Revelation 18:5

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

Revelation 18:5 in Other Translations

KJV
5 For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
ESV
5 for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
NLT
5 For her sins are piled as high as heaven, and God remembers her evil deeds.
MSG
5 Her sins stink to high Heaven; God has remembered every evil she's done.
CSB
5 For her sins are 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 the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”
4 Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “ ‘Come out of her, my people,’so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
5 for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.
6 Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Pour her a double portion from her own cup.
7 Give her as much torment and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit enthroned as queen. I am not a widow;I will never mourn.’

Cross References 2

  • 1. 2 Chronicles 28:9; Ezra 9:6; Jeremiah 51:9
  • 2. Revelation 16:19
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