Revelation 18:5

5 For her sins are piled up to the sky, and God has called to mind her unrighteous deeds.

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 wine of the anger provoked by her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich through her excessive luxury."

4 Then I heard another voice from Heaven, which said, "Come out of her, My people, that you may not become partakers in her sins, nor receive a share of her plagues.

5 For her sins are piled up to the sky, and God has called to mind her unrighteous deeds.

6 Give back to her as she has given; repay her in accordance with her doings, twice as much; in the bowl that she has mixed, mix twice as much for her.

7 She has freely glorified herself and revelled in luxury; equally freely administer torment to her, and woe. For in her heart she boasts, saying, `I sit enthroned as Queen: no widow am I: I shall never know sorrow.'