Zechariah 5:9 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Zechariah 5:9

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The picture becomes more complete. Two winged women appear with huge wings like storks, presumably indicating their carrying capacity, suitable to what they are about to do. They take the barrel or basket and lift it up between the earth and the heaven. They are flying away with it to a place which God has prepared for it. Zechariah asks where they are taking it, and is told they are carrying it to Shinar, the ancient name for Babylon on which a lot of this punishment is going to be poured out. Shinar was the name of the plain where Nimrod had organised the people to build the tower of Babel, and has always represented human rebellion against God. The Babylonian empire where Judah had gone into exile was now fallen and had been replaced by the much more merciful and generous Medo Persian empire. The punishments that God had been measuring out to Judah, he had now terminated. The rest is reserved for eternity, for those who remain unforgiven. God distributes the warnings and the punishments around the world, some more severe than others. These are just portions of judgment. It is in the sovereign hand of God, and everything is organised around the interests of the church. In this chapter, and in others that follow, you see that Judah is the centre of interest. She was taken into captivity into the Babylonian Empire, then a remnant returns, but the worst of her never returned. So there was a pruning, and the punishment had in mind the long-term interests of Judah, and how God will punish the neighbouring nations, and then throw down Babylon in its turn and punish it. Nevertheless, Shinar is spoken of as an abiding entity: the principle of the vision lives on. The ephah containing the woman, wickedness, is being carried to a place where a house will be built for it. Even though wickedness is being restrained by God it still has a part to play in the unfolding drama of world history. Wickedness will continue to exercise its influence, and struggle to break free from its containment, but it will not be allowed to go further than God permits. The people of God must accept that ‘evil must come into the world’, but never can it interfere with the purposes of God or cause a single one of God’s elect to be lost. Although wickedness is restrained in the ephah, it will nevertheless have a house built for it ‘in the land of Shinar: and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base.’ This compound picture is of wickedness being held back, and yet at the same time being allowed to go just so far. Babylon, of course, appears again in the Book of Revelation, where it stands as a symbol of the kingdom of darkness, ruled over by the prince of this world. It is a kingdom at war with God and his people, and it is represented as a woman, the great whore, sitting ‘upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy’ (Revelation 17:3). This prophecy of Zechariah looks forward to the same end game when wickedness will play its part in the final chapter of earth’s history and will receive its full and final judgment. Shinar in the vision is not a physical location on earth, but signifies the operation of the spiritual kingdom of this world wherever it is at work.

Application

The same principle of judgment is at work in the church today. It is difficult for us to take in, because the Christian church in an atheistic age is a minority of people. But all God's providences and how he judges and pours out different things at different times are all actually to promote the interests of the church. If the churches of Christ are wayward and need pruning, then they may be included in turmoil and distress to purge and purify, but it will be limited. The meaning of the vision is that God measures these things and limits them and orchestrates them. ‘I gave Sheba and Seba for thee’, says God through the prophet Isaiah. It is amazing that we who are nothing at all, have been called into the kingdom of God, and now we are in the kingdom which is at the centre of God's interest and everything he does in the world – lifting up empires, throwing them down, advancing some nations, putting back others. Ultimately if we could only see it – and one day we will – it is all going on in the interests of the church. The church is at the heart of everything that God is doing in the world. That is the lesson that Zechariah had to explain to the people in his day.

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Zechariah 5:9 Commentary and Bible Study