Zechariahchapter 5
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Speaks with:Zechariah 1×2Zechariah 5×1Ezekiel 2×1Isaiah 8×1Zechariah 4×1Jeremiah 1×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Two visions of sin removed rather than merely forgiven. A flying roll twenty cubits by ten sails over the land ('this is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole land') entering the house of the thief and of the man who swears falsely by God's name, consuming it, timber and stones. Then a measuring basket comes out with a lead cover, and inside sits a woman: 'This is Wickedness.' She is shoved down and the lead weight slammed on the mouth of it. Two winged women lift the basket between earth and heaven, and Zechariah asks where: 'To build her a house in the land of Shinar': evil deported to Babylon's plain, where Revelation 17 finds it again.
Context
Prophecy · Zechariah — Zechariah overview
- A. 1–4 A flying scroll that lodges in the thief's house
- B. 5–11 The ephah, the woman named Wickedness, and a house in Shinar
The outline
A.A flying scroll that lodges in the thief's housevv. 1 to 4
Read vv. 1 to 4 →B.The ephah, the woman named Wickedness, and a house in Shinarvv. 5 to 11
Read vv. 5 to 11 →
The world behind this chapter
Zechariah 5The history
A scroll flies through the air, thirty feet by fifteen — the size of a public proclamation blown up to billboard scale, and by some readings the same proportions as the porch of Solomon's temple. It is written on both sides and it is a curse going out over the whole land against thieves and against those who swear falsely.
Those two sins are not random. Theft and perjury are the two crimes that destroy a small community's ability to function: you cannot trade if goods disappear and you cannot hold court if oaths mean nothing. The curse enters the thief's house and consumes it, timber and stones.
The next vision is an ephah — a standard dry-measure basket, the container a merchant used to sell grain. Honest weights and measures were a repeated demand in Israel's law, and shaving a measure was the most ordinary form of commercial fraud there was.
Inside the basket sits a woman named Wickedness, and a heavy lead weight is thrown over the opening to seal her in. Two women with wings like a stork carry the basket away to the land of Shinar — Babylon — to build it a house and set it on its own base, like an idol in a temple.
That last image is the point. Wickedness is not destroyed here; it is deported and given a shrine in Babylon, where it belongs, and removed from the land of God's people.
What it meant to them
The returnees' temptation was to think that finishing the building was the whole assignment. These two visions say the land itself has to be cleaned out — the cheating in the market as much as the idolatry on the hills.
The comfort in it is that the removal is God's work, carried out over their heads. They did not have to carry the basket. They had to stop opening it.
Sources cited
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets
- Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life (public domain)
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Zechariah 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.