Zechariah 5:1

Then I turned, and lift up mine eyes, and looked,.... The prophet turned himself from looking upon the candlestick and olive branches, having had a full and clear understanding of them, and looked

Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll. The fraudulent and prejuring transgressors of the law shall be extirpated from Judea.

CHAPTER 5 By the flying roll is showed the curse of thieves and of false swearers, . By a woman in an ephah, pressed under a weight, and carried away to Shinar, is denoted wickedness, and the judgment of it, . Then, or And, Heb. i.e. after I had seen those comfortable visions, and been instructed in the true meaning of them. I turned; changed his posture, though the occasion of it be not mentioned, nor the posture into which he put himself. Lifted up mine eyes; looked up into the air where the vision appeared. Looked, very diligently, and discerned clearly. A flying roll; a volume, or book, which in those days were not written as now our books are printed and bound, but were written, as deeds are now, on large or long parchments, and rolled up upon a neat round stick, or else rolled upon themselves; such the roll here seen: much as our large geographical maps are rolled upon rollers, sad lodged in a convenient cavity, so were their books of old. But probably here now the roll was spread out at large, flying in the air swiftly, perhaps with some noise, that might make the prophet look about him.

Zechariah 5:1 Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll.Ver. 1. Then I turned me, and lifted up mine eyes] i.e. I prepared me to the receiving of a new vision; nothing so comfortable as the former, but no less necessary; that the people, by sense of sin and fear of wrath, might be taken off their wicked practices, redeem their own sorrows, and be accounted worthy to escape all those things that should (otherwise) come to pass, as Zechariah 5:11, and to stand before the Son of man at that dreadful day, Luke 21:36. This seemeth to be the mind of the Holy Ghost, in these two visions here recorded; which while some interpreters attend not, in toto vaticinio neque coelum, neque terrain attingunt, saith Calvin, they are utterly out. And behold a flying roll] Or, volume, as Psalms 40:7, or scroll of paper, or parchment, usually rolled up, like the web upon the pin, uti convolvuntur nostrae Mappae Geographicae, as our maps are rolled up, saith a Lapide; and as in the public library at Oxford the book or roll of Esther (a Hebrew manuscript) is at this day to be seen; but here flying, Volans velocissimum ultionis incursum significat (Chrysost.). Not only becanse spread wide open, as Rabshakeh’ s letter, 2 Kings 19:14, and as that book of the prophet Isaiah, Luke 4:17, but also as fleeting along swiftly, like a bird ready to seize on her prey. Nemo scelus gerit in pectore, qui non idem Nemesin in tergo. No man bears evil in his heart who does not show the same revenge on the outside. The heathens named Nemesis (their goddess of revenge, to take punishment of offenders) Aδραστεια, because no man can possibly escape her, οτιουκαντιςαυτηναποδρασαιτο. They tell us also that their Jupiter writeth down all the sins of all men in a book, or scroll, made of a goat’ s pelt, which they call διφθερα; the very word whereby Aquila and Theodotion (two Greek translaters) do render the Hebrew of this text. Symmachus turns it Kεφαλις, a chapter, or abstract of a larger book, full of sins and woes; and yet it is of an unheard of size, Zechariah 5:2, and of very sad contents, like that book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 2:9-10, lamentation, and mourning, and woe; or the first leaf of Bishop Babington’ s book (which he turned over every morning), all black; to remind him of hell and God’ s judgments due unto him for his sins.

(1) Then I turned . . . eyes.—Better, And I again lifted up my eyes. (Comp. Zechariah 4:1.) Flying roll.—A scroll floating in the air. The form of the vision seems to be suggested by Ezekiel 2:9-10. LXX., omitting the final ah of the word for “scroll,” render δρέπανον, “sickle.”

CHAPTER V The vision of the large flying roll, with the angel's explanation, 1-4. The vision of the ephah, and of the woman sitting on it, with the signification, 5-11. NOTES ON CHAP. V Verse 1. Behold a flying roll.] This was twenty cubits long, and ten cubits broad; the prophet saw it expanded, and flying. Itself was the catalogue of the crimes of the people, and the punishment threatened by the Lord. Some think the crimes were those of the Jews; others, those of the Chaldeans. The roll is mentioned in allusion to those large rolls on which the Jews write the Pentateuch. One now lying before me is one hundred and fifty-three feet long, by twenty-one inches wide, written on fine brown Basle goat-skin; some time since brought from Jerusalem, supposed to be four hundred years old.

1. I turned, and lift up mine eyes, and looked] Rather, I lifted up mine eyes again and saw a flying roll. Its flight signified the swift coming of punishment; its flying from heaven that the sentence proceeded from the judgment-seat above.

Hitherto all had been bright, full of the largeness of the gifts of God; of God’s favor to His people ; the removal of their enemies ; the restoration and expansion and security of God’s people and

1. The introductory formula is similar to that in Zechariah 2:1. A… roll — Among the ancients written documents were preserved in the form of rolls.