Zechariah 5:1 - Meaning and Application

We do not read that the prophet needed to be awakened again, as he did in Zechariah 4:1. After that first awakening, he stayed alert. In fact, now he does not even need to be told to look around, because he turns and lifts up his eyes on his own. Sometimes people become more careful and watchful because of earlier weakness.

Notice first what the prophet saw. He looked up into the air and saw a flying scroll, a huge roll of parchment that had been unrolled. It was flying on the wind, moving quickly and openly through the air, like an eagle swooping down on its prey. It was like Ezekiel’s scroll, written on both sides with lamenting words, mourning, and disaster (Ezekiel 2:9-10). Just as God’s law is written down for certainty and lasting effect, so is the curse of the law. It records bitter things against the sinner. What God has written stands.

The angel, to catch the prophet’s attention and stir up his desire to understand, asks what he sees. The prophet answers that he sees a flying scroll, and by his best estimate it is twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide, about ten yards by five yards. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are like rolls, where God has written the great truths of his law and gospel. Christ is Lord over those rolls. They are large, because they contain much. They are also flying rolls, like the angel with the everlasting gospel who flew in the midst of heaven (Revelation 14:6). God’s word runs swiftly (Psalm 147:15). Anyone who wants to understand these rolls must first say plainly what he sees, and go as far as he can by careful reading. “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” If you tell that much, then you can be helped to understand what you are reading.

Now the meaning is explained in Zechariah 5:3-4. This flying scroll is a curse. It declares the righteous anger of God against sinners, especially those who dishonor God by swearing or wrong their neighbor by stealing. Let every Israelite enjoy his country’s blessings with reverence and fear. If he swears, if he steals, if he lives in any sinful way, he may still see those blessings, but he will not enjoy them. The curse has gone out against him. “If I am wicked, woe to me because of all this.”

Observe the reach of this curse. The prophet sees it flying, and it goes over the face of the whole earth, not only over the land of Israel, but over the whole world. Those who sin against the law written in their hearts will still be judged by that law, even if they do not have the written law. All people are under God’s judgment, and wherever sinners are found on the earth, God’s curse can find them too. If we could see by faith that flying scroll hanging over a guilty world like a dark cloud, keeping away God’s favor and full of thunder, lightning, and storm, we would feel our need of a Savior all the more. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. The size of the scroll shows how many curses sinners bring upon themselves. If they do not turn back, God will make their punishments terrible.

Notice also the particular sinners this curse is aimed at. The world is full of different kinds of sin, and so was the Jewish church at that time. But two kinds are named here: thieves and swearers. Thieves include everyone who takes what is not his own by fraud or force, especially anyone who steals from God by using for himself what was set apart for God’s honor. That kind of sacrilege was a serious sin among the Jews then (Malachi 3:8; Nehemiah 13:10). Someone who robs his father or mother and says, “It is no sin” (Proverbs 28:24), should know this curse is against him too, because it is against every thief. The eighth commandment does not state its penalty, but this curse gives it weight.

Swearers are the other group. Thieves break the second table of the law, while these break the first, and the curse reaches those who break either table. Anyone who swears carelessly and profanely will not go unpunished, and much less the one who swears falsely (Zechariah 5:4). By perjury, he calls down the curse on himself, and that is what will happen. God will say amen to his own false oath and turn it back on his head. He has appealed to God’s judgment to support a lie, and he will meet that very judgment.

The Lord also makes clear that this curse will surely be carried out. “I will bring it out,” says the Lord of hosts (Zechariah 5:4). The one who gives the sentence will also see that it is carried out. When God says he will bring it out, he means, first, that he gives it authority, because it is a righteous curse from a righteous God. Second, he gives it power and directs its work. Who can stop or resist a curse brought out by Almighty God?

The effect of this curse is terrible. On the sinner himself, every thief will be cut off, not merely corrected, but destroyed, cut off from the land of the living. God’s curse cuts deep and kills. He will be cut off from this side, meaning from this place, Jerusalem, and the one who swears will be cut off from this side as well. God will not protect sinners simply because they are among his people, and the holy city will not shield the unholy. Or it may mean they will be cut off from the whole earth, over which the curse flies. Either way, all will be cut off, one as well as another, because God’s judgments in action match his judgments in speech exactly.

The curse also reaches the sinner’s house. It will enter the house of the thief and the house of the one who swears. God’s curse comes with authority to break in, and bars and locks cannot keep it out. It will find the sinner where he feels safest, where he hopes for food and sleep, in his own house. It will strike not only him, but all who are with him because of him. His basket and store will be cursed, and the fruit of his body as well (Deuteronomy 28:17-18). The Lord’s curse is in the house of the wicked (Proverbs 3:33).

The curse will not just trouble a man’s house, or stand at his door. It will stay in the middle of his house and spread its harmful effect through every part of it. It will live in his tent because the tent does not truly belong to him, as Job 18:15 says. It will live where he lives and keep him company at the table and in bed, making both unhappy for him.

Once the curse gets control, it keeps control. Unless the person repents and changes his life, there is no easy way to drive it out or break its hold. In fact, it will remain until it destroys even the timber and stones of the house. Even if the wood is as hard as oak, and the stones are cut from the hardest rock, they cannot stand against God’s curse.

Earlier, the stone and timber were pictured as complaining about the owner’s robbery and oppression, groaning under the load of it (Habakkuk 2:11). Here, they are shown being freed from that bondage and ruin. While they were still strong and beautiful, they were forced, against their will, to support the sinner’s pride and false security. But when they are destroyed, their ruins will gladly stand as lasting signs of God’s justice and clear evidence of the sinner’s wrong.

Sin ruins houses and families, especially sins of injustice and breaking promises. Who really knows the power of God’s anger, or the strength of his curse? Even timber and stones have been destroyed by it. So let us live in reverence and not sin.