Chapter 5
Starts with the sixth vision: of a flying scroll. This is interpreted as the curse that goes out into the whole land. One side is about thieves, the other about those who curse. It goes into the houses of these and remains until the house is consumed, both timber and stones - rich and poor? So this is about...stopping sin at the most fundamental point? As theft is sort of the "entry drug" to a life of crime, disrespecting the name of God is the entry to complete defiance of His will? MSB says the scroll symbolizes the Word of God. It's size matched the size of the Holy Place. All will be judged by God's Word, in all the land, and those who fall short are to be consumed. Doesn't say burned, but I don't know Hebrew, either. That may be what it refers to. Here's a description:
3 Then he said to me, "This is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole land. For everyone who steals shall be cleaned out according to what is on one side, and everyone who swears falsely shall be cleaned out according to what is on the other side. [Zec 5:3 ESV]
MSB notes that "thou shalt not take the name..." and "thou shalt not steal" are the 3rd and 8th commandments, respectively, and may represent that five were on one side and five on the other. Further, then, the sides may represent man's relationship with God on one side, and man's relationship with man on the other, and so encompass all the righteousness that God demands of those who would follow Him. Disdaining these rules leads to destruction, not just in one place, but throughout the land.
The seventh vision: A vision of a basket, with a leaden lid, and a woman sitting in it. Here is the verse:
6 And I said, "What is it?" He said, "This is the basket that is going out." And he said, "This is their iniquity in all the land." 7 And behold, the leaden cover was lifted, and there was a woman sitting in the basket! 8 And he said, "This is Wickedness." And he thrust her back into the basket, and thrust down the leaden weight on its opening. [Zec 5:6-8 ESV].
2025 - It is much the same in NASB:
6 I said, "What is it?" And he said, "This is the ephah going forth." Again he said, "This is their appearance in all the land 7 (and behold, a lead cover was lifted up); and this is a woman sitting inside the ephah." 8 Then he said, "This is Wickedness!" And he threw her down into the middle of the ephah and cast the lead weight on its opening. [Zec 5:6-8 NASB95].
2025 - So in Rev 17 we get the scarlet woman riding the scarlet beast. I balked at the possibility that the vision means that Satan uses, and has always used, women to undermine the originally intended leadership of men, and so steer mankind away from God. Our culture today would scream that this is misogyny and error and pathological. And now we get these verses - and they say it outright. The woman in the basket is given a name. Her name is Wickedness. There is no denying this symbolism. It would be foolish not to link Zech 5 and Rev 17 - these two visions of Satanic master strategy - despite what our culture says. Why wouldn't Satan's most fundamental strategy strike directly at the most fundamental aspect of God's creation? Wouldn't we expect him to attack the relationship between men and women - the foundational basis of all authority? And if we were to give Satan a grade as to how successful he is in today's culture, wouldn't we have to give him high marks? Not only are women walking around with this "innate" assumptions of equal authority with men in all things, but he's undermining the relationship even further by perverting the sexual relationship. If marriage is not fundamentally between a man and a woman, but is open to the whole LGBTQ+ movement, authority in the basic unit of human organization comes down to individual expedience, and has nothing at all to do with the created order. The proof is in the difficulty and the fear of getting "caught" saying such things. This is what these two visions, each reinforcing the other, are about.
2025 - Here is the question: If this whole concept is offensive to you, is it your sense of Biblical truth that is offended, or is it your cultural truth - the worlds opinion - that is offended? This ought to be an easy question to answer.
Mostly 2020 update: The translation in ESV says basket and iniquity. NASB says ephah and "appearance in all the land". Iniquity, as used in this verse in the ESV, is found in only one Hebrew manuscript. The rest say "eye", as in "this is their eye". So an ephah and this is their eye. An ephah was a standard unit of volume. So it could be a specifically sized basket. It might signify a standard - as the scroll symbolized a standard via the Ten. I am reminded of Silence of the Lambs. What do you covet? You covet what you see. So the eye may represent what they covet, their object, their obsession. MSB implies that they see the Babylonian commercial system. Accumulation as the end of all activity. The leaden cover on the basket is lifted to reveal a woman inside. The woman is interpreted as "Wickedness", with a capital W in both NASB and ESV. She is shoved back down inside and the lid replaced immediately. The leaden lid is heavy to keep her in. So the basket is the container for the core desire of the people of Israel, and what it contains is Wickedness - as a system, as the best way, as the optimum method and philosophy for achieving their ends. I believe the idols are gone after the captivity, but now Satan has switched strategies from distraction through idolatry and misdirection, to materialism and worldliness and success as measured by wealth. Perhaps Capitalism is a better word. Wealth is not an idol, but is the "eye" of the people, then and now. And as it took God's outpoured wrath to bring down idolatry, it will take wrath during Trib/Great Trib to bring down materialism. So here I am again, back to believing the Babylon in Revelation is the world commercial system and not so much a single place...though a city might in the future come to be the embodiment and center of that system. Babylon is fallen...Babylon was portrayed as the great harlot - a woman that symbolizes a system. A system that must be contained by careful watching and a leaden lid.
From 2019, MSB says the people of Israel brought the commercialism of Babylon with them when they returned home from captivity. Then two women come forward, with wind in their wings, wings like storks, and they take the basket up in the air. When asked, the one interpreting says they are taking it to Shinar, where a house will be built for it, and when the house is ready, they will set it down. Babylon? Where is Shinar? We've seen that name before...MSB notes point out that Shinar is the "old" name for Babylon. Also, storks are unclean, so these are "demonic" forces taking the basket to a place prepared for it. They set it down on a base - a pedestal - to make it an idol. Even without the pedestal/base reference - which isn't 100% clear to me in the ESV, this still has to be looking forward to that final system called Babylon.
2020-The unclean women taking the eye and what it contains to Babylon, and setting it up to be worshiped certainly fits with the first part of this vision. And it fits very very well with what Revelation says about Babylon. The vision here, and the vision of John seem to be very much on the same page.
I believe this whole chapter is now much more clear to me than it was the first two times. Things just "fit" better now.
2024 - They are taking the basked to the land of Shinar:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F4925880829315226%2F&psig=AOvVaw16IEfv6Ip1nXDOcI_iU9u8&ust=1708701882621000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBMQjRxqFwoTCOiD29-gv4QDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAs
2025 - This is MOSTLY Iraq, edging over into Iran, and a little bit of SE'ern Turkey.
This is the eastern part of the fertile crescent. Ur is south of Shinar, Haran is north of it. Several other maps focused on this same area. Shinar is not a city, it is a region. Notice that Babylon itself is in Shinar, along with the Euphrates. The woman IN the basket is being taken to Shinar where the basked will be set down there on it's base. As long as the lid stays on, then "Wickedness" cannot get out. What does the lead lid represent then, and how does it get off the basket?
2024 - This surely seems to connect this vision with Revelation 17-18.
2024 - Note that the basket is carried by two women. This is hugely unusual. We don't see anything like it anywhere else that I can recall. Angels are not women. Perhaps men would be too tempted, perhaps even angels would be at risk within the sound of the voice of such "Wickedness". Perhaps these two women are part of the system - allies of Wickedness, taking her "home"? And that whole "to build a house for "it".
2024 - Hmmm...I wondered if "it" as a neuter pronoun, was really there. As it looks to me in the interlinear, the pronoun is not there, but SOMETHING must be there. Compare the ESV and the NASB95 to get an idea of the variations possible in the Hebrew:
11 He said to me, "To the land of Shinar, to build a house for it. And when this is prepared, they will set the basket down there on its base." [Zec 5:11 ESV]
11 Then he said to me, "To build a temple for her in the land of Shinar; and when it is prepared, she will be set there on her own pedestal." [Zec 5:11 NASB95]
I looked up the word used for "temple" in NASB95, and it is a VERY RARE translation of a word that is overwhelmingly translated house. I think temple is a real push...that might well be right. Note that NASB says the temple is for "her" not "it". The Hebrew word translated base in the ESV and pedestal in the NASB appears only once in the entire Old Testament. Just this once. NASB seems to really be pushing the line on interpretation instead of translation. ESV seems bent on NOT interpreting, even at the expense of changing pronouns to prevent it. That seems very very odd to me.
Last but not least, Shinar is Babylonia. It is the land from which Abraham migrated with his father. There are many many modern archeological mysteries here. Gobeckli-Teppi is at the extreme north end of this. Ur is at the south end. Uruk is here. These places are the oldest ruins - the earliest "cities" - on the face of the earth. And to this place the basket is transported, and a house is built, and the basket (or its contents) will be set on a base/pedestal there. I think you have to be pretty dense to NOT see this as the cornerstone of end times Babylon.
2024 - Why here? Wasn't Eden here also? It is here because this is the origin of mankind. This is where God established "man", and this is where Satan began trying to destroy God's creation, made in God's own image. This is ground zero. That's why here. AND, this settles it for me. The Babylon in Revelation is a real city, a real place, it is NOT Jerusalem under control of the MoL, it is old Babylon itself under the puppet government of the MoL, but run by Satan with pure original evil permeating the whole place. Why is "Wickedness" a woman? They learned about being tempted in the garden, and now they tempt. They have much more to offer than do men when it comes to tempting men. If that is right, then these verses are explained:
1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk." [Rev 17:1-2 ESV].
This is about temptation of all kinds, promises of all kinds, fake love of all kinds, supported, backed, and promoted not only by physical temptation but by spiritual evil.
2024 - And one more thing, while I'm letting my imagination run: Shinar is a land of "first civilizations", which implies "first kings". This place is EAST of Jerusalem, EAST of Megiddo. So when the frogs are turned loose and the Euphrates dries up to prepare a way for the kings of the east, we are talking about kingdoms east of the Euphrates. Not north and east into China and Russia. EAST. Note that almost all of the cities on this map of Shinar are EAST of the Euphrates river! It is from here that the Kings of the east will come. Might even be that the rest of the world is dead. Every single person on the rest of the planet might be dead, making this the last and only place for Satan to recruit the final army.
2026 - There is still the conflict as to whether Babylon is Jerusalem or some other city. Today, I would say it is old Babylon made new in the last days. The Jews return to Jerusalem, protected there in the last have of the 70th by God, using Micheal and the angels to get them home despite great opposition. Meanwhile, the MoL is set up in Babylon, across the river, and the lid is taken off this pot and the woman, Wickedness, is unfettered to practice immorality as the world has never seen. I think we are talking about the basest of human sexual desire not only allowed but encouraged. Worse even than the ridiculous things we see today.
2026 - If we go with this, then the destruction of Babylon in Rev 17-18 is about THIS city. This specific physical place on planet earth. Perhaps somehow the MoL has built a compromise temple here, and convinced the Jews to worship here. Then it would be this temple where the AoD is set up, and Ezekiel's Temple, the real deal, is still future as Babylon is destroyed. Placing a fake temple in Babylon - saying that many references to the earthly temple of the end times means a temple set up in Babylon and not Jerusalem, is a significant revision. Given these verses in Zechariah, though, we know that some kind of temple to Wickedness is to be set up there.
2026 - Short term fulfilment of the scroll and the basket are elusive. The scroll seems spread out over a period of time - maybe pretty long - that results in the physical consumption of the structures of the land. Perhaps the long exclusion of Jews from Israel is about that? Or it could also easily refer to the deterioration of infrastructure during the 70 years in Babylon, that continued upon the return because the Jews were so few at that time that many structures would have been uninhabited, unmaintained and so would have fallen into ruin.
2026 - We also know that at the time of Zechariah's writing, Babylon was still a power, and that it got pretty corrupt before it fell to Medo-Persia, as depicted at the end of Daniel.
2026 - Here is a big question, but worth the time to study: Can we correlate the eight visions of Zechariah chronologically with end time accounts in Revelation? Here is a quick list of the eight visions. They are listed in the MSB outline of Zechariah:
Man on a horse with others among the myrtle trees
Four horns and four craftsmen of destruction.
Man with a measuring line
Cleansing of the High Priest
Gold Lampstand and Two Olive Trees
Flying Scroll
Woman in Ephah - I believe Babylonian whore
Four Chariots
So I need to review all my 2026 interpretations of the long term fulfilment of these, which I did one by one before wondering if they were chronological with the end times, and just see how they fit, how these visions might overlay the descriptions in Revelation. That is so very worthwhile I am putting it on the calendar.