The Scroll and the Basket
1 Then again I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a flying scroll. 2 He said to me, “What do you see?” I answered, “I see a flying scroll; its length is twenty cubits, and its width ten cubits.” 3 Then he said to me, “This is the curse that goes out over the surface of the whole land, for everyone who steals shall be cut off according to it on the one side; and everyone who swears falsely shall be cut off according to it on the other side. 4 I will cause it to go out,” says Yahweh of Armies, “and it will enter into the house of the thief, and into the house of him who swears falsely by my name; and it will remain in the middle of his house, and will destroy it with its timber and its stones.” 5 Then the angel who talked with me came forward and said to me, “Lift up now your eyes and see what this is that is appearing.” 6 I said, “What is it?” He said, “This is the ephah basket that is appearing.” He said moreover, “This is their appearance in all the land— 7 and behold, a lead cover weighing one talent was lifted up—and there was a woman sitting in the middle of the ephah basket.” 8 He said, “This is Wickedness;” and he threw her down into the middle of the ephah basket; and he threw the lead weight on its mouth. 9 Then I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, there were two women; and the wind was in their wings. Now they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the ephah basket between earth and the sky. 10 Then I said to the angel who talked with me, “Where are these carrying the ephah basket?” 11 He said to me, “To build her a house in the land of Shinar. When it is prepared, she will be set there in her own place.”
Two visions remove wrongdoing from the land in opposite ways — one hunts the guilty down, the other carries guilt itself away.
A scroll flies, and it is measured: twenty cubits by ten cubits. Those are the dimensions given for the porch of the first temple, which puts a document the size of a sanctuary entrance in the air over the country.
It is identified as the curse that goes out over the surface of the whole land, and it names two offenses: theft, and swearing falsely by God's name. One is against a neighbor and one is against God — a sample from each half of the commandments, standing in for the whole.
What the scroll does is unusual. It does not announce; it travels. It will enter into the house of the thief... and it will remain in the middle of his house, and will destroy it with its timber and its stones. A curse that takes up residence and works outward through the structure. Nothing is said about detection, because a written verdict that goes looking for its subject does not need a court.
The second vision reverses the direction. An ephah basket appears — a dry measure, the standard container of ordinary commerce — with a lead cover weighing one talent on it and a woman sitting in the middle.
She is not a person but a label: he said, This is Wickedness. And she is pushed back down and the lead weight thrown on the mouth, which is the only way the vision describes handling her. The container is a market measure and the sin is sealed inside it under a hundredweight of lead.
Then two winged women lift the basket between earth and the sky and carry it to the land of Shinar — the name used for the plain of Babel and Babylon. Wickedness is not destroyed. It is deported, and given an address: to build her a house in the land of Shinar.
So the pair works as a complement. The scroll pursues individual offenders inside the land; the basket removes the thing itself, and returns it where the exile came from.
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