Zacharias 5:2
And he said to me: What seest thou? And I said: I see a volume flying: the length thereof is twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof ten cubits.
Open Zacharias 5:2 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et dixit ad me : Quid tu vides ? Et dixi : Ego video volumen volans : longitudo ejus viginti cubitorum, et latitudo ejus decem cubitorum.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν πρὸς μέ Τί σὺ βλέπεις; καὶ εἶπα Ἐγὼ ὁρῶ δρέπανον πετόμενον μήκους πήχεων εἴκοσι καὶ πλάτους πήχεων δέκα.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֵלַ֔י מָ֥ה אַתָּ֖ה רֹאֶ֑ה וָאֹמַ֗ר אֲנִ֤י רֹאֶה֙ מְגִלָּ֣ה עָפָ֔ה אָרְכָּהּ֙ עֶשְׂרִ֣ים בָּֽאַמָּ֔ה וְרָחְבָּ֖הּ עֶ֥שֶׂר בָּאַמָּֽה
Haydock's commentary
Cubits, alluding to Judea, which was twice as long as it was broad. (Menochius)
Many explain this vision and that of the woman, (ver. 7) of the Jews, (Calmet) after St. Jerome. (Haydock)
But is seems rather to denote the Chaldeans, whose sentence had been long pronounced, and who were punished by the Persians, and by the Greeks, as by two women. If we understand the Jews, their iniquity was chastised by the Assyrians and Chaldeans. (Calmet)
Where a note speaks of the Jewish people, the Church teaches that the Passion cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom The Homilies on the Statues to the People of Antioch, Homily XIX
When the Jews, having been released from Persia, and set free from that tyranny, were returned back to their own county, “I saw,” saith one, “a flying sickle, twenty cubits in length, and ten cubits broad.” They heard also the Prophet giving them this instruction, “This is the curse, that goeth forth over the face of the whole land, and entereth into the house of him that sweareth falsely; and it shall rest in the midst thereof, and throw down the timber and all the stones.” When we had read this passage, we also enquired then why it was, that it should destroy not the swearer only, but also his house, and we stated this to be the reason; that God will have the punishments of the most grievous sins to remain continually visible; that all may afterwards learn prudence. …
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XII on Acts iv. 36, 37
If those for lying suffered such things, what shall not the perjured suffer? Because she simply affirmed, “Yea, for so much,” ye see what she suffered. Bethink you then; they that swear and forswear themselves, of what should they be worthy? It comes in opportunely to-day even from the Old Testament to show you the heinousness of perjury. “There was,” it says, “a flying sickle, ten cubits in breadth.” ( Zech. v. 2 .) The “flying” betokens the swift advent of the vengeance which pursues oaths; that it is many cubits in length and breadth, signifies the force and magnitude of the woes; that it comes flying “from heaven,” is to show that the vengeance comes from the judgment-seat on high: that it is in the form of a sickle,” denotes the inevitableness of the doom: for just as the sickle, where it comes and has hooked the neck, is not drawn back with nothing but itself, but with the head rea …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).