1. Revelation 18:7 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

What is the content of the “like measure” Babylon must be given?

Revelation 18:7 (ESV)

7 As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, ‘I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.’

According to the law of God (Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:19–20; Deuteronomy 19:21), she should get precisely what she gave, that is, in “like measure.” What the woman is to get is “torment and mourning,” in contrast to her present lifestyle of wanton luxury. That is because the prostitute supported her lifestyle through the death of saints (Revelation 17:6), that is, perhaps tormenting in the process of martyring them but certainly throwing their loved ones into torment and mourning. Now she is to taste her own recipe—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.