Zechariah 5:1

Behold a flying roll - This was twenty cubits long, and ten cubits broad; the prophet saw it expanded, and flying. Itself was the catalogue of the crimes of the people, and the punishment threatened by the Lord. Some think the crimes were those of the Jews; others, those of the Chaldeans. The roll is mentioned in allusion to those large rolls on which the Jews write the Pentateuch. One now lying before me is one hundred and fifty-three feet long, by twenty-one inches wide, written on fine brown Basle goat-skin; some time since brought from Jerusalem, supposed to be four hundred years old.

Hitherto all had been bright, full of the largeness of the gifts of God; of God's favor to His people ; the removal of their enemies ; the restoration and expansion and security of God's people and Church under His protection ; the acceptance of the present typical priesthood and the promise of Him, through whom there should be entire forgiveness : the abiding illumining of the Church by the Spirit of God . Yet there is a reverse side to all this, God's judgments on those who reject all His mercies. Augustine, de Civ. Del. 17:3.:Ribera: "Prophecies partly appertain to those in whose times the sacred writers prophesied, partly to the mysteries of Christ. And therefore it is the custom of the prophets, at one time to chastise vices and set forth punishments, at another to predict the mysteries of Christ and the Church."

And I turned and - Or, "Again I lifted up my eyes" Genesis 26:18; 2 Kings 1:11, 2 Kings 1:13; Jeremiah 18:14, having again sunk down in meditation on what he had seen, "and behold a roll flying;" as, to Ezekiel was shown "a hand with a roll of a book therein, and he spread it before me." Ezekiel's roll also was "written within and without, and there was written, therein lamentation and mourning and woe" Ezekiel 2:9-10. It was a wide unfolded roll, as is involved in its flying; but its "flight signified the very swift coming of punishment; its flying from heaven that the sentence came from the judgment-seat above" (Ribera).

5:1 A flying roll - A volume, or book spread out at large, flying in the air, swiftly.