What Is the Woman in the Basket in Zechariah 5?

Term: Ephah: a dry measure of about 22 liters, roughly six gallons, used for grain. Zechariah 5 calls the basket an ephah.

Term: Shinar: an ancient name for the region of Babylonia, where the Tower of Babel was built (Genesis 11:2).

Term: Night visions: the eight visions Zechariah received in one night, recorded in Zechariah 1:7 to 6:8.

What Is the Woman in the Basket in Zechariah 5?

In Zechariah 5:5 to 11, the prophet sees a measuring basket, an ephah, with a lead cover. When the cover is lifted, a woman sits inside, and the angel says her name is Wickedness. He pushes her back in and shuts the lid. Two women with wings like a stork lift the basket between earth and heaven and carry it to Shinar, or Babylon, where a house will be built for it. Most readers take the vision as a symbol. Some Christian writers, including me, see a possible link to UFO reports.

What the passage says

Zechariah prophesied around 520 BC, after the Jewish exiles returned from Babylon. The ephah vision is the seventh of eight night visions. The angel says the basket stands for the people’s sin throughout the land. A talent of lead, which weighs roughly 75 pounds, covers the opening. The woman inside is Wickedness. Two women appear, and the wind is in their wings. They carry the ephah to the land of Shinar, and the angel says a house will be built there and the basket set on its base.

How most readers take it

Many commentators read the vision as a picture of sin being removed from the land and sent back to Babylon. Babylon stands in the Bible for human pride and rebellion, beginning with Babel. On this reading, the basket, the woman, and the wings are symbols, and the passage concerns purity for the restored community. An angel explains the vision inside the text, which suggests that Zechariah is describing a symbol and not a physical object.

The UFO reading

Some Christian writers point to details that sound like a description of a craft. The basket has a heavy metal cover. A being is sealed inside. Flying figures lift it into the sky and take it to Babylon, a city tied to ziggurats, rulers who claimed divine descent, and the Tower of Babel. Zechariah, the argument goes, may have described an unfamiliar object with the only words he had. I have made that argument in my book Disclosure: They Are Not Extraterrestrials, and I present it as my reading.

The problems with it

The text never mentions lights, craft, or anything hovering. The ephah was a common household measure, not a strange object. The angel explains the vision as a symbol, and Zechariah’s other visions use symbols too, such as a flying scroll, a lampstand, and four chariots. Christians hold several views on what the passage means, and few of them see a craft. A reading that links the passage to UFOs cannot be proven from the text.

What is solid and what is not

The passage is clear about the basket, the woman named Wickedness, the two winged women, and the destination in Shinar. The meaning is disputed. I offer the UFO reading as a possibility for readers to consider, and I do not claim that the text requires it. Disclosure is available on Amazon. You can find more of my work at ckqbooks.com.

Sources

Zechariah 5:5 to 11 (King James Version). Genesis 10:10 and 11:2. C. K. Quarterman, Disclosure: They Are Not Extraterrestrials, section on the vision of a woman in a basket.