No sooner does John's vision introduce the "Whore of Babylon" (a personification of Rome), than the fall of Babylon begins. The imagery of foul spirits, birds, and beasts roving the streets makes clear that this city, symbolic of all empires, has become a ghost town. In an hour's time, all the wealth is gone.
John sees kings, merchants, shipmasters and seafarers weeping over the fallen city. But in this truth-telling vision, even their grief is twisted: they are crying about their lost wealth. They are sad about their nice building materials, their spices, their cattle, and even the human lives they have enslaved.
A reminder: slavery was the norm, rather than the exception, in human history, and that the New Testament emerged from a culture in which slavery of various forms was commonplace. Even so, John's list of lost possessions in Revelation 18, "choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves--and human lives", to me seems to mock and expose that very institution. To mourn human lives as another bullet point on an insurance claim of lost goods, is to lose our own humanity, and our connection to God.
We should mourn people, not things. We should love people, not things. If we get it upside down, then John's vision implores us: leave Babylon. Do it now.
My poetic interpretation of REVELATION 18
Another angel now patrols her streets
With spotlight and loudspeaker does he wail:
“From fallen Babylon, all folk, retreat!
She mixes twice in her unholy grail!”
In one swift hour, down Babylon is hurled
The merchants and her kings, faroff, survive;
“Such costly silks and linens, gold and pearls!”
They weep for wealth, but not for human lives.
The captains and shipmasters mourn for jewels,
For iron, marble, humans they enslaved;
The lamp is snuffed, and henceforth, darkness rules;
No flute nor trump, from silence, shall be saved.
Rejoice at this, O Heaven’s Progeny!
Let those who value lives, for praise be free.