Zechariah 5: 5-11
The foregoing vision was very plain, but in this are things dark and hard to understand. Some think the vision is foretelling the final destruction of the Jewish nation and the dispersion of the Jews when by crucifying Christ and persecuting His Gospel, they would have filled the measure of their iniquities.
The Prophet was told to turn and he would see greater desolations (verse 5). What is this that goes forth? The prophet now, through either the distance or the dimness of his sight, could not tell what it was. The angel tells him both what it is and what it means. He sees an ephah, a measure with wich they measured corn. And this is the resemblance of the Jewish nation over all the earth wherever they are now dispersed.
Some think that the mentioning of an ephah which is used in buying and selling intimates that fraud and extortion in commerce were sins abounding among them. He sees a woman sitting in the midst of the ephah representing the sinful church and nation of the Jews in their latter and degenerate age. He that weighs the hills in a balance measures out nations and churches as in an ephah. So exact is He in His judicial dealings with them that God’s people are called the corn of His floor. Here He puts this corn into the bushel.
The angel says of the woman in the ephah: “This is wickedness. It is as wickedness itself.” He sees the woman thrust down into the ephah and a talent or large weight of lead cast upon the ephah’s mouth by which she is made a prisoner in the ephah. This is a sign to show that the wrath of God against inpenitent sinners is what they cannot escape, it is insupportable. Guilt is upon the sinner as a talent of lead.
He sees the ephah with the woman in it carried away into some far country. Two women who had wings like those of a stork were instructed to do it. To make them fly more swiftly, they had the wind in their wings denoting the expedition with which the Romans destroyed the Jewish nation.
They lifted it up between the earth and the heaven as unworthy of either and abandoned by both. When the prophet enquired whether they carried their prisoners. (verse 10) He was told that they designed to build it a house in the land of Shinar. This intimates that the punishment of the Jews should be a final dispersion. They would be forced to dwell in far countries. There the ephah shall be established and set upon her own base. Their calamity shall continue from generation to generation. Their iniquity shall continue too and their hearts shall be hardened to it.
