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drive sin away

Zechariah 5:1-11

Zechariah 5:1 I looked up again and noticed a flying scroll.
Zechariah 5:2 “What do you see?” he asked me. “I see a flying scroll,” I replied, “thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide.”
Zechariah 5:3 Then he said to me, “This is the curse that is going out over the whole land, for everyone who is a thief, contrary to what is written on one side, has gone unpunished, and everyone who swears falsely, contrary to what is written on the other side, has gone unpunished.
Zechariah 5:4 I will send it out,” – this is the declaration of Yahveh of Armies – “and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of the one who swears falsely by my name. It will stay inside his house and destroy it along with its timbers and stones.”
Zechariah 5:5 Then the angel who was speaking with me came forward and told me, “Look up and see what this is that is approaching.”
Zechariah 5:6 So I asked, “What is it?” He responded, “It’s a measuring basket that is approaching.” And he continued, “This is their iniquity in all the land.”
Zechariah 5:7 Then I noticed as a lead cover was lifted, and there was a woman sitting inside the basket.
Zechariah 5:8 “This is Wickedness,” he said. He shoved her down into the basket and pushed the lead weight over its opening.
Zechariah 5:9 Then I looked up and saw two women approaching with the wind in their wings. Their wings were like those of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between the land and the sky.
Zechariah 5:10 So I asked the angel speaking with me, “Where are they taking the basket?”
Zechariah 5:11 “To build a shrine for it in the land of Shinar,” he told me. “When that is ready, the basket will be placed on its pedestal.”

drive sin away

These two visions show what the LORD is going to do to rid the land of sin. He is going to curse the houses of the thief and the one who swears falsely for personal gain. Since they both sinned for personal gain, what they gained will be taken away. Their houses will be cleaned out.

He is going to remove idolatry from the land, symbolized by the woman in the basket, described as wickedness herself. Many of the idolatrous practices of the Canaanites involved sexual sin, just as pornography today is this same kind of idolatry. Also, taking foreign wives often led the Israelites to apostasy. But the LORD shows here that he is not judging females in general by this singular phenomenon: the angels who deport the wicked woman are portrayed as women themselves!

LORD, clean us out, drive sin away from our houses.