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Vision Seven: The Ephah

After this the angelic messenger[a] who had been speaking to me went out and said, “Look, see what is leaving.” I asked, “What is it?” And he replied, “It is a basket for measuring grain[b] that is moving away from here.” Moreover, he said, “This is their ‘eye’[c] throughout all the earth.” Then a round lead cover was raised up, revealing a woman sitting inside the basket.

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Footnotes

  1. Zechariah 5:5 tn See the note on the expression “angelic messenger” in 1:9.
  2. Zechariah 5:6 tn Heb “[This is] the ephah.” An ephah was a liquid or solid measure of about a bushel (five gallons or just under twenty liters). By metonymy it refers here to a measuring container (probably a basket) of that quantity.
  3. Zechariah 5:6 tc The LXX and Syriac read עֲוֹנָם (ʿavonam, “their iniquity,” so NRSV; NIV similar) for the MT עֵינָם (ʿenam, “their eye”), a reading that is consistent with the identification of the woman in v. 8 as wickedness, but one that is unnecessary. In 4:10 the “eye” represented divine omniscience and power; here it represents the demonic counterfeit.