Zechariah 5:9

5:5-11 In this vision the prophet sees an ephah, something in the shape of a corn measure. This betokened the Jewish nation. They are filling the measure of their iniquity; and when it is full, they shall be delivered into the hands of those to whom God sold them for their sins. The woman sitting in the midst of the ephah represents the sinful church and nation of the Jews, in their latter and corrupt age. Guilt is upon the sinner as a weight of lead, to sink him to the lowest hell. This seems to mean the condemnation of the Jews, after they filled the measure of their iniquities by crucifying Christ and rejecting his gospel. Zechariah sees the ephah, with the woman thus pressed in it, carried away to some far country. This intimates that the Jews should be hurried out of their own land, and forced to dwell in far countries, as they had been in Babylon. There the ephah shall be firmly placed, and their sufferings shall continue far longer than in their late captivity. Blindness is happened unto Israel, and they are settled upon their own unbelief. Let sinners fear to treasure up wrath against the day of wrath; for the more they multiply crimes, the faster the measure fills.

Then I lifted up my eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came out two {k} 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. (k) Which declared that God would execute his judgment by the means of the weak and infirm.

Zechariah 5:9-11 . Then lifted I up mine eyes, &c. — Great difficulties attend the interpretation of this part of the vision, and commentators are much divided upon it. According to Calmet, the woman enclosed in the ephah denoted the iniquity of Babylon; the mass of lead which fell down upon her was the vengeance of the Lord; and the two women who lifted her up into the air were the Medes and Persians, who destroyed the empire of Babylon. Houbigant, however, observes, “that nobody has yet found out, nor ever will find out, why these women should carry the ephah into the land of Shinar, or of the Chaldees, if Shinar be understood literally, and not metaphorically. The Jews were not again carried captive into the land of the Chaldeans, after the rebuilding of the temple by Zerubbabel; nor can the Chaldeans be understood by the ephah which is carried into the land of Shinar with the woman, who abused it to fraudulent purposes; for the ephah is a Hebrew measure; and this woman, who is kept shut up in the ephah, is carried into a land not her own. Shinar will be more properly understood, as spoken metaphorically of the last captivity, under which the Jews now live; being, in the several kingdoms of the world, in the same state of servitude as they lived in under, the kings of the Chaldeans; having their dwelling everywhere, with the deceitful ephah, to denote their usury and fraud.

There is no necessity to be anxious about explaining why the ephah was to be carried by two women, and not by one only, or more, for the empire of the Greeks and Romans is not denoted hereby, but two women pertain only to the parable; as it might have seemed too much for one to have carried into a distant country an ephah burdened with lead, and with a woman shut up in it.” Archbishop Newcome understands the words in this sense: considering the two women as “mere agents in the symbolical vision;” the meaning of which, he says, seems to be, “that the Babylonish captivity had happened on account of the wickedness committed by the Jews; and that a like dispersion would befall them, if they relapsed into like crimes. Thus the whole chapter would be an awful admonition that multiplied curses, and particularly that dispersion and captivity, would be the punishment of national guilt.” Blayney interprets the vision in a similar way. “These, [namely, two women, ] and the other circumstances mentioned Zechariah 5:9 , seem to indicate nothing more particular, than that Providence would make use of quick and forcible means to effect its purpose.” Hence these women are said to have had wings like the wings of a stork; the stork, like other birds of passage, being provided with strong wings.

Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked: see Zechariah 5:1 . There came out, from the same place whence the ephah came, two women: the sinful nation was resembled to a woman, and now, to keep a decorum in the vision, they who are to be God’s executioners, to punish that wicked woman, are called women: it is like enough to be meant of the Romans, a warlike and stout nation. The wind was in their wings: they are set forth as having wings like the wings of storks, large and strong, and as flying before the wind with great swiftness; so should Divine vengeance swiftly follow and certainly overtake the Jewish nation, when, after their return out of captivity, they shall corrupt themselves, and fill up the measure of their sins. They lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven; the judgments came thus flying, and so bare away with them those that are to be punished: it is a secret intimation of a future deportation or carrying the Jews into captivity again for sin.

9 . looked ] Rather, saw. came out ] or came forth (as in Zechariah 5:5-6 ), from the surrounding darkness upon the stage or scene of the vision. No meaning need be sought for the details of this verse. They merely convey the fact, clothed in imagery in keeping with the vision, that wickedness was borne swiftly from the land. “Pertinent haec ad colorem imaginis.” Maurer.

9. The agents to carry away the "woman" are, consistently with the image, "women." God makes the wicked themselves the agents of punishing and removing wickedness. "Two" are employed, as one is not enough to carry such a load [Maurer]. Or, the Assyrians and Babylonians, who carried away idolatry in the persons, respectively, of Israel and Judah [Henderson]. As two "anointed ones" (Zec 4:14) stand by the Lord as His ministers, so two winged women execute His purpose here in removing the embodiment of "wickedness": answering to the "mystery of iniquity" (the Septuagint here in Zechariah uses the same words as Paul and "the man of sin," whom the Lord shall destroy with the spirit of His mouth and the brightness of His coming, 2Th 2:3, 7, 8). Their "wings" express velocity. The "stork" has long and wide wings, for which reason it is specified; also it is a migratory bird. The "wind" helps the rapid motion of the wings. The being "lifted up between heaven and earth" implies open execution of the judgment before the eyes of all. As the "woman" here is removed to Babylon as her own dwelling, so the woman in the Apocalypse of St. John is Babylon (Re 17:3-5).

Verse 9. - Then lifted I up mine eyes. This is the conclusion of the vision. And looked; and saw. There came out ( forth ) two women. These two women who now come in sight have been supposed to represent the Assyrians and Babylonians, who wore the agents in the deportation of Israel; or else are considered abettors of the woman in the ephah, who for a time save her from destruction. This latter supposition proceeds on the erroneous idea that wickedness is herein rescued from punishment, whereas the notion that underlies the whole vision is that the Holy Land is purged of wickedness. That the two nations hostile to Israel are represented is an untenable suggestion; for why should they carry off iniquity from Jerusalem and fix it in their own land? Probably by the two women carrying away the evil woman is signified (if the details are capable of explanation) that iniquity brings with it its own destruction and works out its own removal. The wind was in their wings. They were borne along so quickly that they seemed to be carried by the wind; or the wind helped their flight. A stork; Septuagint, ἔποπος , "the hoopoe;" Vulgate, milvi. The Authorized Version is certainly correct. The stork is common enough in Palestine, and is reckoned among unclean birds in the Pentateuch ( Leviticus 11:19 ; Deuteronomy 14:18 ), for which cause some have thought it is here introduced as bearing the sin laden ephah.

There came out two women - It may be that there may be no symbol herein, but that he names women because it was a woman who was so carried; yet their wings were the wings of an unclean bird, strong, powerful, borne by a force not their own; with their will, since they flew; beyond their will, since the wind was in their wings; rapidly, inexorably, irresistibly, they flew and bore the Ephah between heaven and earth. No earthly power could reach or rescue it. God would not. It may be that evil spirits are symbolized, as being like to this personified human wickedness, such as snatch away the souls of the damned, who, by serving them, have become as they.