Dunk's Bible Palace

The Motif Searcher: one word across the Douay, the Latin, the Greek and the Hebrew.

Apocalypse 14:8

And another angel followed, saying: That great Babylon is fallen, is fallen; which made all nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

Challoner: BabylonBy Babylon may be very probably signified all the wicked world in general, which God will punish, and destroy after the short time of this mortal life: or it may signify every great city wherein enormous sins and abominations are daily committed; and that when the measure of its iniquities is full, the punishments due to its crimes are poured on it. It may also be some city of the description in the text, that will exist, and be destroyed, as here described, towards the end of the world.
Open Apocalypse 14:8 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →

The verse in its languages

Vulgate (Clementine)
Et alius angelus secutus est dicens : Cecidit, cecidit Babylon illa magna : quæ a vino iræ fornicationis suæ potavit omnes gentes.
Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
Καὶ ἄλλος δεύτερος ἄγγελος ἠκολούθησεν λέγων· Ἔπεσεν, ἔπεσεν Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη, ἣ ἐκ τοῦ οἴνου τοῦ θυμοῦ τῆς πορνείας αὐτῆς πεπότικεν πάντα τὰ ἔθνη.

Haydock's commentary

Another Angel,...saying:...She is fallen, she is fallen, that great Babylon. By Babylon, as observed before, may very probably be signified all the wicked world in general, whom God will punish and destroy after the short time of this mortal life: or may be signified every great city, and perhaps Rome returned to idolatry in the time of antichrist, a little before the end of the world, or may be signified the idolatry of heathen Rome, in the fourth age[century], when the Christian religion, under Constantine and his successors, began to triumph over paganism, i.e. according to those interpreters followed by Alcazar, Bossuet, P. Alleman, &c. which exposition Dr. Hammond thus expresseth: "the whole impure city of heathen Rome, under the title of Babylon, that old idolatrous city that had lain so heavy upon the people of God....should speedily be destroyed, for advancing the heathen worship." (Witham)

It is probable that here by the great Babylon is meant the city of the devil; that is, the universal society of the wicked: as Jerusalem is taken for the city and the Church of God. (Challoner)

From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.

The Fathers on this verse

St Victorinus of Pettau Commentary on the Apocalypse of the Blessed John, From the fourteenth chapter

8. “And another angel following him.”] The other angel following, he speaks of as the same prophet who is the associate of his prophesying. But that he says,