Micah 5:13
Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee; and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands. Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee; and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands.
Micah 5 is to be read together with Micah 4 and with the birth of the Man-child in Revelation 12, and so read it shows that Babylon is the very beginning of the beast power. The connection places the rise of that power at the point where prophecy moves from the captivity and restoration of God's people to the bringing forth of Christ and His conflict with the dragon. In that setting Babylon stands first, not as one persecutor among many, but as the head and commencement of the continuous antagonistic system.
That beast is the great system of church-and-state government set against God, carried through history under seven heads. The seven heads are seven great dynasties succeeding one another and continuing until Christ comes. Egypt, Assyria, Philistia, Midian, Amalek, and other earlier persecutors do not belong to that system, despite their oppression of Israel. It begins with Babylon at the time the kingdom was taken away from Israel, when Judah went into captivity to Babylon.