wickedness
Zechariah 5:8
5:8 wickedness. Although commerce (business, trade, finance, shipping, etc.) is not necessarily wicked, it can easily and quickly become such as it degenerates into covetousness and the worship of mammon. Ever since Babel, it has been the cause of most crime and most wars. Its “resemblance” is found “through all the earth” (Zechariah 5:6) and is seen here as a seductive woman attempting to escape her confinement in order to seduce the returned exiles away from their spiritual call to rebuild God’s temple and reestablish His worship in “the holy land” (Zechariah 2:12), persuading them to build instead lives of luxury for themselves (compare Haggai 1:3-11).