Translation
The woman was clothed in purple
and scarlet
and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls;
a golden
Go to footnote numbercup was in her hand
which was full of abominations and the impurity of her sexually immoral acts.
Go to footnote numberParaphrase
The woman was surrounded by those things enjoyed only by royalty even if they were acquired by the shedding of blood, and she had all the wealth she could possibly want; she had [what she thought was] a prestigious, impressive, and desirable collection of evidence under her control, which was convincing proof of her abominable ways, and the proof that she had sold her soul to get what she wanted.
Footnotes
1
In other contexts gold would indicate “purity,” but that is obviously not the case here. At first I separated the “gold” from the “cup” to separate the ideas of wealth and collection of evidence. But I did not feel good about that. I struggled for quite some time to understand this symbolic phrase which includes a collection of evidence that is ______. What is it ???? – what is it trying to say? Then it struck me that it is a picture of her own perception of the collection of evidence she possessed. That collection was not really golden, but in her mind it was.
2: “cup … full of abominations”
Why would someone be holding the evidence of their own abominations? The only reason would be that this person is proud of them. Paul wrote about people whose “glory is in their shame” Philippians 3:19. How many people do we have today who live this backward kind of life?