Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 5:1

"Then again I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, a flying roll." — Zechariah 5:1 (ASV)

Until now, all had been bright: it was full of the abundance of God's gifts and of God’s favor to His people. This brightness also included the removal of their enemies; the restoration, 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 would be complete forgiveness, culminating in the abiding illumination 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 addresses this . Ribera also observes: “Prophecies partly pertain 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, 13; Jeremiah 18:14), having again sunk down in meditation on what he had seen, and behold a roll flying; just 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 its flying implies; but its “flight signified the very swift coming of punishment; its flying from heaven that the sentence came from the judgment-seat above” (Ribera).