CRITICAL NOTES.]
Zechariah 5:5.] Seventh vision. Wickedness driven from Judah to mingle with its kindred elements in Babylon.
Zechariah 5:6. Ephah] A familiar dry measure, denoting unjust dealings in buying and selling (cf. Amos 8:5). Resemblance] Lit. eye (i.e. that to which the eye was directed, their aim, viz. evil, some). The ephah was an image of the wickedness of the Jews in the land.
Zechariah 5:7. Lifted] The ephah was covered. Talent] Lit. a round piece of metal, 125 lbs. weight. A woman] In miniature, perhaps; Lit. one woman personified wickedness (cf. Proverbs 2:16; Proverbs 5:3-4). Lit. the wickedness in its peculiar form.
Zechariah 5:8. Cast] it within; caused her to contract herself within the compass of the vessel [Newc.]. Wickedness had risen up, but was cast down again, and sealed up in the ephah. The weight] Lit. the stone, round mass of lead, to secure her. No escape from judgments.
Zechariah 5:9. Two women] removed the ephah with its contents. One not enough to carry the load [Maurer]. The Assyrians and Babylonians, by whom God removed idolatry in the persons of apostate Jews out of the land [Henderson]. Wings] like storks’ wings, strong and ample. Wind] To represent the swiftness of movement, flying before instead of struggling against wind [Wardlaw]. Lifted] up above hindrance and earthly power.
Zechariah 5:11. Build] a permanent habitation. Shinar] An old historic name for Babylon (Genesis 10:10; Isaiah 11:11; Daniel 1:2). Wickedness is to be punished by another exile, longer than the former one. Established] Wickedness cast out of Judah, will dwell long and firmly, but not permanently, in Babylon; a type of the final separation of the ungodly from the godly in time and eternity.
HOMILETICS
THE WOMAN IN THE EPHAH, OR THE WICKEDNESS AND PUNISHMENT OF THE NATION.—Zechariah 5:5-11
The scope of this vision is not much indicated by the angel, and is differently interpreted by commentators. In the former vision, God pursues personal sins with private calamities; in this, the nation fills up the measure of its iniquity, and is cast out of its land. Taking the woman as representing the Jewish nation—the Church of God, and the ephah—the wickedness, the corruption in which the nation had fallen; we have a prophetic warning or denunciation for the future. The two visions, distinct in form, are allied in meaning and purpose.
I. The wickedness of the nation. “This is an ephah that goeth forth.” Dr. Henderson regards the wickedness as meaning “idolatry with all its accompanying atrocities.” Wardlaw and others take the ephah as an emblem of worldly traffic or merchandise. This traffic was mixed up with fraud and treachery, and the ground of complaint and expostulation.
1. The wickedness was universal. “This is their resemblance through all the land.” “Ye are cursed with a curse; for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation” (cf. Malachi 3:9).
2. This wickedness was deeply rooted. The woman is represented as sitting in the ephah. Worldliness dwells in the Church. “The love of this present world” leads many astray.
3. This wickedness was measured. The ephah was gradually filled, and every one contributed to the full measure. All helped to make the heap, and ripen the nation for judgment. Sin was a common store, Divinely permitted and exactly measured (cf. Genesis 15:16). “Fill ye up the measure of your fathers” (Matthew 23:32).
II. The punishment of the nation. The nation was shut up with its sins in the measure; enclosed so that they could not escape; and carried where the retribution begins, but does not seem to end.
1. The nation was carried away. They might be permitted to build and work for God, but if they heeded not the warning, they would be lifted up out of their land, and dispersed to other countries.
2. The nation was openly carried away. “They lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven.” The punishment was before the eyes of all, a public example of God’s vengeance to the world.
3. The nation was carried away by suitable agencies. Whatever the two women represent, they are set forth as agents, swift and sufficient, to execute the Divine purpose, without let or hindrance. “Rapidly, inexorably, irresistibly, they flew and bore the ephah between heaven and earth. No earthly power could reach or rescue it” [Pusey].
4. The nation was carried away to an appointed place. “In the land of Shinar.” Babylon was an emblem of restored and repeated captivity. A place which symbolizes the anti-christian or ungodly powers, who by violence, art, and falsehood war against the truth.
5. The punishment of the nation in this appointed place would be of long duration. “The building of a house” for the ephah, and “the setting of it on its own base,” represent the long duration of the second dispersion. For two thousand years the Jews have remained a distinct people in a scattered state, a proof of God’s faithfulness, and a warning to all nations. Unjust measures, whatever they be, will bring righteous retribution upon their possessors. The instrument of defrauding God and man will become the agent of punishment. Sinners will be driven away in their own wickedness, and sent to their “own place.” Let us seek our portion with the true Israel, and avoid the curse of Babylon’s doom. “Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth” (cf. Revelation 17:3-5).
“Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,
How shall ye flee away and be at rest?
The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,
Mankind their country—Israel but the grave” [Lange]
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Zechariah 5:6. This is equivalent to see, there is a woman, &c. The strokes of punitive wrath do not fall at random or capriciously. There is ample reason in every case, so that one may always say, this (the ephah) is their object in all the land. Men go ceaselessly adding sin to sin, and, because judgment is not suddenly executed, think that there is impunity; whereas they are only filling the measure. God waits. There is an appointed time with him, and he will not anticipate [Lange]. We too are taught by this, that the Lord of all administers all things in weight and measure. So foretelling to Abraham that his seed should be a sojourner, and the cause thereof—“for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full,” i.e. they have not yet committed sins enough (Genesis 15:16) to merit entire destruction, wherefore I cannot yet endure to give them over to the slaughter, but will wait for the measure of their iniquity [Pusey].
The ephah may therefore represent—
1. The sins of the people. Every one contributing to fill up the measure.
2. Their ripeness for Divine judgment. The measure filled up.
3. The just retribution of their punishment. “The unjust measure was one of Judah’s leading sins, and thus, in just retribution, their punishment.”
Zechariah 5:6. They who had dealt treacherously with others, were dealt treacherously with themselves. What measure men mete to others, God metes to themselves (Isaiah 21:2; Isaiah 33:1) [Fausset].
Zechariah 5:8. Lead on the mouth of it. The ephah was covered, and the heavy lid of lead carefully put down upon the mouth of it. This is a significant emblem of the impossibility of escape from the merited judgments of God. So the Jewish people, considered conditionally, as retaining their character, would be carried away in their worldliness, as the woman was borne in the ephah. The very ephah, the instrument of their merchandise and wealth, is represented as the means of confinement; so does the worldly-mindedness, the ambition, and covetousness of the Jewish people shut them up to retributive vengeance [Wardlaw].
Zechariah 5:9 to Zechariah 11:1. A people abusing afflictions and marvellous deliverances from it, by sinning yet more, may expect their afflictions to be returned upon them with harder measure; for a new and sorer captivity, and longer dwelling under it, is here threatened upon renewed provocations.
2. The Lord hath sufficient instruments at command to execute his judgments, who, being employed against his sinful people, shall find all things concurring with them in their work; two women enough to carry the ephah; wings, enabling them to flee and do their work violently and swiftly; high in heaven and earth, above the opposition of men; and wind in their wings, to indicate providence helping them forward.
3. Captivity and exile in profane nations, from the face of God, and the society of one another in his ordinances, is one of the sorest judgments by which the Lord plagues his Church; wickedness is carried to the land of Shinar.
4. As the Church is no place for sin to reign and get a biding habitation; so enemies to the Church are accounted by God as the common sink of wickedness, whom he will punish; for wickedness is carried from the holy land to Shinar, its own place, where all wickedness dwelt, from which the Jews might gather that, as he punished them so he would not spare their enemies [Hutcheson]. The prophet intimates to the Jews of his own age, that if they sin against God by the sins here mentioned, their restoration to Jerusalem is frustrate and abortive; they are not, in heart, in Zion, the city of peace, but in Babel, the city of confusion; and though they may pride themselves in building a city and temple at Jerusalem, yet their own proper place, where their own house is built, is the land of Shinar [Wordsworth].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Zechariah 5:7. Behold. The angel bids him behold the sins of the people Israel; heaped together in a perfect measure, and the transgression of all fulfilled—that the sins which escaped notice, one by one, might, when collected together, be laid open to the eyes of all, and Israel might go forth from its place, and it might be shown to all what she was in her own land [Pusey].
Zechariah 5:8. Lead. Iniquity, as with a talent of lead, weighs down the conscience [St. Ambrose]. Escape is contrary to the laws of God and God’s universe. It is as impossible as that fire should not burn, or water run uphill. Your sins are killing you by inches; all day long they are sowing in you the seeds of disease and death [Canon Kingsley].
Zechariah 5:9-11. This vision, like the other visions of Zechariah, extends to Christian times. In the Christian Church universal corruptions have arisen which may find a solemn warning here. The Church of Rome boasts herself to be Sion: but she is the mystical Babylon of the Apocalypse. Her sovereign pontiff is “the lawless one” of St. Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:3-12). This prophecy may be applied, and ought to be applied, as a warning to those who are tempted to communicate with her in her errors and corruptions. Her doom will be, to be removed from her place, and to be swept away by the whirlwind of God’s wrath, because she rebels against his will and word [Wordsworth].