Zechariah 5:11 - Exposition

To build it ( her ) an house. The LXX . refers the pronoun to the ephah, but it seems more natural to refer it to a person, the woman. The feminine gender of the original would apply to either. She is carried away from Judaea to have a permanent dwelling in a land more suited to her. Pusey thinks that possibly a temple may be intended, "a great idol temple, in which the god of this world should be worshipped." In the land of Shinar; i.e. the ideal land of unholiness, where the world power first arrayed itself against God in the attempt at Babel. Septuagint, ἐν γῇ βαβυλῶνος , ( Genesis 11:2 , etc.). Shinar, equivalent to Sumer in the Assyrian monuments, denotes Lower or Southern Babylon; Accad, Upper or Northern Babylon. And it shall be established. The house shall be firmly fixed there. Others render, "when it is ready." And set there. The gender shows that the woman is meant, not the house: "And she shall be set there in her own place." Thus from the spiritual Zion all wickedness shall be abolished ( Zechariah 3:9 ) and sent to its own place prepared for the enemies of God and holiness. Doubtless, too, a warning is here conveyed to those Jews who still lingered in Babylon, that they were dwelling in a land accursed of God, and were liable to be involved in the fate which pursues ungodliness. Orelli and some others see in these two visions an analogy to the two goats on the Day of Atonement, of which one was sacrificed for the sins of the people, and the other bore away their iniquity to the demons' abode, the wilderness ( Leviticus 16:1-34 .).