The preceding vision described the future removal of individual sinners from the land through divine judgment, and this one pictures the eventual removal of all wickedness from the future "holy land"(2:12; cf. 3:9).
"In line with the scope of all eight of Zechariah's night visions, the fulfilment [sic] of this likewise extends into the millennial kingdom. Nevertheless the immediate application of the vision to the prophet's time and to the conditions then prevailing is plain."104
5:5 The angelic guide next proceeded to instruct Zechariah to view something else that was happening in his vision.
"So little is human nature capable of readily appropriating divine revelation that it is not only necessary for God to let the necessary visions appear but also to stimulate the recipient's attention step by step lest, overcome by the power of the heavenly, he fail to appropriate all that God desires to offer."105
5:6-7 The prophet asked what he saw was, and the angel replied that it was an ephah, a basket that held about a half bushel (or five gallons) of dry (or liquid) material (cf. 1 Sam. 1:24; Ruth 2:17).106The angel lifted up the lead cover on top of the basket and revealed a woman sitting inside. A lead cover would be heavier than the customary stone cover and would guarantee that what was inside would not get out. Either the ephah was oversized, like the flying scroll, or the woman was a miniature in Zechariah's vision. Probably God used an ephah in the vision simply because it was a standard container that people used to carry things in, similar to a barrel.107
"The woman, made visible by the lifting of the lead cover, is still, like the evil she represents, mostly hidden from sight."108
The angel further explained that this is what the ephah and its contents would resemble as they went forth in all the land.
"As in the preceding vision, the earth (ha'arets) designates not merely Palestine, although this is the primary reference, and the removal of godless commercialism is first and foremost from the land,' which will then be in reality the Holy Land' (Zech. 2:12 [16]); but more broadly the term points to the entire millennial earth."109
5:8 The angel explained that the woman represented wickedness. He picked her up, threw her down into the middle of the basket, and shut the lead cover over her (cf. 2 Thess. 2:6-8). Obviously some conflict was involved; "Wickedness"did not want to be restricted. Probably Zechariah saw a woman, instead of a man, because the word "wickedness"in Hebrew is feminine. Here the woman represents the sum total of Israel's sins, wickedness being the opposite of righteousness (cf. Prov. 13:6; Ezek. 33:12).110
5:9 The prophet next saw two other women flying through the air with stork wings. Perhaps they were women and not men because of the motherly attention they brought to their task.111Storks are strong, motherly birds capable of carrying loads a long distance in flight. The word "stork"(Heb. sida) means "faithful one."These women would faithfully carry the ephah and its contents to God's appointed destination.112They lifted up the basket into the air flying off from earth to heaven with the divine assistance of the wind (Spirit, Heb. ruah).
"The removal of Wickedness, like the removal of Joshua's filthy garments (3:4), was an act of free grace on the part of the covenant-keeping (hasid) God."113
5:10-11 When Zechariah asked the angel where the two flying women were taking the basket, his interpreter responded that they were taking the woman to the land of Shinar (Babylonia, cf. Gen. 10:10; 11:2; 14:1, 9).
"Shinar, besides taking the theme of Babylon as antagonist back to the very beginning (Gen. 10:10), creating thereby a kind of historical inclusio,' lends a more trans-historical sense to the message."114
These two women with storks' wings were God's agents carrying out His will (cf. Ps. 103:11-12; Jer. 32: 39-40; Ezek. 36:25). At the appointed time the woman Wickedness would set atop a pedestal as an object of worship, an idol (cf. Rev. 17-18).
"Thus where Judah had been exiled was a fitting place for wickedness to be worshipped, but not in the land where God had placed hisname. The idolatry of Babylon must once and for all be separated from the worship of the God of Israel."115
"We understand the passage to speak of the heaping up of the full measure of Israel's sins prior to the time of God's separation of the wicked from the midst of the righteous remnant of the last days."116
"The two cleansing acts of this chapter are complementary, like the two goats on the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16, of which the first must give its blood as an expiation before the Lord, while the second carries away the guilt of the people, and the impurity springing from it, to the region of the impure desert-demon. The cleansing judgment, despite the terror, is a benefit to the land, which is thus purified and fitted to receive the blessing pictured in the former visions."117
