<p>17:16<i> And the ten horns which you saw: they and the beast, these shall hate the prostitute and shall make her desolate and naked- </i>According to the prototype of the Old Testament invasions of Israel, their enemies turn against each other. We are to expect this in the last days, so that, e.g., Ethiopia will turn against Assyria as happened historically at the time of the Assyrian attack upon Jerusalem. This may be part of the process whereby the horns &quot;hate the whore&quot; of Babylon/Assyria during the final stage of their persecution of God's people (Rev. 17:16 cp. Hab. 2:8).&nbsp;Nah. 3:9 points out that the real strength of Assyria against Israel was on account of the support she received from the smaller surrounding powers.&nbsp;Likewise the &lsquo;Romans&rsquo; who destroyed the temple in AD70 were largely Arab and Persian mercenaries. Similarly no one nation presently has any likelihood of dominating the Middle East in terms of military power.&nbsp;Iran and Iraq (geographical 'Assyria') will need the assistance of the other surrounding nations to realistically invade Israel. &quot;<i>Tidings</i> out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him&quot; (Dan. 11:44) uses the same word translated &quot;rumour&quot; in 2 Kings 19:7, concerning the 'rumour' Sennacherib heard of his Ethiopian allies turning against him.&nbsp;These 'tidings' can be interpreted in a last-days context as referring to news reaching 'Assyria' of her smaller allies turning against her - the horns hating the whore.</p><p>Historical Babylon was not destroyed simply by &quot;the Medes&quot; but by her own former allies turning against her. In the same way as God puts this idea into the hearts of the ten kings (:17), so Jer. 50:9 says of Babylon's destruction: &quot;I will stir up and cause to come up against Babylon a company of great nations from the north country&quot;.&nbsp; Babylon has just been pictured as sitting upon many waters, the nations within the land promised to Abraham (:15). But these waters are to be dried up from her, and those very waters come upon her in destruction. Thus Jer. 50:38,42: &quot;A drought is on her waters, and they shall be dried up... The sea has come up on Babylon; she is covered with the multitude of its waves&quot;. The nations who destroy her were from the borders of the earth / land promised to Abraham: &quot;Many kings shall be stirred up from the uttermost parts of the earth (Jer. 50:41).&nbsp; These are the ten kings of Rev. 17 who hate the whore and destroy her, the &quot;nations&quot; of &quot;all the earth / land&quot; whom Babylon had made drunk (Jer. 51:7). Her destroyers are likened to locusts (Jer. 51:14), a figure for the jihadist invaders in Rev. 9 who were once supportive of her. There is large emphasis in Jer. 51 that these destroyers of Babylon will have been &quot;prepared&quot; by God, raised up by Him; just as we read in :17 that God puts this idea into their hearts: &quot;<i>Prepare </i>the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz... <i>Prepare </i>against her the nations&quot; (Jer. 51:27,28).</p><p><i>And shall eat her flesh and shall burn her completely with fire</i>- Eating the flesh of a victim is a Hebraism for total hatred. But within John's thought, the connection is with his record of the Lord's teaching that His followers are to eat His flesh (Jn. 6). The idea may be that although they hate her, yet they are participants in her, as we are in the Lord, and they shall therefore not be saved on account of this but rather judged. Judgment by fire is very much the language of Divine judgment, but we see here how this judgment will actually be brought about by the infighting within the beast system. Under the law, prostitutes were to be burnt to death. So the idea seems to be that indeed Babylon refers to a charismatic individual who leads or rides the beast. As Babylon burnt Jerusalem with fire, so she must be burnt (Jer. 21:10; 51:58).</p><p>The animals and birds were even under Babylon's control according to Dan. 2:38. But it is the beasts and birds of the sky who later are prophesied as feasting upon Babylon (Rev. 19:17). This is the equivalent of the horns on the beast hating the whore of Babylon who rides it; the destruction of the Babylon system will ultimately be more by Muslim infighting than direct bolts of destruction from God. Indeed, this was historically God's preferred method of destroying Israel's invaders in Old Testament times.<br />&nbsp;</p>