The Great Millstone

At the Red Sea Pharaoh's host "sank into the bottom as a stone" and "sank as lead in the mighty waters" (Exod 15:5, 10), remembered in Nehemiah as "a stone into the mighty waters" (Neh 9:11). Jeremiah gives Seraiah his scroll against Babylon with a command: bind a stone to it and cast it into Euphrates, and say, "Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise" (Jer 51:63-64). The mighty angel of Revelation 18:21 performs Jeremiah's sign-act on the cosmic scale, a great millstone hurled into the sea: Babylon sinks and never rises. The judgment is a single act and final, not a long future campaign.