Babylon was a city located along the Euphrates River. This city was the capital of what was called the Babylonian Empire. The Babylonian empire included Babylon and all of the land that the Babylonian people took from other nations.
Babylon was the same place where the Tower of Babel was built hundreds of years before (see: Genesis 11:1-9).
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The Babylonians were a group of people from Babylonia. They attacked the people of Judah. They made the people leave the land of Israel. They made them live in different places within the kingdom of Babylonia (see: 2 Kings 25). This happened about 586 years before Jesus was born on earth. The people of Judah lived in Babylonia for 70 years (see: 2 Chronicles 36:21-22; Jeremiah 29:10). After these 70 years, the Persian kingdom defeated the Babylonians (see: Daniel 5).
Part of Babylonia was called “Chaldea.” The people living there were the “Chaldeans.” Therefore, people also used the word “Chaldea” to talk about Babylonia (see: 2 Kings 25; Ezra 5:12; Isaiah 13:19).
In the New Testament, the word “Babylon” was used to talk about different places where people worshiped idols and did other sinful things (see: 1 Peter 5:13). The words “Babylon the great” were used to talk about a person, a city, or a nation that was sinful in the same way the city of Babylon was sinful (see: Revelation 14:8; 16:19; 17:5; 18:2, 9, 10, 21). “Babylon the great” was also called “the great prostitute” (see: Revelation 17:1).
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