Revelation 18:15

The merchants of these things, who were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and mourning; saying, Woe, woe, the great city, she that was arrayed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and previous stone and pearl!

The wail of the merchants is like that of the kings, for they too stood "afar off." The ancient prejudice of businessmen that they are not concerned with religion will at last be confounded when there is none, or so little that it hardly counts on any effective scale.

Woe, woe ... They shall cry not for lost faith, but for lost profits. Caird confused the present tense of these supplementary and recapitulatory views of an end that has already occurred, saying, "After it has happened, men are still able to stand afar off and watch the smoke of their burning."[54] The events here are not after the end; they are before it. See under Revelation 18:3. "There is something almost pathetic about these laments. In every case, the lament is not for Rome, but for themselves."[55]

[54] G. B. Caird, op. cit., p. 227.

[55] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 164.