Zechariah 5:8

This is wickedness This woman that thou seest sitting in the ephah represents the wickedness of the whole land, gathered up, as it were, into one and personified.

the weight of lead Lit. the stone of lead; so called, either because stones were used as weights (comp. our English word "stone"), or because the leaden lid on the mouth of the ephah suggested by its size and weight the stone cover of a well. Genesis 29:2.

upon the mouth thereof Lit. upon her mouth; but rightly rendered thereof, as the reference seems plainly to be to the ephah, on which the angel firmly fixed the lid, when he had cast down the woman into it.

A different, but less satisfactory, view of the vision has been taken. According to this the woman is seen "having in her hand the leaden weight with which she was wont to traffic, and sitting crouched down in an empty bushel or ephah, as if that were her true seat and throne.… It was a special form of wickedness that was here pourtrayed, namely, unrighteousness as it manifests itself in matters of weight and measure, or, to designate it in our Lord's own words, -unfaithfulness as regards the unrighteous mammon" … But -with the same measure that ye mete withal, shall it be measured to you again." The very instrument which the woman used for her unholy work was to be the means of her confusion. The ephah in which she sat was made the chariot in which she was removed from the land; and the angel, with righteous indignation, seized the woman herself, dashed her down into the ephah as she was about to rise from her sitting posture, and taking hold of the leaden weight, flung the heavy -stone of lead" upon her mouth. Thus did the angel indicate that -wickedness" would be a subject of Divine wrath. He smote her in the mouth wherewith she had so often uttered words of lying and fraud; and did so with the very instrument with which she was wont to measure her ungodly gain. Thus was her mouth stopped (Psalms 107:42; Job 5:16), and the instrument of sin was made the instrument of her punishment." (Rev. C. H. H. Wright.) The moral of the vision, however, is not the destruction, nor even the punishment of wickedness, but its expulsion from the holy land, that it may go to its own place.