Chapter 5

1I looked up again, and I saw a flying scroll. 2“What do you see?” he asked. And I replied, “A flying scroll, twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.” 3“That,” he explained to me, “is the curse which goes out over the whole land. aFor everyone who has stolen, as is forbidden on one side [of the scroll], has gone unpunished; and everyone who has sworn [falsely], as is forbidden on the other side of it, has gone unpunished. 4[But] I have sent it forth—declares the LORD of Hosts—and [the curse] shall enter the house of the thief and the house of the one who swears falsely by My name, and it shall lodge inside their houses and shall consume them to the last timber and stone.” 5Then the angel who talked with me came forward and said, “Now look up and note this other object that is approaching.” 6I asked, “What is it?” And he said, “This tubb that is approaching—this,” said he, “is their eyec in all the land.” 7And behold, a disk of lead was lifted, revealing a woman seated inside the tub. 8“That,” he said, “is Wickedness”; and, thrusting her down into the tub, he pressed the leaden weight into its mouth.

9I looked up again and saw two women come soaring with the wind in their wings—they had wings like those of a stork—and carry off the tub between earth and sky. 10“Where are they taking the tub?” I asked the angel who talked with me. 11And he answered, “To build a shrine for it in the land of Shinar;d [a stand] shall be erected for it, and it shall be set down there upon the stand.”