Zechariah 5:5-11

From: Minor Prophets By: John Gifford Bellett

Zechariah 5:5‑11 • 1 min. read • grade level: 7

Zechariah 5:5-11⁵Then the angel that talked with me went forth, and said unto me, Lift up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth. ⁶And I said, What is it? And he said, This is an ephah that goeth forth. He said moreover, This is their resemblance through all the earth. ⁷And, behold, there was lifted up a talent of lead: and this is a woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah. ⁸And he said, This is wickedness. And he cast it into the midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof. ⁹Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven. ¹⁰Then said I to the angel that talked with me, Whither do these bear the ephah? ¹¹And he said unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar: and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base. (Zechariah 5:5‑11)

The seventh vision is that of “the Ephah with the woman sitting in it.” This is a picture of wickedness, or lawlessness. It is hidden—the woman in the ephah— and it is borne to the land of Shinar, its base, where it began its course. This we know; for Nimrod was the first great representative of the wicked or the lawless one, who is to be destroyed in the day of the Lord. This “wickedness” is hidden as here in an “ephah,” or, as in Matthew 13, in “three measures of meal”—hidden, I may say, under a profession, as of the religion of Israel, or of the name of Christendom. But it is really Babylon at the end as at the beginning, “the land of Shinar”; as we again see in Revelation 17, and many other Scriptures.

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