This week I'll finish off the vision section of Zechariah, which began (1:8vv) and now ends with horses patrolling the earth (6:1-8). There are also two visions in chapter 5, one of a flying scroll and the other of a flying basket. I guess you could also say the horses are flying, but that's in a more metaphorical sense.
5:1-4 Flying Scroll5:5-11 Flying Basket6:1-8 Flying Horses
Of course, there are better ways to describe each vision, so:
5:1-4 A flying curse scroll condemns theft and lying5:5-11 A basket containing wickedness is flown far away6:1-8 Horses patrolling the earth cause God's spirit to rest
There are things which all three visions share in common, and lexemes is a key one.
- Coming/going (יצא) is very consistent through these visions. A sense that everything is happening is created. The scroll zooms in, the basket zooms away, and the chariots zoom in and out of the scene.
- Each vision mentions the whole earth/land (כל הארץ). In the first instance this is Yehud (Judah), because the focus is the cleansing of the land from sin. But it also broadens out to describe the whole world - the Persian empire, and even beyond.
- The first and second visions also discuss houses, the house of the thief and liar, and then the house being built for the woman in the basket. The contrast here is with the house which has been the focus throughout Zechariah up to this point: the temple, or house, of Yhwh.
I'm still thinking through the connections between the visions as a whole, which are said to be chiastic. For instance, here's one way they could be construed:
1.7–17: The promise of rest centred on Yhwh’s house (horses!)
2.1–4: Judgement on the scattering nations (horns!)2.5–17: His house in Jerusalem is the place Yhwh will dwell (measuring man!)
3.1–10: Joshua the priest over Yhwh’s House (heavenly court!)4.1–14: Not by might or by power but by Yhwh’s Spirit (lampstand!)
5.1–4: Curse on the house of the thief/liar (flying scroll!)5.5–11: A far-away house for wickedness (idol in a basket!)
6.1–8: Yhwh’s Spirit at rest (horses!)
I've massaged the titles a little to make the parallels a little clearer. The first and last are the clearest because of the shared vision (horses!), and the contrast between the second/third and sixth/seventh passages are workable in terms of near (the house/houses) and far (the nations, the idol's home). The middle two are about the two key players (Joshua and Zerubbabel), and maybe there's a thread through the first, fourth, fifth and eighth visions.
The issue with this approach is the chiasm was uncovered by the image of the visions (horses!), but that's the only time it works. Every other parallel is thematic or a keyword. I guess I want my chiasms (if this is even properly a chiasm - something beyond the verse level is better called a parallel or envelope structure) to present themselves. There's a fair bit of work to get here, and even then it's not too tight.
For me it makes more sense that these visions, like any dream, are pieced together from sights and sounds and experiences from every day. There are people building walls and temple furniture, there are discussions about Zerubbabel and Joshua, about Babylon and Persia, and the horses and chariots of the empire are zipping around, being the eyes and ears of Darius. Now, it can well be the case that both of these are true. But there is enough to keep them together without insisting on an intentionally designed structure.
5:1-4 A flying curse scroll condemns theft and lying
A similar introductory formula to the other visions has Zechariah seeing unprompted for once. Normally the angel draws his attention to something but the scroll is obvious enough to see, because it is flying, and also because it is massive. It's something like 10m x 5m (20x10 cubits), although it's not clear if this is rolled up or not. It's also not clear if Zechariah can see what's on it, or the angel just knows and tells him.
In any case, the angel is there to help and without the 20 questions of the previous vision tells Zechariah what's happening. It's a flying scroll which is also a curse. It's a מגלה עפה ... האלה (megillah 'aphah ... ha'alah). And it has two specific targets, every thief and everyone who swears ... who swears falsely by my name.
The explanation of what swearing entails is held off by a verse, perhaps for suspense, or there was just no need to explain it. Of course swearing in parallel with theft will be the bad type of swearing, and we find out quickly enough that it is.
The assumption here is that these two targets are breaking two commandments of the Decalogue, the 8th (don't steal) and either the 3rd (don't misuse my name) or the 9th (don't bear false witness). The difficulty with the second one is it takes terms from both the 3rd and 9th commandments. But the solution is I think resolved by referring to Leviticus 19, where the wording is almost identical to Zechariah 5:4. This also importantly places these commandments in the context of life in the land, which is not to be like the nation they have been rescued from nor the nations surrounding them. This is the reasoning behind the sexual ethics in Leviticus 18 and also makes sense of the fruit laws in Leviticus 19. The point then of theft/swearing being targets is that these are laws, which, when broken, would lead to them being yet again vomited out of the land.
5:5-11 A basket containing wickedness is flown far away
This time it's the angel who is doing the coming and going, and he tells Zechariah to look at what things are coming and going up above. It's another flying object, a basket, evidenced by the command to raise his eyes and look. But although he's looking up, he is also looking in, and sees a woman (אשה) in a basket (איפה) - an ishshah in an ephah. to go with our megillah 'aphah ha'alah from the previous vision.
Of course, it's not all revealed at once. First he sees the basket, then sees a lead disk rising, and then he sees the woman, only for her to be pushed down by the lead cover.
So far then we have three measurements, two of which are also eponymous for their object (container/weight). We did have cubits for the scroll, and now we have an ephah, which can also stand for the basket, and on top of this is a kikar, which is the word both for a talent (in this case, of lead) and also the shape it comes in, a round object, in this case a cover for the basket.
There is a textual issue, despite manuscript evidence, where the woman in the based is called עינם (their eyes?), but is pretty universally read עונם (their iniquity) based on logic as well as the evidence of the versions. There are attempts to make it mean something, such as "appearance", as in the appearance of iniquity, but this still assumes it's iniquity.
More interesting to me is the next description, that she is wickedness. The fun pun here is that רשעה is a near anagram for the goddess אשרה. And this then explains how this woman is able to fit in a basket - she is not alive but an idol. She is from Babylon (the plains of Shinar) and to there she will return.
How will she get back there? Two other women, with stork wings. And the counter pun is now found with the wings of the stork, the חסידה, which is of course very close to חסד. Wickedness represented by Asherah is removed by the stork-winged women representing faithfulness.
I'm sort of interested by who these women are; divine messengers are generally not feminine in appearance or description (as far as I can recall) so I want to assume these are angels of some description but we really know nothing else. And of course it's a dream.
6:1-8 Horses patrolling the earth cause God's spirit to rest
Last off are the horses, but this time they're pulling chariots. Which raises the question of whether they were pulling chariots too back in chapter 1. Maybe that's how the same person could be riding a horse as well as standing among the myrtle trees - he was standing aboard his chariot, so he was both mounted and standing. We also have a different number of horses. There were three colours in chapter 1, now there are four, and possibly different colours, but it also reduces to three colours of horses. Presumably each chariot has horses all of one colour.
Where are they going? North, south, and a third direction. NIV says it's west, as in behind, as in, from an easterly orientation. But it makes more sense to say after the north horses, because that's what it says, but also because west would be into the sea, and also because north is the end point in 6:8 of the chapter. What's with north and south? I think it's because the nations who have been most in their faces are Egypt (south), and Syria, Babylon, Assyria and Persia - because everyone needs to access Yehud from the north, if they aren't going through 1000km of desert.
This doesn't resolve the question of where precisely the spirit ends up in v8. Is it in Damascus, Babylon, or Ecbatana? Or is it just [gestures wildly] somewhere up that way? Perhaps the answer is less where but what. As in, what is the purpose of Yhwh's spirit being at rest in the north? The most consistent answer is with the same meaning as chapter 1, that this is a sign the earth is at rest, and the returnees can now get to work building the temple and being the people of God, in God's place, and under God's rule.
This has all taken three days to get to the end of, because I keep getting called away. Sleep is calling now, and then I'll preach through it tomorrow. And then, the rest of 6 and chapter 7! Until then.
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