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Zechariah

About this book
Chapter 5

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.” 4 “I will send it out,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and it will enter the house of the thief and of the person who swears falsely in my name. It will land in the middle of his house and destroy both timber and stones.” 5 After this the angelic messenger who had been speaking to me went out and said, “Look, see what is leaving.” 6 I asked, “What is it?” And he replied, “It is a basket for measuring grain that is moving away from here.” Moreover, he said, “This is their ‘eye’ throughout all the earth.” 7 Then a round lead cover was raised up, revealing a woman sitting inside the basket. 8 He then said, “This woman represents wickedness,” and he pushed her down into the basket and placed the lead cover on top. 9 Then I looked again and saw two women going forth with the wind in their wings (they had wings like those of a stork), and they lifted up the basket between the earth and the sky. 10 I asked the messenger who was speaking to me, “Where are they taking the basket?” 11 He replied, “To build a temple for her in the land of Babylonia. When it is finished, she will be placed there in her own residence.”

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Compare Zechariah 5:1 and LXX Zechariah 5:1

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

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.

Passages

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.”
500–401 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Zechariah

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.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Zechariah

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.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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