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Zechariah 5 describes a flying scroll that brings a curse to the land, targeting thieves and the dishonest. The Greek Septuagint translation changes the scroll to a sickle, harmonizing the image with earlier sections of the book.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Zechariah 5:1
Hebrew Bible
1 Then I turned to look, and there was a flying scroll! 2 Someone asked me, “What do you see?” I replied, “I see a flying scroll 30 feet long and 15 feet wide.” 3 The speaker went on to say, “This is a curse traveling across the whole earth. For example, according to the curse whoever steals will be removed from the community; or on the other hand (according to the curse) whoever swears falsely will suffer the same fate.”
Date: 500–401 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Zechariah 5:1
Septuagint
1 And I turned, and lifted up my eyes, and looked and look, a flying sickle. 2 And he said to me, What do you see? And I said, I see a flying sickle, of the length of twenty cubits, and of the breadth of ten cubits. 3 And he said to me, This is the curse that goes forth over the face of the whole earth: for every thief shall be punished with death on this side, and every false swearer shall be punished with death on that side.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Harmonization within the same book ... Examples of such harmonization, well-known already from the Septuagint to the Pentateuch (compare LXX Genesis 2:2, that avoids an antagonism to the Sabbath commandments), are also to be found in the translations of the prophetical books. Zechariah 5:1 mentions a scroll which contains vows on the whole earth. The translator knows that in the last days many nations shall flee to the Lord for refuge and shall become a people to him (Zechariah 2:15). Therefore he substitutes the scroll by the sickle. There is also an intertextuality between Nahum 1:12 (Lord on great waters) and Zechariah 9:10. In LXX Isaiah 1:4, the “wicked seed” is a harmonization to Isaiah 14:20: Due to its wickedness, Israel is put on a par with the royal house of Babylon! Such harmonization is debated also concerning Jeremiah 52 (within the theoretical frame of Masoretic text priority) and with regard to Daniel 10:1: The reading “In the first year of Cyrus” (Daniel 10:1 LXX diff. Masoretic text + Theodotion) is possibly an accommodation to Daniel 1:21 (Daniel rested until to the first year of Cyrus). An inner-Greek misreading (from τωτριτωι to τωπρωτωι), however, is also discussed ..."
Martin Meiser, The Septuagint and Its Reception: Collected Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 99–100.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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