BibleTools.info

This is an ephah that goeth forth - This, among the Jews, was the ordinary measure of grain. The woman in the ephah is supposed to represent Judea, which shall be visited for its sins; the talent of lead on the ephah, within which the woman was enclosed, the wrath of God, bending down this culprit nation, in the measure of its sins; for the angel said, "This is wickedness;" that is, the woman represents the mass of iniquity of this nation.

This is the ephah that goeth forth - Theodoret: “We too are taught by this, that the Lord of all administers all things in weight and measure. So, foretelling to Abraham that his seed should be a sojourner and the cause thereof, He says, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” Genesis 15:16, that is, they have not yet committed sins enough to merit entire destruction, wherefore I cannot yet endure to give them over to the slaughter, but will wait for the measure of their iniquity.” The relation then of this vision to the seventh is, that the seventh tells of God‘s punishment on individual sinners; this, on the whole people, when the iniquity of the whole is full.

This is their resemblance, as we say, their look, that is, the look, appearance, of the inhabitants “in all the land.” This then being the condition of the people of the land, at the time to which the vision relates, the symbolical carrying away of the full measure of sin cannot be its forgiveness, since there was no repentance, but the taking away of the sin with the sinner. Cyril: “The Lord of all is good and loving to mankind; for He is patient toward sinners and endures transgressors, waiting for the repentance of each; but if one perseveres long in iniquity, and come to the term of the endurance allowed, it remains that he should be subjected to punishment, and there is no account of this long forebarance, nor can he be exempt from judgment proportioned to what he has done. So then Christ says to the Jewish people, rushing with unbridled phrensy to all strange excess, “Fill ye up the measure of your fathers” Matthew 23:32. The measure then, which was seen, pointed to the filling up of the measure of the transgression of the people against Himself.” Jerome: “The angel bids him behold the sins of the people Israel, heaped together in a perfect measure, and the transgression of all fulfilled - that the sins, which escaped notice, one by one, might, when collected together, be laid open to the eyes of all, and Israel might go forth from its place, and it might be shown to all what she was in her own land.” Ribera: “I think the Lord alluded to the words of the prophet, as though He would say, “Fill up the measure of sins” which your fathers began of old, as it is in Zechariah, that is, ye will soon fill it; for ye so haste to do evil, that ye will soon fill it to the utmost.”

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.