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5. The Flying Scroll

¹ I looked again, and there before me was a flying scroll.

² He asked me, “What do you see?”

I answered, “I see a flying scroll, twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide. That is, about 30 feet long and 15 feet wide or about 9 meters long and 4.5 meters wide”

³ And he said to me, “This is the curse that is going out over the whole land; for according to what it says on one side, every thief will be banished, and according to what it says on the other, everyone who swears falsely will be banished. ⁴ The LORD Almighty declares, ‘I will send it out, and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of anyone who swears falsely by my name. It will remain in that house and destroy it completely, both its timbers and its stones.’”

The Woman in a Basket

⁵ Then the angel who was speaking to me came forward and said to me, “Look up and see what is appearing.”

⁶ I asked, “What is it?”

He replied, “It is a basket.” And he added, “This is the iniquity Or appearance of the people throughout the land.”

⁷ Then the cover of lead was raised, and there in the basket sat a woman! ⁸ He said, “This is wickedness,” and he pushed her back into the basket and pushed its lead cover down on it.

⁹ Then I looked up—and there before me were two women, with the wind in their wings! They had wings like those of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between heaven and earth.

¹⁰ “Where are they taking the basket?” I asked the angel who was speaking to me.

¹¹ He replied, “To the country of Babylonia Hebrew Shinar to build a house for it. When the house is ready, the basket will be set there in its place.”

He afterwards adds, that he was asked by the angel what he saw. He might indeed have said, that a roll flying in the air appeared to him, but he did not as yet understand what it meant; hence the angel performed the office of an interpreter. But he says, that the roll was twenty cubits long, and ten broad. The Rabbis think that the figure of the court of the temple is here represented, for the length of the court was twenty cubits and its breadth was ten; and hence they suppose, that the roll had come forth from the temple, that there might be fuller reason to believe that God had sent forth the roll. And this allusion, though not sufficiently grounded, is yet more probable than the allegory of the puerile Jerome, who thinks that this ought to be applied to Christ, because he began to preach the gospel in his thirtieth year. Thus he meant to apply this number to the age of Christ, when he commenced his office as a teacher. But this is extreme trifling. I do not feel anxious to know why the length or the breadth is mentioned; for it seems not to be much connected with the main subject. But if it be proper to follow a probable conjecture, what I have already referred to is more admissible — that the length and breadth of the roll are stated, that the Jews might fully understand that nothing was set before them but what God himself sanctioned, as they clearly perceived a figure of the court of the temple.