Zechariah 5:11, commentary and pictures

The woman who is wickedness shut up in the ephah is carried away to the land of Shinar where Babylon stood, and there a house is built for her where she is set firmly established on her own base. This signifies the Jewish nation being taken into Babylonian captivity, with the greatly diminished remnant settled there as though in a permanent home, yet with hope of return to their own land after seventy years. Wickedness will not end with judgment but will be perpetuated and established as a permanent institution in Shinar, identified with the later spiritual or mystic Babylon as a new form of rebellion against God. That house is a lasting religious system built on Babylonian rebellion and idolatry, in which iniquity as a false religious standard in the measure is given a permanent home and foundation and is enforced, depicting the Roman Catholic Church sending its altered standard of God's law throughout the earth. Catholics and Protestant bodies unite to give that false standard lasting legal authority, especially through laws enforcing Sunday observance, while Babylon advances through war, commotion and strife and uses force to suppress those whose truth threatens it.

Symbols and Captivity History

This prophecy belongs to the part concerning the reformation under Zerubbabel and later reformations of which it was a type, whose figures and symbols point to nations and to God's power to save. Its visions give motives for confidence and earnest effort, looking beyond the restoration from Babylon to the final glorious restoration when Christ comes. The ephah is a just measure and standard under God's watch, and its vision condemns fraud in weights and measures. It reaches the same people condemned by the flying roll for stealing and swearing falsely, since such wrongdoers also cheat in their dealings.

The ephah with the woman, representing wickedness, is carried away to the land of Shinar where Babylon was situated. There a house will be built for it and it will be set firmly established on its own base. The carrying of the woman in the ephah to Shinar where Babylon stood signifies the Jewish nation being taken into Babylonian captivity. The woman represents the greatly diminished Jewish remnant carried into Babylonian captivity after Jerusalem's destruction. Only a few thousand people, including surviving members of the royal family and priesthood, remained to be taken captive, while many others were killed and the sanctuary's surviving vessels were carried away.

The woman is established as a helpless captive beneath the lead. The two winged women who carry her away in triumph represent her captors, the Babylonians and Assyrians, united under Nebuchadnezzar to conquer and carry the Jews away after he destroyed Jerusalem. The captive woman is settled in Babylon in Shinar as though it were her permanent home, with the house firmly established there. The captivity would last a long time, but the stork's return points to hope that the Jews would return to their own land after seventy years. The vision recalls Jerusalem's first destruction and the Jews' captivity in Shinar or Babylon as a warning against sin, so that a second destruction and final dispersion might be avoided. That warning was not permanently heeded, and Jerusalem was later destroyed and the Jews dispersed by the Romans under Titus in A.D. 70.

Wickedness Established as Babylon

The wickedness shut up in the measuring vessel does not come to an end in judgment but is carried away to be perpetuated and set up as a lasting institution in Shinar on its own base, which is the later spiritual or mystic Babylon, a new form of rebellion against God. The corrupt woman taken to Shinar and set in her own place is Babylon and its corruptions, for Shinar is Chaldea whose center was Babylon. The ephah is corrupt religious commercialism borne to Shinar, the land of rebellion, where a system of Babylonian idolatry is founded on its own foundation, formed before the Christian age in rebellion against God and made to endure under various outward forms.

The house built for the woman in Shinar is a lasting religious system grounded in Babylonian rebellion and idolatry, arising after men refused the light of truth that had shone at Babylon for seventy years and turning their guilt into a religion that allowed them to continue in evil without conscience. It was to endure through changing outward forms while keeping the same spirit, but not forever, for it was finally to be destroyed. That house is a corruption of the light and truth given through God's servants, blended with Babylonian idolatry, and the two women carrying it portray that corruption joined to other powers to give it strength and authority, as in Christ's time apostate Christianity blended with paganism, and in the present application Spiritualism unites with apostate Protestantism. The two women with stork-like wings lift the ephah to the land of rebellion, supplying the power that upholds the apostate woman and makes her continued existence possible. The wind in their wings is war, commotion, and strife, for Babylon advances by earthly conflict and uses force to put down those whose truth threatens it, yet it keeps throughout the earth and across the ages the name God gave it and the same character.

The ephah is a standard of measure and the woman is a church, together picturing the Roman Catholic Church sending its altered standard of God's law throughout the earth. Iniquity as a false religious standard in the measure is carried to the land of Shinar, which is Babel or Babylon, a place of confusion, where a place is prepared for it and it is given a permanent home and foundation on its own base, and its removal there pictures a false standard becoming established and enforced. That giving of the ephah a permanent place in Shinar pictures Catholics and Protestant bodies uniting to give that false standard lasting legal authority, especially through laws enforcing Sunday observance.