Oracles against the Nations – Sibylline Oracles Book 3.295-488

This section seems to have been inserted into the third book from another source as it interrupts the flow of the apocalyptic section ending in 294.

  • Babylon is judged first because they destroyed the temple (303-313). Babylon will be “filled with blood” because they poured out the blood of good men and righteous men, whose blood even now cries out to high heaven.”
  • Egypt will be judged until the seventh generation (314-318).
  • Gog and Magog, between the Ethiopian rivers (319-323), “your dewy earth will drink black blood.”
  • Lybia, because they destroyed the house of the great immortal (324-340). Lybia and Ethiopia are among the followers of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38:5. Their land will be full of corpses, chasms and yawning pits.
  • Many cities will fall (341-349). The list includes nineteen cities in Asia Minor and Egypt.
  • Rome is condemned (350-380). Rome will fall in poverty and “become a street” (364). Rome will be liable to pay ten-thousand times so “what man would want to live in those days?” (371). Collins suspects line 357, “often drunken with your weddings with many suitors” is an allusion to the many weddings of Cleopatra, called “the mistress” in the oracle.
  • Macedonia will greatly afflict the world (381-388). Alexander the Great is described as from the “race of Cronos” and he will conquer even Babylon.
  • Alexander will go throughout the world conquering whomever he pleases (389-401). Lines 397-398 make reference to ten horns and another which will sprout out the side, similar to Dan. 7:7 and the various other “horn” prophecies in Dan. 8 and Rev. 13.

The remaining section is a collection of prophecies against cities in Greece and Asian Minor, beginning with Phrygia (402-413). Illium, Sparta, Cyprus, Ephesus, etc. are all mentioned in this section (414-488). The oracle also refers to Homer as “certain false writer, an old man, of falsified fatherland” (419-420), a writer who “he will especially embellish the helmeted men of war” (426).

2 thoughts on “Oracles against the Nations – Sibylline Oracles Book 3.295-488

Leave a Reply