Zechariah 5:8

And he said, This [is] wickedness,.... A representation of wicked men, who are wickedness itself, as their inward part is, Psalms 5:9 and particularly of the wicked one, the man of sin and son of

Then the angel that talked with me went forth, and said unto me, Lift up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth.

And he said; the angel unfolds the riddle. This, this woman that sits in the ephah, represents the sinful nation of the Jews, is emblem of their wickedness. Is wickedness, in the abstract, to express the greatness of the Jews’ wickedness, they will grow up to be most wicked. He cast it; the angel cast down this woman, wickedness, from the seat she sat on, . And he east the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof; and now she is down the weight of lead, which she can never lift up, or remove, is laid upon the mouth of the ephah, she is shut up, as in a prison, to suffer the punishment of all her sins. This is their resemblance.

Zechariah 5:8 And he said, This [is] wickedness. And he cast it into the midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof.Ver. 8. And he said, This is wickedness] viz. This woman, a figure of the whole sinful nation of the Jews; as were Aholah and Aholibah, Ezekiel 23:36; Ezekiel 23:44, and Babylon the Great, the mother of fornications and abominations, Revelation 17:5, to whom I may add that grand-daughter of hers, Katherine de Medicis, Queen mother; who by her wickedness wonderfully troubled all France for thirty years together. And he cast it into the midst of the ephah] The angel, as an executioner of Divine justice, throws her down who before sat perking and priding herself; and claps her up close prisoner as it were in the ephah. Casting the weight of lead into the mouth thereof] That is, of the ephah, or of the woman, according to that, Psalms 107:42 "The righteous shall see it, and rejoice: and all iniquity shall stop her mouth." Montanus, one of the Talmud, addeth, that this woman is compelled to take this lead into her mouth; that molten lead was poured down her throat, for a punishment of her frauds and thefts, Zechariah 5:3. But the wicked shall not be so excused; for upon them God shall rain snares, fire, brimstone, and a burning tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup, Psalms 11:6, and this is far worse than molten lead, or burning bell metal. Compare with this text Jeremiah 51:64 Revelation 18:21; cf. Revelation 20:1. An angel, a strong angel, for better assurance of Rome’ s irreparable ruin, taketh a stone, a great stone, which he throweth, and with force thrusteth into the bottom of the sea, whence it cannot be buoyed up, whence nothing ordinarily is recovered, much less a millstone thrust from such a hand with such a force. "What do ye imagine against the Lord?" saith Nahum; "he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time," Nahum 1:9; that is, the wicked shall be totally and finally consumed at once; neither will God make another doing of it. "I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah," Amos 4:11 : wickedness is here crushed together, as it were, in a narrow vessel, covered with lead, and carried into a strange country.

(7, 8) Talent.—Better, disc. The construction of these verses is rather difficult. They should be taken as the words of the angel-interpreter, and be rendered: And behold (i.e., and you may see) a leaden disc being lifted up, and this [which you now see on the removal of the disc] is a woman sitting in the ephah; this, continued he, is wickedness. Observe the climax: first, representatives of the two classes of sinners are spoken of; then they are heaped into an undistinguishable mass, and afterwards they are spoken of as one woman, who impersonates wickedness. Cast it.—Better, her, the woman.

8. This is wickedness] This woman that thou seest sitting in the ephah represents the wickedness of the whole land, gathered up, as it were, into one and personified. the weight of lead] Lit. the stone of lead; so called, either because stones were used as weights (comp. our English word “stone”), or because the leaden lid on the mouth of the ephah suggested by its size and weight the stone cover of a well. Genesis 29:2. upon the mouth thereof] Lit. upon her mouth; but rightly rendered thereof, as the reference seems plainly to be to the ephah, on which the angel firmly fixed the lid, when he had cast down the woman into it. A different, but less satisfactory, view of the vision has been taken. According to this the woman is seen “having in her hand the leaden weight with which she was wont to traffic, and sitting crouched down in an empty bushel or ephah, as if that were her true seat and throne.… It was a special form of wickedness that was here pourtrayed, namely, unrighteousness as it manifests itself in matters of weight and measure, or, to designate it in our Lord’s own words, ‘unfaithfulness as regards the unrighteous mammon’ … But ‘with the same measure that ye mete withal, shall it be measured to you again.’ The very instrument which the woman used for her unholy work was to be the means of her confusion. The ephah in which she sat was made the chariot in which she was removed from the land; and the angel, with righteous indignation, seized the woman herself, dashed her down into the ephah as she was about to rise from her sitting posture, and taking hold of the leaden weight, flung the heavy ‘stone of lead’ upon her mouth. Thus did the angel indicate that ‘wickedness’ would be a subject of Divine wrath. He smote her in the mouth wherewith she had so often uttered words of lying and fraud; and did so with the very instrument with which she was wont to measure her ungodly gain. Thus was her mouth stopped (Psalms 107:42; Job 5:16), and the instrument of sin was made the instrument of her punishment.” (Rev. C. H. H. Wright.) The moral of the vision, however, is not the destruction, nor even the punishment of wickedness, but its expulsion from the holy land, that it may go to its own place.

And cast her into the midst of the Ephah - As yet then the measure was not full. Ribera: “She had the lower part within the Ephah, but the upper, especially the head, without.

8. The interpreter proceeds to explain the significance of the woman. This is wickedness — The wickedness of the whole land (Zechariah 5:6) is personified in the one woman.