Jeremiah 51:47-49. Babylon must fall, and the days are coming when it shall. The whole land and all of its idols will be put to shame. All her slain will fall in her midst. Then all the heavens and the earth will rejoice. Babylon must fall for the sake of the slain of Israel, because all the slain of the earth have fallen for Babylon.

I have written before about how I Think We Might Be Babylon - the truly evil power that crushes the good in service of its idols. But this time I am looking at the last line of this - "Babylon must fall for the slain of Israel, as for Babylon have fallen the slain of all the earth." Babylon, to Jeremiah, was the conquering city - the great nation-state that would crush Israel and destroy the Temple. But in the Bible Babylon in general is often used as a symbol, a stand-in for the evil of the world - for the way power corrupts and crushes the innocent. That is why I wrote previously that the United States seems to be heading in the direction of Babylon. But this line attributes all the deaths of the world to Babylon - so this is likening Babylon more to evil in general - that force in the world that makes us turn on each other and destroy God's kingdom. In that sense, maybe I am wrong about attributing these "Babylonian" tendencies to just the United States. Maybe Babylon to us is this creeping (actually not so creeping anymore ) secular globalization. It is crushing the innocent in its path - just look at China and Australia and New Zealand.

It does not care about individuals, it just sees humanity as a mass of unruly peons that needs to have order and control imposed on it. That power is, indeed, responsible for "all the slain of the Earth."