What Does Zechariah 5:2 Mean?
And he said to me, What do you see? And I said, I see a flying roll. Its length is twenty forearms, and its breadth ten forearms.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I answered, I see a flying roll; the length thereof is twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof ten cubits.THE KEY
The flying scroll bears the exact dimensions of the temple porch, putting the written vision at the scale of a threshold.
THE MEANING
The written words are no longer tucked away; they enter your field of sight in motion. Their measure echoes the temple porch, twenty cubits by ten, so the vision arrives at the scale of an entrance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that a written message can remain safely contained and unseen; this one is already in flight.
THE ROOT
מְגִלָּה
megillah
GROWS FROM
גלל
galal
to roll, to roll away
מְגִלָּה (megillah), meaning “scroll” or “roll,” carries the rolling action of גלל (galal). Here the rolled writing is airborne: a text that could stay wound up moves into view.
ALSO GROWS
galal: to roll; to roll away
גָּלַל
The scroll’s name preserves this physical action: writing is borne on a rolled surface.
galgal: wheel; rolling wheel
גַּלְגַּל
A wheel extends the same root into a thing that rolls onward, echoing the scroll’s movement through the vision.
THE PATTERN
A written word becomes an encounter when it is brought into view and opened.
Take a roll of a book, and write in it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah, until this day.And he spread it before me, and it was written on its face and on its back, and there were written in it laments, moaning, and woe.And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. And when he had unrolled the scroll, he found the place where it was written,THE THREAD
And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty forearms was its length, according to the breadth of the house; and ten forearms was its breadth before the house.The scroll has the same twenty-by-ten-cubit measurements as the porch before the temple. That shared measure lets the flying text occupy the scale of a threshold.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us