Zechariah Chapter 5 verse 8 Holy Bible
And he said, This is Wickedness: and he cast her down into the midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof.
read chapter 5 in ASV
And he said, This is Sin; and pushing her down into the ephah, he put the weight of lead on the mouth of it.
read chapter 5 in BBE
And he said, This is Wickedness: and he cast her into the midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof.
read chapter 5 in DARBY
And he said, This is wickedness. And he cast it into the midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof.
read chapter 5 in KJV
read chapter 5 in WBT
He said, "This is Wickedness;" and he threw her down into the midst of the ephah basket; and he threw the weight of lead on its mouth.
read chapter 5 in WEB
And he saith, `This `is' the wicked woman.' And he casteth her unto the midst of the ephah, and casteth the weight of lead on its mouth.
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Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 8. - This is wickedness. This woman is the personification of wickedness. It is very common to find backsliding Israel represented as a faithless and adulterous woman (comp. Isaiah 1:21; Jeremiah 2:20; Hosea 2:5; and the parable of the two women in Ezekiel 23.). He cast it; her - the woman. As the woman rose, or tried to rise, from the ephah, the angel flung her down into it. It is possible, as some commentators suppose, that the ephah into which wickedness is thrust represents the measure of iniquity which, being reached, constrains God to punish (see Genesis 15:16, where the dispossession of the Amorites is postponed till their iniquity is full). The weight of lead; literally, as the LXX., the stone of lead; Vulgate, massam plumbeam. This is the cover of the ephah, that which is called the "talent of lead" in the preceding verse. This heavy cover the angel cast upon the mouth of the ephah, in order to confine the woman therein (comp. Genesis 29:2, which passage may explain why the cover is called "a stone"). Dr. Wright and some other commentators, referring the passage to theft and perjury alone, consider that the woman held in her hand the leaden weight with which she weighed her gains, and was sitting in the ephah which she used in her traffic; so that she represents dishonesty in the matter of weight and measure. She is punished by the means of the instruments she had used unrighteously; the weight is dashed upon her lying mouth, and the ephah, her throne, is made the vehicle that carries her out of the land. But it seems a mistake to confine the iniquity mentioned to the two special sins of theft and perjury; nor would the talent and the ephah be natural instruments of stealing and false swearing; and the point of the vision is not the punishment of wickedness, but its expulsion from the land. It is true that the pronominal suffix in the mouth thereof is feminine, and that the LXX. makes it refer to the woman, τὸ στόμα αὐτῆς. But it may equally refer to ephah, which is also feminine.
