Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Revelation 17:5

"and upon her forehead a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." — Revelation 17:5 (ASV)

The woman has a title written on her forehead, showing that in spite of all her royal glamour she is nothing but a prostitute. It was customary for Roman prostitutes to wear their names in the fillet that encircled their brows. The first word in the woman’s title is “ MYSTERY” (GK 3696; cf. 1:20; 10:7; 17:7). It seems best to see this word as a prefix to the actual name—i.e., “She has a name written on her forehead, which is a mystery, ‘Babylon. Elsewhere in Revelation John uses “mystery” as a word denoting a divine mystery or allegory that is now revealed (cf. also comment on 11:8). No doubt the specific mystery is that this prostitute is the mother of all earth’s idolatrous prostitutes. She is the reservoir or the womb that bears all individual cases of historical resistance to God’s will on earth; she is the unholy antithesis to the woman who weds the Lamb (19:7–8) and to the New Jerusalem (21:2–3). That is in part why she cannot be any particular historical city . While at its beginning Babel was associated with resisting and defying God (Genesis 11:1–11), it is probably the epoch of the Babylonian captivity of Israel that indelibly etched the proud, idolatrous, and repressive nature of Babylon on the memories of God’s people and thus provided the symbolic image that could be applied to the further manifestations of the mother prostitute.