layer upon layer upon layer creating a final structure of wickedness that has reached all the way up to heaven.
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