Which Old Testament books does Revelation 18 draw from?

Revelation 18 draws from at least three distinct Old Testament traditions, and the boundaries between them are identifiable by the specific vocabulary John uses in each section. This matters because understanding where John is borrowing helps you understand what he is saying.

The opening image — fallen Babylon as "a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every unclean spirit, a haunt of every unclean bird" (Rev 18:2) — comes from Isaiah 34:11–15, where owls, ravens, vultures, and night-creatures nest in the ruins of Edom after YHWH's day of vengeance. The key Greek phrase (orneon akatharton, G3732+G169, "unclean bird") appears in both passages, and the textual similarity scores unusually high — 88.5% on a consonantal overlap test. Isaiah 34:8 gives the theological frame: "a day of the LORD's vengeance, a year of recompense for Zion's cause." In John's retelling, Babylon's fall is vengeance for Zion.

The long merchant lament in Revelation 18:9–19 — the kings and sailors and merchants weeping over the smoke of the burning city — is drawn almost directly from Ezekiel 27, the funeral song over Tyre. The shared Greek vocabulary through the Septuagint is dense: emporos (G1713, merchant) appears six times in Ezekiel 27 and four times in Revelation 18. Kybernētēs (G2942, pilot) and gomos (G1117, cargo) appear in both. The mourners in both passages stand at a distance, grieving from the sea, casting dust on their heads (Ezk 27:30; Rev 18:19). John is deliberately recasting the Tyre oracle onto Babylon.

Then the command that breaks into Revelation 18:4 comes straight from Jeremiah:

"Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins." — Revelation 18:4

That is a near-verbatim quotation of Jeremiah 51:45 in Hebrew (tsə'û mittokāh 'ammî). And Revelation 18:21's millstone sign-act — an angel heaving a great stone into the sea and saying "so will Babylon be thrown down" — re-enacts Jeremiah 51:63–64, where the prophet Seraiah throws a scroll tied to a stone into the Euphrates with exactly the same words. A vocabulary analysis shows 39% shared terms between Revelation 18 and LXX Jeremiah 50–51.

Three sources, three sections, one chapter. For the full analysis and what this tells us about the identity of "Mystery Babylon," see Mystery Babylon.