Wicked Fire in a Flying Roll Prophesied in Zechariah 5
The flying roll Zechariah saw
There is a number of obscured prophecies in the Hebrew Scripture, and the prophecy in Zechariah 5 is one of them. The prophecy in Zechariah 5 is of a “wicked fire in a flying roll”. To this obscured prophecy in the Book of Zechariah, we now turn to explain. We read,
And I lifted up my eyes again and looked and saw a flying roll. And he said to me, “What do you see?” And I answered, “I see a flying roll, twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide”. (Zec 5:1-2)
The flying roll as depicted in the prophecy in Zechariah 5:1-2 is being seen moving swiftly over the earth. What is peculiar here is the size of the flying roll (precise dimensions of twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide). And since the actual size of a roll can be determined only when it is unrolled, we may say that its length and width are only given in order to be seen as such, meaning, the text does not say that the roll is flying in an unrolled shape and form, but it simply says that the roll is flying and is twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide. The statement as to the size of the flying roll is unquestionably significant, as we will explain further in this study. We keep on reading,
And he said to me, This is the curse that goes forth over the face of the whole earth: everyone who is stealing shall go unpunished, on the one side, according to it, and everyone who has sworn falsely shall go unpunished, on the other side, according to it. I shall send it out, declares YHVH of hosts, and it shall come into the house of the thief and the house of the one who shall swear falsely by My Name. And it shall remain in the midst of his house and shall consume it, both its timber and stones. (Zec 5:3-4)
The flight of the roll, the prophet wants to know, symbolizes the going forth of the curse over the whole land. In Hebrew it is כָּל־הָאָרֶץ. The words כָּל־הָאָרֶץ could be rendered “the whole earth” because it evidently signifies the whole earth as in Zechariah 4:10, Zechariah 4:14, and Zechariah 6:5. However, the same term could also refer to any piece of land, as this Hebrew expression is used by the opposition in Zechariah 5:11, where we read “the land of Shinar.” If therefore כָּל־הָאָרֶץ is rendered as the whole earth, then its reference to the land of Shinar in Zechariah 5:11 is out of place. Hence, the phrase כָּל־הָאָרֶץ must refer to the land of Shinar, not the whole earth.
The flying roll that carries curse to Shinar
Further we are told, this curse that goes forth with the flying roll and falls upon all thieves and false swearers (Zechariah 5:3) is further defined more precisely in Zechariah 5:4, as swearing in the name of YHVH for deceit, and refers to the abuse of the name of YHVH for deceit. The flying roll therefore symbolizes the curse which will fall upon sinners throughout the whole land of Shinar consuming them together with their houses.
And the messenger who was speaking with me came out and said to me, Lift up your eyes now, and see what this is that is going forth. And I said, What is it? And he said, It is an ephah that is going forth. Again, he said, This is their appearance throughout the earth: And see, a lead cover lifted up, and this: a woman sitting inside the ephah! And he said, This is wickedness! And he threw her down into the ephah and threw the lead weight over its mouth. (Zec 5:5-8)
The messenger now asked Zechariah concerning what was going forth with the flying roll. He revealed that the flying roll Zechariah saw was carrying an ephah with a lead cover, and what perplexed the prophet was that there was a woman sitting inside the ephah; this woman the messenger described as “wickedness”. What does that mean?
The Hebrew word “ephah” is a noun and it is to be understood as an ephah-measure (bushel) in which the grains are all collected together. It should not be understood as a measurement unit, but as a container clearly seen in the context, because the mysterious woman was sitting in it. Therefore “ephah” is a container that is housing the woman. The cover of lead (Heb. kichar) is a circular plate, and as we will see below this is a key to its understanding. The lead cover is lifted up, and a woman is sitting in the ephah (achat does not stand for the indefinite article, but is a numeral “one”, i.e., as one singular thing, instead of forming a number of individual things). This woman, who was already sitting in the container, was only seen by the prophet because the lid was lifted up, and this “woman” is described as רִשְׁעָה rish’ah, wickedness. The angel throws the woman into the ephah and shuts it with the lead lid to carry her away out of the land.
We read further into the prophecy,
And I lifted up my eyes and looked and saw two women, coming with the wind in their wings. And they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the ephah between earth and the heavens. Then I said to the messenger who was speaking to me, Where are they taking the ephah? And he said to me, To build a house for it in the land of Shin’ar. And it shall be established and set there on its own base. (Zec 5:9-11)
Now, two more women were brought into the scene, who carried away the ephah with the woman through the air. The two women who carried it with the wind had wings of a stork. Why are we given to know the kind of bird unless to tell us that the women had broad wings typical for storks. From this detail we are given to know, we may deduce that the purpose of the two women is to transport the woman in the container from an unspecified land to the land of Shinar, as it is natural for two women to carry a container holding it at both sides. And since the container is part of the flying roll, and the two women lifted it up on the broad wings, we also deduce that the women and the wings are part of the flying roll. The wings are filled with wind that they may be able to carry their load with greater velocity through the air on a high altitude, expressed by “between earth and the heavens”.
Now, the statement in Zechariah 5:11 should draw our attention. We are told that the reason the women picked up the container with the woman in it is to build a house for it in the land of Shinar. What is the “it” in the phrase? It is the woman who is the load in the container. The building of a house in the land of Shinar indicates that the woman is to be stationed there permanently. And where it is said “it shall be established and set there on its base”, it means that it will be built on firm foundations, since the Hebrew word מְכֻנָה mechunah means a firmly established building, i.e., a building made of stones. The land in which the woman of wickedness is carried away is the land of Shinar, where she is to permanently dwell in. This is the obscured description of the woman that was sitting in a container carried by the flying roll on broad wings. With this no less perplexing description, the prophecy of the “flying roll’ and the “woman” in a container ended for the prophet.
After having done a verse-by-verse analysis of the entire chapter, let us proceed farther in this matter and decode the prophetic message Zechariah received.
The land of Shinar is the easiest to define, and we start with it. This name “Shinar” can be identified with Bavel, “Babylon”, as its use can be seen in Genesis 10:10, Genesis 11:2, Genesis 14:1, Genesis 14:9, according to which, Shinar is the land in which Nimrod founded the first empire of the world, and this is the land in which the human race built the Tower of Bavel. However, Shinar is not to be taken only literally and geographically as an epithet applied to the land of Mesopotamia, but also figuratively as wickedness and evil, thus referring to the last empire of wickedness and evil, which will form itself into a Babylon of the last days of Ezekiel 38 and 39. Therefore, we may say that Shinar can easily be identified as the land of Iraq and Iran nowadays.
The second element in the prophecy is the obscure one: the flying roll. We should know that the shape of a roll is the shape of a cylinder, since this is the natural shape and form of a roll. However, it is important to clarify here that according to our opinion its size of twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide is given when unrolled. We will explain.
We know that there are two types of cubits used in the Scripture: the cubit of a man (Deuteronomy 3:11) is a measure of distance from the elbow to the fingertips, aka the short (anthropological) cubit, and the cubit of the Sanctuary, aka the long (architectural) cubit being a cubit and a handbreadth.
The Tabernacle and the First Temple were built according to cubits of “the former measure” (2Ch 3:3), the long cubit or the ancient measurement, which, according to Ezekiel 40:5 and Ezekiel 43:13, was a handbreadth longer than the civil cubit of the time of the exile. The long cubit is given as approximately 52.5 cm and the short cubit as about 45 cm. Hence, we learned, the size of the flying roll is given according to the cubit of the Sanctuary, that is 52.5 cm or 0.525 m.
The flying roll is 20 cubits long which equals 10.5 m. The width of the flying roll (unrolled) is 10 cubits (5.25 m), or according to the formula of circumference of circle (C = π • d), the diameter of the flying roll is 1.67 m. In other words, the flying cylinder is 10.5 m long and 1.67 m wide.
Having said all that about the “flying roll”, we are coming to the point in our study of decoding the second most intriguing element in the prophecy: the mysterious “woman” in an ephah.
This cylinder that Zechariah calls “a flying roll” (for the lack of a better word) carries a container made of lead whose load is “a woman” called “wickedness”. That wickedness we are told can consume the wicked with their houses of stones and concrete.
Now, the most important of these words is the Hebrew word for “woman” אִשָּׁה ishah. Ishah is a feminine form of אִישׁ ish, a man. The Hebrew word for fire is אֵשׁ eysh, hence we see that these two Hebrew words spell and sound similarly. So, what is the connection between “woman” and “fire”?
The Hebrew word for fire written without the vowel points is is אש. Derived from this two-letter parent root is the three-letter child root איש ish meaning “man.” To rediscover this relationship between “fire” and “man” let us consider the making of fire by man.
In ancient times, fire was made with a “bow drill” and tinder. Man pressed tinder to form a ball, then with one hand he held the handle while with the other hand he moved the bow back and forth in a sawing motion. This action caused the rod to spin back and forth on the fireboard. The friction of the two woods rubbing also created heat causing the dust to become very hot. After a short time, the smoke began to rise from the heated dust. Then the fire maker blew air to kindle the fire. Let us compare the making of fire to the Creation story, as we read both descriptions in parallel: as the Creator has made the man, and as a man makes a fire.
The Creator: And YHVH Elohim pressed the man from the dust of the ground and puffed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living soul. (present author’s literal translation of Gen 2:7)
The Fire maker: And the fire maker pressed the tinder from the dust, and he puffed into the tinder his breath and the tinder became a living fire: אש.
From the creation story we know that the woman was made from the man. From the above comparison the Creator made the man like the fire maker makes fire. Therefore, we see that the creation of fire אש eysh is like the creation of the woman אִשָּׁה ishah. The Hebrew word for “woman” is אִשָּׁה ishah and being a feminine form of אִישׁ ish, a man, is related to fire, in the same manner as man is related to fire. If we take the vowel points out of אשָּׁה, woman, and אֵשׁ, fire, we will see that they are like one and the same, as אשָּׁה ishah is a feminine form of אש eysh (letter hey as a suffix at the end of the word that makes the word feminine).
If we are correct in our supposition, we can say that in the prophecy of the flying roll “fire” is implied, and if we indeed replace “woman” with “fire” it will make much more sense than a woman sitting in a basket. For the Masoretes, the idea of a woman sitting in a basket makes no more sense than a fire in a basket. Therefore, we see that a cylinder carries a leaden container whose payload is the fire of wickedness that consumes everything. This container is carried away through the air by two more fires (women) that have widespread wings whose only purpose is to transport the wicked payload from an undisclosed land to the land of Shinar (Iraq and Iran) where it will be stationed in a firmly established concrete building.
Insight: The Masoretes are scholars who are experts on the Masorah (textual criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures including notes on features of writing and on the occurrence of certain words and on variant sources and instructions for pronunciation written between AD 600 and 900); scribes. We now turn to the text.
The Iranian threat that causes fear in the land of the living
What could all that possibly mean?
The present author could not think of anything else other than a ballistic missile (a flying roll) of some type capable of carrying a nuclear payload (wicked fire) in a leaden warhead (ephah). This missile is delivered from an unspecified country to the land of Shinar, that is Iraq and Iran, today, in order to be stored in heavily fortified concrete buildings, i.e. silos. With that being said, let us look at the specifications of the Iranian ballistic missile Shahab-1 below and see if we can find any similarities with the flying roll carrying a wicked fire in the prophecy in Zechariah 5.
The Shahab-1 is an Iranian variant of the Russian SS-1C Scud B.
Originated from: Soviet Union, North Korea
Alternative names: Scud B, R-17, SS-1C.
Warhead (leaden): High explosive, chemical, biological, nuclear
The rest is left up to the reader to figure out, but here is the hint: North Korea’s export of nuclear technology for Iran is not news any longer nowadays. It is proven that the rogue regime in North Korea (Russia can also be the suspected culprit here) not only has sold know-how of nuclear warheads to Iran, but also the technology to build Iranian ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) programs capable of reaching Israel and beyond. What North Korea gets in exchange is the so-needed oil from Iran. Whether North Korea is the unspecified land in the prophecy, is a mere speculation on the part of the present author. But the fact is that Israel was behind the destruction of the North Korean nuclear reactor (a wicked fire in a basket) in Syria, the Iranian proxy.
Whether the unspecified land is North Korea or Russia, one thing is certain: Shinar is undoubtedly Iran. And that Iran might have received ready-to-use nuclear warheads from North Korea (or Russia) or the technology to enrich uranium and make nuclear bombs should not surprise anyone. The mullahs might have taken the shortcut to acquire nuclear warheads directly from North Korea instead of developing their own. Undoubtedly, this would save them time in a brilliant move to bypass the porous “Iran nuclear deal” of Barak Hussein Obama. The continuation of this article is in the article “The Iranian Threat that Causes Fear in the Land of the Living.”
For more insight on the end-time prophecy, please, visit Prophecy Insight and Part II The Last Kingdom of the present author’s book Reckoning of Time.
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