The Vision of the Woman in a Basket
The angel summons Zechariah to look at what is coming, and the prophet sees a basket whose significance is then disclosed. Inside sits a woman whom the angel names as Wickedness, and she is pushed back down beneath a lead cover. The paragraph dramatizes the exposure and forced confinement of evil rather than its denial or domestication.
T5hen the angel who was speaking with me came forward and told me, “Now lift up your eyes and see what is approaching.” 6“What is it?” I asked. 7And behold, the cover of lead was raised, and there was a woman sitting inside the basket. 8“This is Wickedness,” he said. And he shoved her down into the basket, pushing down the lead cover over its opening.
Zechariah then sees two women with powerful wings carrying the basket away through the air. When he asks where they are taking it, the angel replies that a house will be built for it in the land of Shinar, where it will be set on its pedestal. The paragraph completes the vision by showing wickedness removed from the covenant land and relocated elsewhere.
9Then I lifted up my eyes and saw two women approaching, with the wind in their wings. Their wings were 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 with me. 11“To build a house for it in the land of Shinar, ” he told me. “And when it is ready, the basket will be set there on its pedestal.”