And he said to me, “What do you see?”: See the comments on the same words in 4.2. He refers to the same angel as in the previous vision. Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version make that clear in English by saying “The angel,” and many translators will need to do the same.

The words I answered translate the same Hebrew expression as that translated “I said” in 4.2. In reporting a conversation, the word answered is more natural in English, and translators should be aware of stylistic points of this kind.

I see a flying scroll; its length is twenty cubits, and its breadth ten cubits: This reply makes it clear that the scroll was not rolled up, but completely unrolled; otherwise, the prophet would not have known its size. The size given, twenty cubits by ten cubits, is much larger than any normal scroll would be. These measurements are in fact the same as those of the entrance hall of Solomon’s Temple (1 Kgs 6.3), though it does not seem possible to draw any conclusion from the similarity. Good News Translation translates the measurements into modern units. The cubit was about seventeen and a half inches, so in the American editions of Good News Translation, the size is given as “thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide” (compare Moffatt, New International Version, New Living Translation, Contemporary English Version). In the British and Australian editions, which use metric measurements, the size is given as “nine metres long and four and a half metres wide.” Since the size in cubits is in round figures, some think this is calculated too precisely. Translators who use metric measurements may also consider following the example of Bible en français courant, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch and Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente and give the size in round figures as ten meters long and five meters wide.

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. & Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Zechariah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2002. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .