Zechariah 5
Big idea: Two visions about removal rather than restoration. A scroll the size of the temple porch flies over the land carrying a curse against theft and false swearing, and then wickedness itself is personified, shut in a grain basket with a lead lid, and flown to Babylon to be given a house of its own.
A city with God at its centre (chapter 2) cannot keep what these visions remove. The pair are the negative half of the same programme.
5:1–4 — A flying scroll
The dimensions are the clue: thirty feet by fifteen, which are the measurements of the tabernacle's holy place and of the temple porch. A document that size, in the air, is the law itself gone airborne over the whole land — and it is written on both sides, like the tablets at Sinai.
1 Then again I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a flying scroll. 2 He said to me, “What do you see?” I answered, “I see a flying scroll; its length is twenty cubits, and its width ten cubits.” 3 Then he said to me, “This is the curse that goes out over the surface of the whole land, for everyone who steals shall be cut off according to it on the one side; and everyone who swears falsely shall be cut off according to it on the other side. 4 I will cause it to go out,” says Yahweh of Armies, “and it will enter into the house of the thief, and into the house of him who swears falsely by my name; and it will remain in the middle of his house, and will destroy it with its timber and its stones.”
5:5–11 — Wickedness in a basket
The container is an ephah, a standard dry measure — a commercial vessel, which matters, since a rigged ephah was the standard way of cheating in the market. Inside it, when the lead cover is lifted, sits a woman, and the angel names her: this is Wickedness. She is pushed back in and the talent of lead is dropped on top.
5 Then the angel who talked with me came forward and said to me, “Lift up now your eyes and see what this is that is appearing.” 6 I said, “What is it?” He said, “This is the ephah basket that is appearing.” He said moreover, “This is their appearance in all the land— 7 and behold, a lead cover weighing one talent was lifted up—and there was a woman sitting in the middle of the ephah basket.” 8 He said, “This is Wickedness;” and he threw her down into the middle of the ephah basket; and he threw the lead weight on its mouth. 9 Then I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, there were two women; and the wind was in their wings. Now they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the ephah basket between earth and the sky. 10 Then I said to the angel who talked with me, “Where are these carrying the ephah basket?” 11 He said to me, “To build her a house in the land of Shinar. When it is prepared, she will be set there in her own place.”
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).