Zechariah’s sixth vision opens with a flying scroll. In my imagination, the scroll is like one of those aerial advertisement banners that fly over busy beaches encouraging people to “Eat at Joe’s.” Obviously, this sky banner is a religious scroll and there is no attached airplane.
An anonymous speaker in the vision asks Zechariah to identify what he sees. The speaker is likely the angelic messenger but the text leaves it vague. Zechariah gives him the dimensions of the flying scroll: twenty cubits by ten cubits (5:2).
A cubit was the standard biblical unit of measurement in Bible times, equal to about eighteen inches, the distance from the elbow to the fingertips. In our terms of measurement, the unfurled scroll was thirty by fifteen feet.
Somehow Zechariah was able to estimate the dimensions of a scroll even though the scroll was in flight. Possibly, the dimensions are a subtle way of connecting the scroll to Solomon’s Temple. The porch or portico of Solomon’s Temple had the same dimensions as the flying scroll (1 Kings 6:3), and so did the cherubim with their wings outstretched across the Ark of the Covenant (1 Kings 6:23-26). The exact dimensions of the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle are hard to discern from Exodus (26:5-18), but some scholars believe the Holy of Holies was also twenty by ten cubits. If the vision is intentionally correlating the scroll with the Temple, the deeper meaning is that God’s holy word is to be upheld, just like his holy place.
