Sacrificing Babylon

The ten horns join with the beast in slaughtering the harlot city Babylon. It’s a macabre scene, marked by five relentless verbs – hate, desolate, make naked, eat, burn – and by a bizarre sequence of actions. 

It’s a sacrificial sequence. An ascension offering (Leviticus 1) was prepared for offering by being skinned. Then its flesh was burned. Though it is not specified that other offerings were skinned, many would have involved both burning and eating. Yahweh’s portion was always burned prior to the meal; Yahweh the Master of the house consumed His meal first. The treatment of the harlot is a twisted sacrificial sequence: They hate her, desolate her, strip her naked, eat her, and, having eaten her, then burn her with fire. Then her smoke, like the smoke of sacrifice, arises forever and ever (18:9, 18; 19:3).

(Historically, the violation of normal sacrificial order makes sense. First the kings would strip the city and “eat” its plunder; then they would set whatever remained on fire.)

It’s a symmetrical eye-for-eye punishment. For her abominations and desolations, she is desolated. She drank saints’ blood, the life of the flesh, and her flesh is given to the beast’s horns (as Jezebel was eaten by dogs). She sacrificed the saints, and in recompense she is sacrificed.

Why would a woman be sacrificed? That isn’t as odd as it might appear. As James Jordan has argued, every offering is a gift of “bridal food” (ishsheh) to Yahweh the Divine Husband. Every sacrifice is a wedding feast. The sacrifice of the harlot is an inverted parody of sacrifice. It’s the offering of a harlot rather than a bride. It is not an animal offered by a human, but a human offered by a beast and his cohort of kings.