| Geneva Study Bible And I said, What is it? And he said, This is an {e} ephah that goeth forth. He said moreover, This is their {f} resemblance through all the earth. (e) Which was a measure in dry things, containing about five gallons. (f) That is, all the wickedness of the ungodly is in God's sight, which he keeps in a measure, and can shut it or open it at his pleasure. Wesley's Notes 5:6 He - The angel. An ephah - A measure which held about three bushels. Goeth forth - Out of the temple. Their resemblance - This is an emblem of this people everywhere. Thus there is limited time and measure for them, while they sin, and are filling the ephah with their sins, they will find that the ephah of wrath is filled up also, to be poured out upon them. Scofield Reference Notes [1] What is it In the vision of the ephah local and prophetic elements are to be distinguished. The elements are: an ephah or measure; a woman in the ephah; a sealing weight upon the mouth of the ephah confining the woman, and the stork-winged women whose only function is to bear the ephah and woman away into Babylonia (Shinar). The thing thus symbolized was "through all the land" (v.6). Symbolically, a "measure" (or "cup") stands for something which has come to the full, Song that God must judge it 2Sam 8:2 Jer 51:13 Hab 3:6,7 Mt 7:2 23:32. A woman, in the bad ethical sense, is always a symbol of that which, religiously, is out of its place. The "woman" in Mt 13:33 is dealing with doctrine, a sphere forbidden to her 1Tim 2:12. In Thyatira a woman is suffered to teach Rev 2:20. The Babylon phase of the apostate church is symbolized by an unchaste woman, sodden with the greed and luxury of commercialism. Rev 17:1-6 18:3,11-20. The local application of Zechariah's ninth vision is, therefore, evident. The Jews then in the land had been in captivity in Babylon. Outwardly they had put away idolatry, but they had learned in Babylon that insatiate greed of gain Neh 5:1-9 Mal 3:8 that intense commercial spirit which had been foreign to Israel as a pastoral people, but which was thenceforward to characterize them through the ages. These things were out of place in God's people and land. Symbolically He judged them as belonging to Babylon and sent them there to build a temple--they could have no part in His. The "woman" was to be "set there upon her own base" (Zech 5:11). It was Jehovah's moral judgment upon Babylonism in His own land and people. Prophetically, the application to the Babylon of the Revelation is obvious. The professing Gentile church at that time condoning every iniquity of the rich, doctrinally a mere "confusion," as the name indicates, and corrupted to the core by commercialism, wealth, and luxury, falls under the judgment of God (Rev. 18.). Margin earth Lit. land, i.e. Palestine. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary 6. This is their resemblance-literally, "eye" (compare Eze 1:4, 5, 16). Hengstenberg translates, "Their (the people's) eye" was all directed to evil. But English Version is better. "This is the appearance (that is, an image) of the Jews in all the land" (not as English Version, "in all the earth"), that is, of the wicked Jews. This-Here used of what was within the ephah, not the ephah itself. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 5:5-11 In this vision the prophet sees an ephah, something in the shape of a corn measure. This betokened the Jewish nation. They are filling the measure of their iniquity; and when it is full, they shall be delivered into the hands of those to whom God sold them for their sins. The woman sitting in the midst of the ephah represents the sinful church and nation of the Jews, in their latter and corrupt age. Guilt is upon the sinner as a weight of lead, to sink him to the lowest hell. This seems to mean the condemnation of the Jews, after they filled the measure of their iniquities by crucifying Christ and rejecting his gospel. Zechariah sees the ephah, with the woman thus pressed in it, carried away to some far country. This intimates that the Jews should be hurried out of their own land, and forced to dwell in far countries, as they had been in Babylon. There the ephah shall be firmly placed, and their sufferings shall continue far longer than in their late captivity. Blindness is happened unto Israel, and they are settled upon their own unbelief. Let sinners fear to treasure up wrath against the day of wrath; for the more they multiply crimes, the faster the measure fills. | 
