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About Jesus Steve Sweetman This Chapter - Chapter 5 The
Flying Scroll (ch. 5:1 - 4) In
verses 1 and 2 Zechariah sees a flying scroll.
The angel asks him what he sees.
Zechariah replies by saying that he sees a flying scroll that is
30 feet long and 15 feet wide. This
is one very large scroll that is flying through the air. In
verse 3 the angel gives a partial explanation of the vision.
He says that the scroll represents God’s judgment.
We see this idea of a scroll representing God’s judgment in the
book of Revelation as well. The
angel tells us that the scroll has writing on both sides of it.
On one side we see that every thief will be banished from the
land. Then, according to the
other side of the scroll, everyone who swears
falsely will be banished from the land.
Since
the vision appears to be directed to In
verse 4 God Himself speaks. He
says that everyone who is a thief and swears falsely will be visited by
this scroll and this scroll will remain with them until he and his house
will be destroyed. There
are many speculations to why just two of many sins are spoken of here
that are judged. I think
they are simply representative of all sin.
You
might notice that the sin of swearing is clarified in verse 4.
It is swearing falsely by God’s name.
This means that those Jews who say they represent God, and
don’t, will be judged accordingly.
The sin is not simply telling a falsehood.
It is actually misrepresenting God Himself, something that the
Jews were doing and Christians and the church does all the time. Futurists
believe that this judgment spoken of here is what is also known as
Jacob’s Trials, that is, the time of the Great Tribulation, those last
seven years of this present age where The
Woman In A Basket (ch. 5:5 - 11) In
verse 5 we see the angel that is explaining and showing Zechariah these
visions say, “look up and see what this is that is appearing.”
The wording suggests that as one vision disappears, another
vision appears, and that is really how it was.
Zechariah saw all these visions in one night. In
verse 6 Zechariah asks, as he has been doing, “what is this?”
None of these visions seem to be understood by Zechariah.
Also
in verse 6 the angel says what Zechariah sees and gives a simple
explanation. The first thing
we see in the vision is a “measuring basket”, or an “ephah” as
the Jews would call it. This
basket was slightly larger than our bushel basket. The
simple explanation is that this basket holds the iniquity of the people
in the land. In
verse 7 we see that this basket had a led covering that was opened, and
once opened a woman could be seen in the basket. In
verse 8 the angel tells Zechariah that “this is wickedness”.
The word “this” refers to the woman.
The woman represents wickedness, as women often do in Scriptural
visions. It appears that
once the led top was opened, the woman rose and wanted out, but that
angel pushed the top down so the woman could not get out. In
verse 9 we see the next part of this vision.
There were two other women that stood outside the basket.
They picked the basket up and held it between heaven and earth.
These women had wings, which might suggest that they were some
type of angelic being. In
verse 10 Zechariah asked the angel explaining these things where the two
women were taking this basket. The
explaining angel answers by saying the basket with the evil woman was
being taken to the country of The
angel continues by saying that a house was being built for this basket,
and when it was ready, the basket would be put into this house.
The
vision ends with no further explanation.
Like many prophecies, the explanation is left for us to figure
out. Jesus, in John 14 spoke
of the things He said. He
said that His followers would have a hard time understanding the things
He spoke about, but when the time came for those things to be fulfilled,
they would remember and then they would understand and believe.
This is the way it is with many prophecies of the Bible.
We might have an idea what they mean, or maybe no idea at all,
but there will come a time when we will understand them. I
believe the meaning of this vision is somewhat clear.
We know a couple of things right off the bat.
We know that the basket represents iniquity of the people in the
land and the woman in the basket represents wickedness.
We also know that two other winged women take the basket to the
region of If
we want to take a Futuristic approach to this vision, we would say that
the region of Babylonia might well be the last great world empire that
is actually called At
the time of the end, the last great world power just doesn’t come into
existence over night. There
is time period where it is rising to a world power as any other world
power rises over time. But
once this power is well established, the anti-christ will come in and
take charge.
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