The wider context had been speaking of the fall of Babylon, that great prostitute. “Babylon” depicted any city or civilization or state that adopted the mindset of Old Testament Babylon in the days of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:30), the mindset that insists people can build their own paradise on this earth without God. Efforts to build a paradise involve more than political leadership and peace (i.e., the work of the first group the heavenly voice mentions, “kings,” in Revelation 18:9). Such efforts involve also an economy, trade, that is, supplying people with their wants and needs (hence the reference to “merchants,” Revelation 18:11). But sourcing a city’s wants and needs is one thing; transporting them to a given city (of potentially hundreds of thousands of inhabitants) is another matter. The easiest way to transport goods in the apostle’s days (as today) is by water. So these “shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea” had an essential role to play in satisfying the “Babylon” spirit of the populations among whom John’s readers resided. They were the “trucking industry” of the day.
17 For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.”And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off