785. [verse 16] 'And saying, Woe, woe, that great city, clothed with fine linen and purple and scarlet and decked with gold, precious stone and pearls, for in one hour so many riches have been devastated' signifies a grievous lamentation that their magnificent things and gains have been destroyed so suddenly and so clearly. By 'woe, woe' is signified a grievous lamentation, as above (n. 769). By 'that great city' is signified the Roman Catholic form of religion because it is said 'clothed with fine linen and purple' and 'decked with gold', which cannot be said of a city but can of a form of religion. By 'clothed with fine linen, purple and scarlet, and decked with gold, precious stone and pearls' are signified things similar to those above (n. 725-727) where the same words are, in general things magnificent in external form. By 'for in one hour so many riches have been devastated' is signified that their gains have been destroyed so suddenly and so clearly. By 'in one hour' is signified suddenly and clearly, as above (n. 769), because by time and all things of time states are signified (n. 476). It is plain from these things that by those words are signified the things that have been set forth above. Very similar things are said in Jeremiah concerning the devastation of Babel:-
The land of Babel is full of a sense of guilt from the Holy One of Israel: the thoughts of Jehovah stand against them to place them in desolation: they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner nor a stone of foundations, because thou shalt have been laid waste for an age. Babel shall become heaps, a habitation of dragons, an astonishment and a hissing. Babel has been reduced to desolation, the sea has gone up over her, she has been covered with the multitude of the waves, her cities have been thriven back to desolation, a hand of drought and solitude Jer. li 5, 26, 29, 37, 41-43.