Seven: The Flying Scroll (The Sixth Vision) - Zech 5: 1-4
- Nov 1, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Nov 2, 2024
I looked again, and there before me was a flying scroll.
2 He asked me, ‘What do you see?’
I answered, ‘I see a flying scroll, twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.’
3 And he said to me, ‘This is the curse that is going out over the whole land; for according to what it says on one side, every thief will be banished, and according to what it says on the other, everyone who swears falsely will be banished. 4 The Lord Almighty declares, “I will send it out, and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of anyone who swears falsely by my name. It will remain in that house and destroy it completely, both its timbers and its stones.”’
The bus on the way into London stopped long enough at the traffic lights for me to have a good look at the massive advertising hoarding by the side of the road. The picture on the hoarding was of some soldiers looking rugged and efficient. The wording ran something like “British Army – Own a Part of it” and underneath the picture, on the same billboard, was the name of the managing director of a private company known for handling the sell-off of nationalised businesses into the hands of shareholders. And next to his name, in red graffiti-type writing, was an arrow with the words “I bet he drinks Carling Black Label.” It took me a little while to work out that this was not an audacious sell-off of the British military but an advert for beer.
Roadside advertising hoardings are roughly 10m x 5m, the same size as the flying scroll in Zechariah’s sixth vision. In the days before the book (codex) was invented, writing was done on papyrus or parchment and rolled into a scroll for convenient storage. This one is unfurled and enormous, so it can be easily read, we presume, and hurtling through the air – sent by God himself – to declare and then carry out a curse.
Scrolls containing words of judgement are also found in Jer 36:1-3 (warning King Jehoiakim and his people of disaster) and Ezek 2:9 - 3:2 (as part of Ezekiel’s call to be a prophet). Richard Phillips suggests, “With these precedents, the appearance of a scroll likely caused Zechariah’s heart to skip a beat” (p121).
Some commentators find significance in the dimensions of the scroll, which are the same as that of the Holy Place in the Temple (where only the priests were permitted to go) as well as the width and height of the cherubim over the Ark of the Covenant. I like one of the suggestions made by Carol and Eric Meyers (p280), which is that 10 m x 5 m is the size of the forecourt in front of the Temple where the people might well have met the priests to hear their judgement on difficult cases. In Zechariah’s vision God’s judgement is no longer confined to the Temple area, but finds out the sinner “like today’s heat-seeking missiles,” as Richard Phillips puts it (p123).
Curses were standard parts of treaties between kings in ancient times. You called down curses on your head that would come true if you broke your side of the bargain. Curses played a large part in the summing up of the covenant God makes with Israel in Moses’ time. Blessings for obedience are promised in the first 14 verses of Deuteronomy 28, but the remaining 54 verses are given over to curses for disobedience, and pretty bloodcurdling they are too.
The curse on the flying scroll is quite specific. On one side it’s directed against the thief, and on the other it’s against the one who swears falsely. Some scholars think that these were particularly prevalent crimes at the time. The upheaval caused by exile and return would have made it relatively easy to take someone else’s land and swear a false oath to bolster the claim. Others disagree. They maintain that swearing falsely, which breaks the ninth commandment (bearing false witness) also breaks the third (taking God’s name in vain). Now imagine the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone. The third commandment is in the middle of the first tablet and the eighth commandment (the one about stealing) is in the middle of the second. So these two curses represent the breaking of the whole of God’s law (maybe that’s why the scroll is so large). False swearing breaks one’s duty to God. Theft breaks one’s duty to one’s neighbour. We’re reminded of Jesus’ summing up of the law in Mark 12: 29-31.
There’s a translation difficulty in v3. The Hebrew verb is nqh, which in this form means ‘remain blameless’ or ‘be purged out’. The ESV renders it ‘be cleaned out’ and the NIV stretches it to ‘be banished’. Many scholars however think it should have the first meaning and they render it ‘has gone innocent’ or ‘has got away with it’ – until now. In either case, judgement is now on its way.
So here is this scroll, declaring a curse to evildoers, winging its way across the countryside. What’s going to happen to it? God says he is sending it into the houses of the thieves and the false-swearers, where it will stay and destroy those properties (nothing is said of the inhabitants), both timber and stones.
Emperors did sometimes decree that miscreants’ houses were to be pulled down (Dan 3:29, for example) but I wonder if this curse, which will remain in the house and destroy it, operates far more slowly, a kind of divine dry rot. Maybe that’s how God’s judgement tends to work. A thief takes what’s not his and lies to cover it up. He thinks he’s got away with it. But life gradually goes wrong after that. The stolen property does him no good. He’s unable to sell it, or he gets far less for it than it’s worth. Maybe his conscience gnaws at him. Friends find it difficult to trust him as they used to, though they couldn’t say why. In the end he has nothing to show for his theft and even what he had before slips through his fingers.
Wishful thinking, maybe, though many novels tell a similar tale. It is surely at least sometimes true that our sins find us out. It is the way the world is put together. Many of the so-called Wisdom books of the Old Testament tell the same story. For example, Proverbs 9:17-18 has Folly call out, “Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious!” then comments, “But little do they know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of the grave.”
Unfortunately, as we all know, it is also true that bad things happen to good people, and the wrong ’uns get away scot-free. (The Wisdom book of Job makes that abundantly clear, and only hints at why that might be).
What then of the scroll of God’s judgement? Did Zechariah get it wrong? Well, the book of Revelation gives a final perspective. In it another scroll, with seven seals, forms part of the heavenly vision. Only Jesus the Lamb of God is found worthy to break the seals and unroll the scroll. As he does so, fearsome judgements are poured out on unrepentant sinners (Rev 5-6). Then seven trumpets sound, and more terrifying disasters occur (Rev 8-9). Then seven bowls of God’s wrath are poured out on the earth, each with dreadful consequences (Rev 16). In the end all forms of evil are destroyed in the lake of fire, there is a new heaven and a new earth, and God dwells at last with his redeemed people (Rev 20-21). It’s a vivid picture on a vast canvas, and hard to make sense of in places, but there seems to be no doubt that judgment will not be dodged forever.
This is a worrying thought, for we know we are all sinners. Yet there is hope. Paul makes it clear in Gal 3:10-12 that failure to keep the entirety of God’s law indeed brings a curse. But that’s not the end of the story. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.’ He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit” (Gal 3: 13-14). God who sends his implacable curse to pull down the houses of sinners has also come in the Person of his Son to pull the curse down on his own head that we might go forgiven and free.
And that’s a message that deserves to be put on the biggest of advertising hoardings and displayed throughout the land.
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