²⁵ at the head of every street you built your lofty place and prostituted your beauty, offering yourself^[a] to every passer-by and multiplying your prostitution.^(A)

³¹ building your platform at the head of every street and making your lofty place in every square! Yet you were not like a prostitute because you scorned payment.

¹⁶ And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the whore;^[a] they will make her desolate and naked; they will devour her flesh and burn her up with fire.^(A)

¹² And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast.^{(A) 13} These are united in yielding their power and authority to the beast;

The Great Whore and the Beast

17 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great whore^[a] who is seated on many waters,^{(A) 2} with whom the kings of the earth have engaged in sexual immorality^[b] and with the wine of whose prostitution the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk.”^{(B) 3} So he carried me away in the spirit^[c] into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.^{(C) 4} The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her prostitution,^{(D) 5} and on her forehead was written a name, a mystery: “Babylon the great, mother^[d] of whores^[e] and of earth’s abominations.”^(E)

³² Thus says the Lord God:

⁹ Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians, for whom she lusted.^{(A) 10} These uncovered her nakedness; they seized her sons and her daughters, and they killed her with the sword. Judgment was executed upon her, and she became a byword among women.^(B)

¹⁵ But you trusted in your beauty and prostituted yourself because of your fame and lavished your prostitutions on any passer-by.^[a](A)