Revelation 18:5

5 for her sins are a sticky mass piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.

Revelation 18:5 Meaning and Commentary

Revelation 18:5

For her sins have reached unto heaven
Or "have followed unto heaven"; one after another, in one age after another, until they have been as it were heaped up together, and have reached the heavens; the phrase denotes the multitude of them, God's knowledge and notice of them, and the cry of them to him; see ( Genesis 18:20 ) ( Jonah 1:2 ) the Alexandrian copy and Complutensian edition read, "have cleaved", or "glued", and so the Syriac and Arabic versions seem to have read; her sins were as it were soldered together, and stuck fast to her, and being joined and linked together, made a long chain, and reached to heaven, and cleaved to that, and cried for vengeance:

and God hath remembered her iniquities;
and is about to punish her for them; for as forgiveness of sin is signified by a non-remembrance of it, so punishment of sin by a remembrance of it, and of the persons that commit it; see ( Revelation 16:19 ) .

Revelation 18:5 In-Context

3 "For all the nations have drunk of the wine of God's fury caused by her whoring - yes, the kings of the earth went whoring with her, and from her unrestrained love of luxury the world's businessmen have grown rich."

4 Then I heard another voice out of heaven say: "My people, come out of her! so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not be infected by her plagues,

5 for her sins are a sticky mass piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.

6 "Render to her as she rendered to others! Pay her back double for what she has done! Use the cup in which she has brewed to brew her a double-sized drink!

7 "Give her as much torment and sorrow as the glory and luxury she gave herself! For in her heart she says, 'I sit a queen - I am not a widow, I will never see sorrow.'