Another angel, powerful and glorious, cried, “FALLEN, FALLEN IS BABYLON THE GREAT, AND IS BECOME A HABITATION OF DEMONS, A HOLD OF EVERY UNCLEAN SPIRIT, AND A HOLD OF EVERY UNCLEAN AND HATEFUL BIRD.” This is an accurate account of Jerusalem during the Roman siege. Verse three reveals the cause of God’s wrath. The fault with Jerusalem was not because they traded with other nations, or that she was prosperous. After God had clothed Zion with beauty as His queen, Jerusalem played the harlot and treated God as if He were no different than the pagan gods. There may have been much adultery, but this adultery was spiritual unfaithfulness (cf. James 4:1-4) because she did not attribute her wealth to God but to the favors of her lovers (cf. Heb. 2:1-13). Consumed with these relationships, she forgot God. This adultery is the reason for the inclusion of God’s wrath upon the nations who committed adultery with her.
Because of her spiritual condition (inhabited only by demons, unclean spirits, and unclean/hateful birds), God urges His people to come out of her that they have no fellowship with her sins and receive not of her plagues (v. 4). Many Christians left Jerusalem after the persecution of the Jews started (Acts 8:1-3). Even as late as the Roman siege, saints could escape the city (Matthew 24:15-22).  Palestine and Israelite territory was not the place to live during the wrath of God. When the Romans invaded the area, many found refuge in the city, thinking that the walls would provide a safe haven from the enemy. However, Jesus tells his discples that safety would not be found in the city (cf. Luke 21:20-22).  By the time the seditious Jews controlled the whole city, the city was full of unclean spirits and iniquties. The city, like Sodom and Gomorrah, must reap what has been shown and be destroyed (Matt. 23:37-39, Rev. 6:16-17). Sometimes, one does not always reap in proportion to what has been sown. As Hosea 8:7, some have sown the wind but have reaped the whirlwind. Here, she is to be repaid double for the wickedness she has deposited over the many years of her wickedness. For her wantonness and pride, she will receive mouring and torment. In one day, she is stripped of her glory and receive the plagues of death, mourning, famine, and a complete burning with fire (v. 8). Josephus explains, “Yet was the misery itself more terrible than this disorder; for one would have thought that the hill itself on which the temple stood was seething hot, as full of fire on every part of it, that the blood was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain mrore in number than those that slew them; for the ground did nowhere appear visible, for the dead bodies that lay on it; but the soldiers went over heaps of these bodies, as they ran upon such as fled from them” (Wars, VI, v, 1).
Making matters worse, she has no remorse or sense of accountability for any actions taken over those years. She continues to say, “I am a queen and shall not see mourning” (v. 7). This may have some allusion to Lamentations 1:1-2 during the first destruction of Jerusalem. In the first destruction, they lamented their condition and suffered seventy years of captivity. In the second, she has no sense of shame or sorrow for her past choices and brings an end to the nation. The difference is likened to a marital seperation verses a divorce where she and her children are cast out. This was the day that is “the great and terrible day of the Lord” (Joel 2:31), “the day of wrath” (Rom. 2:5), “the day of the God” (2 Pet. 3:12), and “the day of the Lord” (2 Pet. 3:10; 2 Thess. 2:2). It was a period of time that came toward the end of that generation from around A.D. 66 and A.D. 80. The city’s destruction is described as taking place in one hour (18:19).