The Curse Goes out Over the Land
Two visions of guilt being dealt with: a flying scroll going out as a curse on thieves and false swearers, and a woman named Wickedness shut in a basket under a lead lid and carried off to Shinar. Our Father does not tolerate evil — he removes it.
5 1Again I lifted my eyes and looked, and there before me was a flying scroll. 2He asked, "What do you see?" I answered, "I see a flying scroll, thirty feet long, fifteen feet wide."
3Then he said to me, "This is the curse going out over the whole land. Everyone who steals will be purged away, by one side of it; everyone who swears falsely, purged away by the other."
4"I have sent it out, declares the Father of heaven's armies; it will enter the thief's house and the house of whoever swears falsely by my name, stay there, and consume it—both timbers and stones."
Wickedness Carried to Its Place
5Then the angel talking with me came forward and said, "Now look up and see what this is going out."
6I asked, "What is it?" He said, "The basket going out." Then, "This is their guilt across the whole land."
7Suddenly, the lead cover was lifted, and there was a woman sitting inside the basket. 8He said, "This is Wickedness." He pushed her back into the basket and forced the lead weight over its mouth.
9I looked up and saw two women coming, wind in their wings—wings like a stork's—and they lifted the basket between earth and sky. 10Then I said to the angel who was speaking with me, "Where are they taking the basket?"
11He said to me, "To build a house for it in the land of Shinar; and when it's ready, the basket will be set there on its base." a a v11 Shinar is the ancient name for Babylonia — the land of Israel's great exile.
