Zechariah 5:1-4
New English Translation
Vision Six: The Flying Scroll
5 Then I turned to look, and there was a flying scroll! 2 Someone asked me, “What do you see?” I replied, “I see a flying scroll 30 feet long and 15 feet wide.”[a] 3 The speaker went on to say, “This is a curse[b] traveling across the whole earth. For example, according to the curse whoever steals[c] will be removed from the community; or on the other hand (according to the curse) whoever swears falsely will suffer the same fate.” 4 “I will send it out,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and it will enter the house of the thief and of the person who swears falsely in my name. It will land in the middle of his house and destroy both timber and stones.”
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- Zechariah 5:2 tn Heb “20 cubits…10 cubits” (so NAB, NRSV). These dimensions (“30 feet long and 15 feet wide”) can hardly be referring to the scroll when unrolled since that would be all out of proportion to the normal ratio, in which the scroll would be 10 to 15 times as long as it was wide. More likely, the scroll is 15 feet thick when rolled, a hyperbole expressing the enormous amount and the profound significance of the information it contains.
- Zechariah 5:3 tn The Hebrew word translated “curse” (אָלָה, ʾalah) alludes to the covenant sanctions that attend the violation of God’s covenant with Israel (cf. Deut 29:12, 14, 20-21).
- Zechariah 5:3 sn Stealing and swearing falsely (mentioned later in this verse) are sins against mankind and God respectively and are thus violations of the two major parts of the Ten Commandments. These two stipulations (commandments 8 and 3) represent the whole law.
Zechariah 5:1-4
Expanded Bible
The Vision of the Flying Scroll
5 I ·looked up again [L turned and lifted my eyes] and saw a flying scroll.
2 ·The angel [L He] asked me, “What do you see?”
I answered, “I see a flying scroll, ·thirty feet [L twenty cubits] long and ·fifteen feet [L ten cubits] wide.”
3 And he said to me, “This is the curse that ·will go [or is going out] all over the land. One side says every thief will be ·taken away [banished; purged]. The other side says everyone who ·makes false promises [swears falsely] will be ·taken away [banished; purged]. 4 The Lord ·All-Powerful [Almighty; of Heaven’s Armies; T of hosts] says, ‘I will send it to the houses of thieves and to those who ·use my name to make false promises [swear falsely]. The scroll will stay in that person’s house and destroy it with its wood and stones.’”
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