The chapters containing the visions are chiefly concerned with the hope founded on the approaching end of the seventy years, which, as Jeremiah predicted, would be the period of the captivity in Babylon. These are the meaning of the visions, according to some interpreters: The flying roll, a huge book with wings, contained the record of sin and curse. The prophet sees it flying from the Holy Land, destroying on its way the houses of the thieves and perjurers. The woman in the ephah (5:5-11) represents the principle of evil and of temptation. She, too, like sin and the curse, must be removed from the land, and she is carried away to the land of Shinar, which the Jews regarded as the fit abode of wicked things. The chariots of the winds (6:1:8) are God's messengers commissioned to avenge Israel. The black horses go north, that is to punish Persia; the dappled, south, that is against Egypt; and the white, west, that is against Greece, then becoming formidable. The horses of the fourth chariot have a general commission for any part of the world in which enmity to Israel might develop.
