Jeremiah 3:2

3:2 “Look up at the hilltops and consider this. ¹ 

You have had sex with other gods on every one of them. ² 

You waited for those gods like a thief lying in wait in the desert. ³ 

You defiled the land by your wicked prostitution to other gods. ⁴ 

Zechariah 5:5-11

Vision Seven: The Ephah

5:5 After this the angelic messenger ⁵  who had been speaking to me went out and said, “Look, see what is leaving.” 5:6 I asked, “What is it?” And he replied, “It is a basket for measuring grain ⁶  that is moving away from here.” Moreover, he said, “This is their ‘eye’ ⁷  throughout all the earth.” 5:7 Then a round lead cover was raised up, revealing a woman sitting inside the basket. 5:8 He then said, “This woman represents wickedness,” and he pushed her down into the basket and placed the lead cover on top. 5:9 Then I looked again and saw two women ⁸  going forth with the wind in their wings (they had wings like those of a stork) and they lifted up the basket between the earth and the sky. 5:10 I asked the messenger who was speaking to me, “Where are they taking the basket?” 5:11 He replied, “To build a temple ⁹  for her in the land of Babylonia. ¹⁰  When it is finished, she will be placed there in her own residence.”

[3:2]  ¹ tn Heb “and see.”

[3:2]  ² tn Heb “Where have you not been ravished?” The rhetorical question expects the answer “nowhere,” which suggests she has engaged in the worship of pagan gods on every one of the hilltops.

[3:2]  ³ tn Heb “You sat for them [the lovers, i.e., the foreign gods] beside the road like an Arab in the desert.”

[3:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “by your prostitution and your wickedness.” This is probably an example of hendiadys where, when two nouns are joined by “and,” one expresses the main idea and the other qualifies it.

[5:5]  ⁵ tn See the note on the expression “angelic messenger” in 1:9.

[5:6]  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.

[5:6]  ⁷ tc The LXX and Syriac read עֲוֹנָם (’avonam, “their iniquity,” so NRSV; NIV similar) for the MT עֵינָם (’enam, “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.

[5:9]  ⁸ sn Here two women appear as the agents of the Lord because the whole scene is feminine in nature. The Hebrew word for “wickedness” in v. 8 (רִשְׁעָה) is grammatically feminine, so feminine imagery is appropriate throughout.

[5:11]  ⁹ tn Heb “house” (so NIV, NRSV, CEV).

[5:11]  ¹⁰ sn The land of Babylonia (Heb “the land of Shinar”) is another name for Sumer and Akkad, where Babylon was located (Gen 10:10). Babylon throughout the Bible symbolizes the focus of anti-God sentiment and activity (Gen 11:4; 14:1; Isa 13–14; 47:1-3; Jer 50–51; Rev 14:8; 17:1, 5, 18; 18:21).