Zechariah 5

chosen people as a husband is jealous over his wife and as parents over their children (Ex. 20:5; Deut. 4:24; 5:9; 6:15). This explains why the Lord accused the Jews of adultery and unfaithfulness whenever they were guilty of worshipping heathen gods (Jer. 2:1–3; 3:14; 31:32; Hos. 1). Worldliness on the part of Christians is also pictured as “spiritual adultery” (James 4:4–10).

The Lord was angry with the Gentile nations because they had been unnecessarily brutal toward the Jews. True, God had called Assyria to punish the northern kingdom of Israel, and Babylon to chasten Judah; but these nations went beyond what God called them to do and tried to destroy the Jews. Other nations, like Moab, had also joined in the assault (see Ps. 83; 137).

But the Lord’s most heartening words had to do with Judah’s future, not her enemies, for God promised to return to His people and prosper their nation. He would comfort Zion and prove to the enemy nations that Jerusalem was indeed His chosen city. This promise is repeated and expanded in the rest of Zechariah’s prophecy.

When our situation appears to be hopeless, we must remind ourselves that God identifies with our sufferings and is in charge of the future. Our responsibility is to repent, confess our sins, and believe His “comforting words.” His responsibility is to respond to our faith and work out His perfect will for us.

The previous vision ended with the interpreting angel calling Israel’s God “the Lord of the whole earth”

(4:14), a title that is also used in Psalm 95: and Isaiah 54:5. Zechariah’s purpose in writing is to tell us about the future of the Jews and Jerusalem, but the future of the whole world is involved in the future of the Jews, for God called Israel to bring blessing or cursing to all the nations of the earth (Gen. 12:1–3).

The prophet describes three key events that give evidence that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is indeed “the Lord of the whole earth.”

The vision of the flying scroll and the vision of the ephah focus primarily on the land of Israel. In both of them, God performs a cleansing operation and deals with the sins of the nation.

God removes lawlessness (vv. 1–4). The prophet saw a large open scroll, fifteen feet by thirty feet, floating through the air, with writing on both sides. On one side he read the third commandment against taking God’s name in vain (Ex. 20:7), and on the other side he read the eighth commandment against stealing (v. 15).

This scroll represented the law of God that brings a curse on all who disobey it, and that includes all of us (Deut. 27:26; Gal. 3:10–12); because nobody can fully obey God’s law. For that matter, the law was never given to save people (Gal. 2:16, 21; 3:21) but to reveal that people need to be saved; “for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20).

Out of Ten Commandments, why did the Lord select the two that forbid stealing and swearing falsely? Were these sins especially prevalent among the Jewish remnant at that time? It may be that many of the Jewish people were not faithful in their giving to the Lord, robbing Him of tithes and offerings and then lying about it. In their business dealings, they may have cheated one another. The prophet Haggai rebuked them for putting their own interests ahead of the Lord’s work (Hag. 1:1–11), and certainly robbing God was a grievous sin among the Jews a century later (Mal. 3:7–15).

But there is another reason. The third commandment is the central commandment on the first tablet of the law, and the eighth commandment is the central commandment on the second tablet of the law, so these two commandments represent the whole law. “But whoever shall keep the whole law, yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10).

If I’m suspended over a chasm by a chain of ten links, how many links have to break before I fall? If while driving down the highway, I’m pulled over by a policeman because I’m speeding, does it make any difference to him that I haven’t broken the income tax laws or stolen anything from my neighbors? Obedience to one law doesn’t negate disobedience to another law. To break one is to become a lawless person.

God announced that the scroll of His law would visit the individual homes in the land and judge those who were deliberately disobeying God. Whether “cut off” means killed or expelled from the covenant community isn’t made clear. Like a thief or a plague, the curse would enter the houses unannounced and bring destruction.

The Jewish remnant was certainly familiar with the “blessings and curses” of the covenant recorded by Moses. They also knew that after Joshua had brought the people into the Promised Land, they gathered at Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim and read the “blessings and curses” and promised to obey the Lord (Josh. 8:30–35).

Lawlessness abounds today and the only commandment many people worry about is “Thou shalt not get caught!” Ethics is something studied in the classroom but not seriously practiced in the marketplace, and the Ten Commandments are only dusty artifacts in the museum of morality. No wonder Hosea wrote, “They make many promises, take false oaths and make agreements; therefore lawsuits spring up like poisonous weeds in a plowed field” (10: niv). People break God’s law and then try to use man’s law to protect themselves, and often they win!

Ultimately, God will judge all sinners who have rebelled against His law (Jude 14–15); but He will start with Israel, the nation that gave us God’s law. It’s a divine principle that judgment begins with God’s people (1 Peter 4:17; Ezek. 9:6). This judgment will occur before our Lord establishes His kingdom on earth, and the “holy land” will truly become holy (Zech. 2:12). God will “remove the iniquity of the land in one day” (v. 9).

God removes wickedness (5:6–11). Not only will individual sins and sinners be judged, but wickedness itself will be removed from the land. In this vision, wickedness is personified by a woman, because the Hebrew word for “wickedness” is feminine. The ephah was a common measure in Israel, but no ephah would be large enough to house a person, so, like the huge scroll, this was a special ephah. The woman attempted to get out of the ephah, so a heavy lead cover was put on the ephah to keep her in. A talent of lead would weigh from seventy-five to one hundred pounds.

The prophet then saw two other women, but they had wings! With the help of the wind, they lifted up the basket and its contents, plus the heavy lead cover, and carried it in the air to Babylon. Although angels are actually sexless (Matt. 22:30), in Scripture they are generally depicted as male, so these two women were special agents of the Lord created just for this particular task. They took the ephah and the woman to Shinar (Babylon, Dan. 1:2) and put the ephah on a base in a special house.

In order to understand this vision, we must ask ourselves, “What did the Jews bring to their land from Babylon when they returned after their captivity?” It wasn’t idolatry, for their years of exile cured them of that sin. The answer is—commercialism. The Jews were people of the land when they went to Babylon, but many of the Jews born in Babylon became people of the city and successful merchants. So it was the spirit of competitive commercialism that was represented by the woman in the ephah, for both the ephah and the talent are measures of commodities.

The ancient city of Babylon is first mentioned in Genesis 10: as a part of Nimrod’s empire. Nimrod is called “a mighty one in the earth” and “a mighty hunter” (Gen. 10:8–9), which the NIV translates “a mighty warrior … a mighty hunter.” This is the picture of a conquering despot, forging himself a kingdom at any cost and defying the Lord in the process. The famous Tower of Babel was built in Shinar as an attempt to exalt man and dethrone God (11:1–19).

Throughout Scripture, Babylon symbolizes the world’s enmity against God, culminating in the vivid description in Revelation 17—18. (See also the parallel in Jer. 50—51.) The contrast in the book of Revelation is between the Bride (the heavenly city) and the harlot (the earthly city of Babylon). When you read Revelation 18, you see that the emphasis is on the commercial success and the vast wealth of Babylon, the very “virus” that some of the Jews had caught during the Babylonian exile.

This doesn’t imply that the people of Israel today are all guilty of bad business practices, or that it’s wrong for anybody to earn money by engaging in business. Both believers and unbelievers, Jews or Gentiles, can be manufacturers and merchants and faithfully do their work. But if the worldly commercial spirit infects the child of God, it will result in twisted values, confused priorities, and a craving for wealth and position that grieves the Lord (1 Tim. 6). The best antidote is Matthew 6:33.

The two women with storklike wings placed the ephah on a base in a special house in Babylon, which suggests that “commercialism” was worshipped as one of the Babylonian gods. Unfortunately, money has become a god around the world and, like a god, money is trusted by people to give them help, to solve their problems, to provide happiness, and to empower them to accomplish their goals in life. The last of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt not covet” (Ex. 20:17), but coveting will cause people to break the other nine commandments. “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim. 6: nkjv), everything from lying on one’s income tax to murdering a helpless victim for a few dollars.

God has now cleansed the land. What is His next step in preparing His people for their promised kingdom?