Zephaniah 1:3

I will consume man and beast,.... Wicked men for their sins, and beasts for the sins of men; and, as a punishment for them, the creatures whom they have abused to the gratifying of their lusts: I

I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling-blocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the LORD. I will consume man and beast.

The former verse denounced the future desolation in general terms. This verse specifieth what desolation in particular God would bring upon the land. I will consume man and beast; man shall be consumed for his own sin, and the beasts consumed for man’ s sake; men by the pestilence and famine, the beasts by murrain, and devoured by multitudes of hungry soldiers, that shall make greater havoc than any murrain ordinarily doth. The fowls of the heaven; either by some unknown disease among them, or else by a distaste at the stench of putrefying carcasses, they fled away, so that none, or very few, appeared, insomuch that it looked as if all were consumed. The fishes of the sea: by sea, some understand ponds, lakes, or smaller seas, such as that of Gennesareth and Tiberias, the waters whereof might be made noisome to the fish by the streams of blood and carcasses which might possibly be east into them; or God might destroy the fishes by some consuming disease too. He hath ways to do it, who hath once said he will do it. The stumbling-blocks; the idols. The wicked; the idolatrous priests, and others who worshipped them. I will cut off man, all shall disappear, from off the land of Judah.

Zephaniah 1:3 I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the LORD.Ver. 3. I will consume man and beast] Heb. I will gather them, and cast them away as they do the sweepings of the house. See the word used in this sense, Psalms 26:9, "Gather not my soul with sinners," &c. God gathered his people for a better purpose; both while they are alive, Psalms 27:10, and when they die, Isaiah 57:1. The righteous is taken away (Heb. gathered) from the evil to come: as a shepherd gathereth his sheep when a storm is coming; or as a master of a family doth his jewels, when his house is on fire. But as for the wicked, they are gathered too, but it is for slaughter, as beasts in a pound, malefactors in a prison; and at the last day the tares shall be gathered and bundled up together for hell’ s furnace, Matthew 13:41-42. I will consume the fowls of the heaven] Made for man’ s use, to be to him for food, Genesis 9:2, for health and for delight, as companions of his life; hence it is threatened as a judgment to him to lose them, Jeremiah 4:25, and here. And the fishes of the sea] Made likewise for man’ s use to feed him, Numbers 11:5; Numbers 11:22 Luke 24:42; hence the Latin piscis of pasco, to feed, and the Hebrew Berechah for a fishpool; the word signifieth a blessing, Genesis 12:2 cf. Nehemiah 2:20. Now the Lord here threateneth destruction to beasts, birds, and fishes, not by the way of hyperbole, as the Rabbis dream; but because in common calamities, in warlike tumults, and when God will destroy a people indeed, the beasts also are killed, the fowls hunted away, the fishpools wasted, &c. Let those that will not believe this look into Illyricum, Thracia, Macedonia, Greece, and various parts of Turkey, laid utterly desolate and empty both of men and other creatures. Jerome upon this text, and likewise upon Hosea 4:3, affirmeth the same of his native country, wasted so with war, ut praeter coelum et coenum, et crescentes vipres et condensa silvarum, cuncta perierint, that besides air and earth, and briers and forests, all was destroyed. And that we may not wonder at this severity of God, hear what the same Father saith elsewhere of his ungracious countrymen (Epist. ad Chremat.): In men patria deus Venter est, et in diem vivitur, et sanctior est ille qui ditior: In my country their belly is their god, their glory is in their shame, they mind earthly things: and so their end hath been destruction, and utter desolation, as Philippians 3:19.

(3) The stumblingblocks with the wicked.—i.e., the enticements to sin together with the sinners. The word macshκlβh is used in Isaiah 3:6 in the sense of “a ruin.” Here, however, such a signification would not be apposite. It is exactly the πάντατὰσκάνδαλα of Matthew 13:41, a passage wherein we may perhaps see a reminiscence of the text before us.

Verse 3. I will consume man and beast] By war, and by pestilence. Even the waters shall he infected, and the fish destroyed; the air become contaminated, and the fowls die.

3. Zephaniah 1:3 particularises the “all things” of Zephaniah 1:2, cattle and fowl and fishes of the sea, and man. Hosea 4:3, “Therefore shall the land mourn, and everyone that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven; yea the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away.” Similarly Ezekiel 38:19, “Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; so that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence”; cf. Isaiah 2:19-21. the stumblingblocks … wicked] The words are rather obscure, and seem to disturb the connexion. The term rendered “stumblingblock” occurs again Isaiah 3:6, “let this ruin (the country in anarchy) be under thy hand,” and Hitzig would understand it here in a somewhat similar sense, the houses, &c. “destined to become heaps” (Job 15:28). The somewhat similar word usually rendered “stumblingblock” is used in the sense of idol, or any object or practice of false worship (Ezekiel 14:3-4; Ezekiel 14:7), and this sense is more probable here. But the clause introduces an idea not in harmony with the rest of the verse.

The stumbling-blocks with the wicked - Not only shall the wicked be utterly brought to an end, or, in the other meaning of the word, “gathered into bundles to be taken away,” but all causes of