¹⁸ The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”^(A)

¹⁹ The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. God remembered great Babylon and gave her the wine cup of the fury of his wrath.^(A)

² He called out with a mighty voice,

²³ This is what he said: “As for the fourth beast,

⁴⁰ And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron; just as iron crushes and smashes everything,^[a] it shall crush and shatter all these.^{(A) 41} As you saw the feet and toes partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the strength of iron shall be in it, as you saw the iron mixed with the clay.^(B)

⁴ His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to deliver a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.^(A)

The Birth of Jesus

2 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.