Habakkuk 3

This is the “vision which the prophet Habakkuk did see” from his watch-tower; this was what God said within him in answer to his complaint of the inequalities of Divine providence; and thus he was led from the darkness of doubt to the light and life of faith. Cox.

3:1 A PRAYER of Habakkuk the prophet, to Shigionoth.

2. O LORD, I have heard the report of thee, and am afraid:

O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years,

In the midst of the years make it known; In wrath remember mercy.

3. God came from Teman,

And the Holy One from mount Paran.

[Selah

His glory covered the heavens,

And the earth was full of his praise.

4. And his brightness was as the light;

He had rays coming forth from his hand:

And there was the hiding of his power.

5. Before him went the pestilence,

And fiery bolts went forth at his feet.

6. He stood, and measured the earth;

He beheld, and drove asunder the nations:

And the eternal mountains were scattered,

The everlasting hills did bow;

His goings were as of old.

7. I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction:

The curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.

8. Was the LORD displeased against the rivers?

Was thine anger against the rivers,

Or thy wrath against the sea,

That thou didst ride upon thine horses,

Upon thy chariots of salvation?

9. Thy bow was made quite bare;

The oaths to the tribes were a sure word.

[Selah

Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers.

10. The mountains saw thee, and were afraid;

The tempest of waters passed by:

The deep uttered his voice,

And lifted up his hands on high.

11. The sun and moon stood still in their habitation;

At the light of thine arrows as they went, At the shining of thy glittering spear.

12. Thou didst march through the land in indignation,

Thou didst thresh the nations in anger.

13. Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people,

For the salvation of thine anointed;

Thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked,

Laying bare the foundation even unto the neck. [Selah

14. Thou didst pierce with his own staves the head of his warriors:

They came as a whirlwind to scatter me:

Their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly.

15. Thou didst tread the sea with thine horses, The heap of mighty waters.

16. I heard, and my belly trembled,

My lips quivered at the voice;

Rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in my place:

That I should rest in the day of trouble,

When it cometh up against the people which invadeth him in troops.

17. For though the fig tree shall not blossom,

Neither shall fruit be in the vines;

The labour of the olive shall fail,

And the fields shall yield no meat;

The flock shall be cut off from the fold,

And there shall be no herd in the stalls:

18. Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,

I will joy in the God of my salvation.

19. Jehovah, the Lord, is my strength,

And he maketh my feet like hinds’ feet,

And will make me to walk upon mine high places.

For the Chief Musician, on my stringed instruments.

Chap. 3. This chapter, said in the preface to be a “prayer,” is not exclusively or even chiefly prayer in its strict sense; though it begins with prayer and closes with most wonderful utterances of simple faith and exulting joy in God. The chapter is chiefly song, embodying as the immediate answer to his prayer what is technically called a “theophany"—i.e., a manifestation of God to His prophet—to his mental, not bodily eye, we must suppose; bringing up before him in vivid review the glorious things God had wrought for His people in ancient days. The special aim was to reveal God as seen in His glorious power, and in His loving faithfulness to His chosen people, so that the prophet should see that Jehovah is verily great and glorious, and especially worthy to be trusted as the enduring protector of His own people. It was under the influence of this sublimely grand manifestation of Jehovah, that the prophet makes at the close such an utterance of his simple faith and of his unbounded joy and triumph in the God of his salvation. The publication of this song, in connection with the revelation of such calamities, was designed to inspire the same faith and joy in the believing portion of the people as it had done in the prophet’s own soul. H. C.

The “prayer” or “ode” of Habakkuk is the human echo to the Divine voice which, through the two previous chapters, we have heard denouncing judgment. That voice had pronounced a doom to be executed, first on Judah by the fierce and cruel Chaldean for the iniquity of the land, and then on the Chaldean himself, for his cruelty, and because he defiled his own power, making his sword his god. To this voice the prophet has listened with deep and growing agitation. And now he prays both that, if the doom must come, it may come speedily and not tarry; and that mercy may come as well as wrath (verse 2). That his prayer may have the strength and fervor of hope, he recalls the most signal manifestations of the Divine glory made to Israel in past ages, comforting himself with the thought that, whenever God has appeared to “stamp down nations,” it has been that He might save those who trusted in Him, “and rescue His anointed” (verses 3-15). This magnificent “theophany” occupies the place of honor in the ode, which indeed is mainly taken up with it. All that the poet has to add is a description of the emotions with which it has inspired him. He still trembles as he “awaits the day of tribulation;” but his faith has been so invigorated by his review of the merciful and glorious “end”

of past judgments, that, even as he trembles, he rejoices in God as his salvation and his strength (verses 16-19). This, in general, is the course and sequence of thought in the ode of Habakkuk. Cox.

1. A prayer of Habakkuk.** Prayer is taken in its widest sense, beginning with devout supplication, and including grateful commemoration of past, and announcement of future mercies. B. C.

According to Habakkuk and David, prayer is not the mere utterance of desire in the simplest forms of speech; nor is it always even a direct address to the Almighty. It includes much more. It is often and mainly a devout meditation on God, on His works and providence and on our relations to Him; it is a meditation on spiritual facts and verities, conducted under a reverent and stimulating sense of the Divine presence. It is thinking with God in all our thoughts. Cox.

“Upon Shigionoth,” refers to the music in which this song was to be sung—no doubt lofty, bold, triumphal, in keeping with the strain of the sentiment. H. C.

2-15. First comes the earnest prayer (verse 2), uttered in terror, but in faith, that the work of God may be revived in the interval between the announcement and final execution of judgment, a prayer accompanied with the assurance that when judgment is executed, it will be tempered with mercy. Then verses 3-15 give the answer to the prayer, and confirm the assurance. In prophetic vision (verses 3-15) the past work of God is revived, reproduced in living action. As of old God manifested Himself, so will He go forth again with even more terrific and stupendous display of majesty and glory; the immediate effect being the infliction of retributive judgment upon the heathen, but the final and true object being the salvation of His people.

“Thou dost tread the earth in fury, In wrath Thou dost thresh heathens; Thou wentest forth for the salvation of Thy people, For salvation with Thine anointed.” (Verses 12, 13.)

This portion concludes with special details showing the character and the cause of the judgment which would at a future time be executed upon the Chaldeans.

2. Revive Thy work.** A good and true rendering; the work of the Lord endures, goes on without ceasing, at all times, but it comes forth, so to speak, in living act at certain great crises; it is then manifested and vividly apprehended. Here the prophet prays that the old work of deliverance, repeated at each great critical epoch in the history of Israel, may be distinctly present, as a living reality, to the minds of the people. B. C.

What this Divine work is he puts beyond doubt in the verses that follow, in which he recalls the most splendid manifestations of the glory of God that had been vouchsafed to his fathers in past generations. At the giving of the Law on Sinai, through the perils of the Exodus, under the rule of the Judges, there had been “theophanies,” which, however grand and terrible in form, were nevertheless full of grace; robed in light and majesty, God had appeared to give a law unto Israel and to save them out of the hand of all their enemies. This is the work (Ps. 90 : 16) which Habakkuk entreats God to call to life again, to renew, to supplement, and to complete. Let Him appear in the midst of the years, between the threatening and the infliction of doom, as of old He appeared to the fathers, to republish His law, to deliver His people from their foes; to make Himself known to the faithless sons of faithless sires, in the glory of His goodness and compassion, that, when the doom falls, they may take refuge in Him. The heavens are now dark with menace; they will hereafter be yet darker with judgment; but, in the middle space, let there be some little light, that men’s hearts may not wholly fail them for fear.

But he is not content with urging and reurging the same prayer in the same or similar words. “In wrath remember mercy” is, in effect, the same prayer in other words. For the “work” which he implores God to revive is that manifestation of mercy and longsuffering patience by which all past revelations of His wrath have been attempered. There is “wrath” now in the threatening; there will be “wrath” hereafter in the infliction of judgment: meantime, let there be such a disclosure of Divine “mercy” that as men “await the day of tribulation,” and “when he that shall attack them cometh up,” if “trembling seize their breast,” they may yet be “joyful in the God of their salvation,” though “the cornfields bear no food,” and “the fold be empty of the flock, and there be no ox in the stall.”

This is the “prayer of Habakkuk the prophet,” a prayer which the ode simply unfolds in the most sublime and various forms. The whole chapter is but a development of this thought, a grand fugue of which this is the theme. And the prayer conclusively proves that Habakkuk had seized on these intimations of the merciful end of Divine judgment, which we are so apt to overlook, in the revelations with which he had already been inspired. It was because he had learned that judgment was “determined for correction,” not for destruction (1 : 12), that, in echoing back the Divine voice, he could ask for mercy. He had been taught that Jehovah sitteth in the heavenly temple, ruling all the affairs of men, sweeping away whatever exalted itself against Him, in order that the life of the knowledge of His glory might fill the earth as the waters cover the deep (2 : 20, 14). And therefore he could confidently entreat, “Revive Thy work in the midst of the years, O Jehovah. In wrath remember mercy,” knowing that he did but ask what God had resolved to bestow. Cox.

2. The language of this prayer, “O Lord, revive Thy work,” may be used fitly by all Christians in the way of accommodation, as a prayer for a revival of true religion in the hearts of men. Yet this passage must be interpreted according to the nature of the subject as shown in the context; and this requires us here to apply the words to God’s work of saving His people from being utterly ruined by the Chaldean invasion, then close at hand. H. C.

3. Sdah. This and verse 9 are the only passages in which the word occurs out of the Book of Psalms; its use here shows that the hymn was intended for recitation in the temple; it denotes a musical pause. B. C.

3, 4.

“God cometh from Teman, The Holy One from the mountains of Paran, His splendour covereth the heavens, And the earth is full of His glory. The brightness is like that of the sun; Rays stream forth from His hand: And there His glory is hid.”

Sinai is not mentioned in these verses, and yet this is simply a poetic conception of the giving of the Law at Sinai, as no student of the Hebrew Scriptures can doubt; for there is hardly a phrase in these verses which is not borrowed from Moses or Deborah. The song in which “Moses, the man of God, blessed the children of Israel before his death,” opens thus:

“Jehovah came from Sinai, And rose up upon them from Seir; He shone out from the mountains of Paran, And He came forth from the myriads of His angels, Flashing forth rays of fire upon them from His right hand.” (De. 33 : 2.)

The leading image in the verses both of Moses and of Habakkuk is that of a sunrise. As they conceived the scene, the glory of God rose on the children of Israel encamped under Sinai, as the sun rises in the east when the morning spreads down the mountains. Moses speaks of Jehovah as rising up, as shining forth, as flashing forth fiery rays. Habakkuk expressly says that His brightness was like that of the sun, that His splendor covered the heavens, that the earth was full of His glory, that rays streamed forth from His hand. The image is at once natural and sublime. The Israelites were camped in the wilderness before the mount. Above them towered the grim rugged peaks of Sinai. It was this mountain, on which the glory of the Lord was seen, over which the Divine Sun rose upon them. But far away, across the desert, in the distant east, two other lofty ranges lifted their crests to heaven: the one was the limestone range of Edom, of which Mount Seir was the highest peak; the other was the mountains of Paran, which formed the southern wall of Canaan. As these lofty ranges lay to the east, or, more strictly, the northeast, of Sinai, the sun, which the children of Israel saw pouring its light over the peaks and crags of Sinai, must first have “risen up on Mount Seir,” and “shone out on the mountains of Paran.” To them that would be the natural course of the sun. It would rise in the distant east, behind the ranges of Paran and Edom; having topped these ranges, it would shine full upon Sinai, and then, climbing the summit of Sinai, it would shine down, with fiery rays, on the camp of Israel. Of this figure Moses availed himself when describing the manifestation of the Divine glory. God came to them, as a sun, to give them light—came clothed with majesty as with a garment. And, to give effect to the figure, he drapes it in forms borrowed from the sunrise as it would appear to the Israelites encamped beneath the mountain.

Deborah, in her song of praise and triumph, takes up the same imagery, varying it, however, to adapt it to her purpose. She sings:

“Lord, when Thou wentest out of Seir, When Thou marched out of the field of Edom, The earth trembled, The heavens dropped, The mountains melted from, before the Lord, Even Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel.” (Judges 5: 4, 5.)

Possessed by thoughts of battle and victory, Deborah conceives of the manifestation on Sinai under the figure of a march, but the march of the sun on its course. To her it seems that, issuing from the lofty terraces of Seir, God had advanced across the desert till He reached Sinai, where He stood, revealing Himself in His glory, causing all its rugged edges to meet and flow into beauty.

Habakkuk takes up both the thought of Deborah orah and that of Moses. But, first, he simply expands that of the man of God. As he gazes on the vision, the land of Edom (of which Teman is but another name) rises before him with its double range of red sands—one and limestone hills; and over against these hills “the mountains of Paran,” separated from them only by the deep valley of the Ghor. In the southwestern desert lies the range of Sinai, and beyond it the fathers of Israel are encamped. He sees God rise and come, like a sun, over Teman and Paran, advance higher and higher till He tops the crest of Sinai, and shines down upon the camp, his splendor covering the heavens, His glory filling the earth. The one thought he adds to Moses is one of the most sublime in the ode. After dwelling on the “splendor” and “glory” of God, His “brightness,” and the “rays that stream forth from His hand,” the prophet affirms that even in all these the “glory” of God “is hid” rather than revealed. The sun shines with no borrowed light, in it is no darkness at all; and therefore it may be taken as our best symbol of the Almighty, of “the Holy One” who cannot tolerate sin. The law given on Sinai was a good law, disclosing much of God’s will, as much as men were able to bear. But God is brighter than the sun; He is more and better than the law can reveal. The heavens do declare the glory of God, but not fully; the statutes given to Israel are broad and pure, but not broad enough to contain all the thoughts of God, nor pure enough to do more than shadow forth “the Holy One.” Even in the rays that stream forth from Him, His glory is hid as well as revealed.

6,7. The prophet still has Sinai in his mind. The great tempest beneath which the primeval mountain “quaked greatly,” and “was altogether in a smoke,” finds an echo in his verse. But, like Deborah, he now conceives of the Divine advent, not as a sunrise, but as a march. Once more God is coming forth from Teman and Paran, crossing the crags of Sinai, to defend and redeem His people. As He pauses in His march, collecting His forces for the battle, all nature is convulsed; the earth quakes, the mountains crumble, the hills sink; as He looks with threatening aspect on their foes, the nations tremble; they are amazed and melt with fear. Once more Jehovah treads the ways that are His from of old. That the scene is still in the Sinaitic Desert, and that Habakkuk has the song sung by Moses on the margin of the Red Sea in his mind, is apparent from the fact that, among the nations which are to tremble, he mentions “Cushan” and “Midian.” For the Midianites occupied the territory which stretches between the mountain range of Sinai and the gulf of the Red Sea (Ælanitic Gulf); while “Cushan” is but a lengthened form of “Cush,” which lay on the other side of the range, and was the home of “the blameless Ethiopians.” What the poet intends to convey is that, in his vision, the mighty tempest which blew around the feet of Jehovah as He stood on the peaks of Sinai still raged, and carried fear to the nations on either side of the range, to the African and to the Arabian tribes. But this thought he conveys in poetic images, telling us that, under the stress of this mighty tempest, he saw the tents of Cushan under affliction, and the tent-curtains of Midian tremble. In plain prose the verse means that both the tribes that lay under the very shadow of Sinai, and those who were afar off, came, and would come, within the circle of the Divine judgments.

As in imagination Habakkuk saw the glory revealed on Sinai, and stood with Moses by the Red Sea, taking part in the song of triumph, it was but natural that he should select for special mention the dividing of the Red Sea, and of the deep rapid waters of the Jordan—the two great kindred miracles in which Jehovah appeared to and for His people, the one at the commencement, the other at the close of their pilgrimage through the desert. It is in allusion to these miracles that he breaks into the impetuous and vehement inquiry, verse 8. Of course he expects no answer to the question. Such a question is, indeed, the strongest form of affirmation. Cox.

9. Selah. The pause, denoted by Selah, marks a sentence of peculiar solemnity. It introduces a new series of images, representing the convulsions of nature at the coming of the Judge.

11. “Sun, moon stood each in his dwelling;” withdrew and hid himself in terror at the Divine presence. A magnificent figure, and, like all true poetry, true to nature—a vivid portraiture of the thick darkness of the mid-tempest. It is as though the sun, and, as the storm rages on without ceasing, the moon withdrew into the tabernacle of enshrouding cloud. Compare the imagery of the eighteenth Psalm, 7-14, specially the eleventh verse: “He made darkness His secret place; His pavilion round about Him were dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies.” B. C

“The mountains see Thee; they writhe; The rain-torrent sweepeth along:

The abyss lifteth up its voice, It flingeth its hands on high:

Sun and moon draw back into their habitations

At the light of Thine arrows shooting by,

At the lightning splendors of Thy spear.

In fury Thou dost march through the earth;

Thou dost stamp down nations in Thy wrath.

Thou goest forth to the rescue of Thy people,

To the rescue of Thine anointed.”

Storm, earthquake and battle all lend their terrors to the scene that now passes before the poet’s eye. The world trembles and splits, mighty torrents gushing out from the rents, so that “the earth is cloven with rivers,” the mountains writhe in agony as they gaze, affrighted, on the armed and incensed King of Heaven; torrents of rain lash and obscure the air; the “abyss”—i.e., the great deep of waters, is shaken into violent commotion, flinging up its billows to heaven and beating its shores with the hoarse roar of its waves. The sun does not now stand still on Gibeon, or the moon in the valley of Ajalon, as in the day of Joshua’s famous victory; they sullenly retire into their chambers, eclipsed by the still more vivid splendor of the arrows shot from the Divine bow, and of the spear which He hurls, like lightning, from his hand. In short, to the excited imagination of the poet, it seems that the fair ordered cosmos is resolved into its chaotic elements; once more “the earth is without form and void;” once more “darkness broods on the face of the deep.” Once more, too, “the Spirit of God moves on the face of the waters,” to bring order from confusion, and to fill the void with forms of beauty. For as the prophet draws his theophany to a close, he sees, and lets us see, the gracious and redeeming purpose for the accomplishment of which God has come forth from the secret places of His pavilion. He marches in fury through the earth, stamping down in His march the nations who set themselves against His people; but His aim is not vengeance so much as rescue, the rescue of the race whom He has chosen and anointed, and in whom all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. “Evil to men” is often “good for man;” often the welfare of humanity can only be secured by the removal of those who oppose themselves to it, just as in the natural world destruction is a constant condition of welfare and advance. So that when God manifests Himself for salvation, He must often manifest Himself in destruction; but His aim, His end, is ever gracious, His will is the salvation of men. On this conviction Habakkuk stays his soul as the glory of the Lord passes before him, speaks of Jehovah as rising up, as shining forth, as flashing forth fiery rays. Habakkuk expressly says that His brightness was like that of the sun, that His splendor neared the heavens, that the earth was full of His glory, that rays streamed forth from His hand. The image is at once natural and sublime. The Israelites were camped in the wilderness before the mount. Above them towered the grim rugged peaks of Sinai. It was this mountain, on which the glory of the Lord was seen, over which the Divine Sun rose upon them. But far away, across the desert, in the distant east, two other lofty ranges lifted their crests to heaven: the one was the limestone range of Edom, of which Mount Seir was the highest peak; the other was the mountains of Paran, which formed the southern wall of Canaan. As these lofty ranges lay to the east, or, more strictly, the northeast, of Sinai, the sun, which the children of Israel saw pouring its light over the peaks and crags of Sinai, must first have “risen up on Mount Seir,” and “shone out on the mountains of Paran.” To them that would be the natural course of the sun. It would rise in the distant east, behind the ranges of Paran and Edom; having topped these ranges, it would shine full upon Sinai, and then, climbing the summit of Sinai, it would shine down, with fiery rays, on the camp of Israel. Of this figure Moses availed himself when describing the manifestation of the Divine glory. God came to them, as a sun, to give them light—came clothed with majesty as with a garment. And, to give effect to the figure, he drapes it in forms borrowed from the sunrise as it would appear to the Israelites encamped beneath the mountain. Deborah, in her song of praise and triumph, takes up the same imagery, varying it, however, to adapt it to her purpose. She sings:

“Lord, when Thou wordest out of Seir,

When Thou marchaded out of the fold of Edom,

The earth troubled,

The heavens dropped,

The mountains melted from before the Lord,

Even Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel.”

would still live and never could fail or be cut off, or be any the less a faithful and glorious God for all the storms of earth, or for the invasion and desolating sweep of the most savage robber hosts. The last verse heightens the showing of His joy. Elastic and buoyant, His feet like the feet of the hind who bounds over the cliffs and never makes a mis-step on the erags of the mountain—so He moves along the high places of the earth, all undisturbed by the storms and troubles that harass the dwellers in the vales below. It seems plain that the prophet was brought to this sublime height and placid rest of faith by means of those vivid, soul-thrilling views of God presented in this chapter, in which God is seen in His great works of mercy and of power in behalf of His people. Herein lie the special instruction and the great value of this wonderful chapter. In point of literary merit, its beauty and sublimity are of the highest order, and challenge our intense admiration; but far above and better than all those beauties is the sublime moral lesson it teaches—viz., that if any “good man would fix his hand upon the skies and bid earth roll, nor feel her idle whirl,” the rational mode of reaching this sublime repose of faith is to study the great works of God’s power and mercy as found in the historic pages of His Word, and as first revealed from heaven in the ways of His providence and miracle-working power toward His people in the days of old. This study of God, deep, appreciative, prayerful, with the aid of His teaching Spirit, must be the one great condition on our part—a trustful, believing study, with a loving and appropriating faith. Such a study of God, with such help from His Spirit, give their utmost vividness and power to those great truths respecting God which we need to see and feel as realities. It is beyond measure blessed to have the soul thus filled with the practical impression of those truths! Then what was only as a dream before, becomes reality, clearly seen and deeply felt, and then it becomes natural and easy to adjust one’s heart and life to the demands of those truths. They call for implicit faith in God; impressed by such views of God, and drawn by His Spirit, we seem spontaneously to yield it. So Habakkuk found his heart full of the simplest, sweetest trust in God, and in God alone—in God, though everything else should fail.

It should have been more distinctly noted that the fig tree and the vine stand here to represent, not themselves alone, but every other earthly good. They stand for home and dear ones, for country and sanctuary, for safety of person and for dear life. Although all these should fail, yet, said the prophet, will I rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in the God of my salvation. In the same spirit, a psalmist said: “My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever” (Ps. 73: 26). H. C.

When sensible comforts are withheld or withdrawn, then to rely upon God’s promises, and go forward in duty just as if we experienced them, that is true faith, great faith, unmingled faith. And that is the faith taught by trial. Blessings will teach gratitude, but not this kind of faith. Blessings, indeed, are so apt to accustom the soul to sight, that except by the very peculiar care and discipline of God’s grace, a long uninterrupted continuance of them unfits the soul for faith; so that when the accustomed tide of blessings begins to fail, and a discipline of want or darkness intervenes, the soul begins to imagine itself deserted of God, begins to faint, forgetful of the exhortation which speaketh as unto children concerning the rebukes of God; perhaps stops short in the course of duty, just as if God’s comforts and not God were its guide, its support, its index and its impulse. But that is faith in sight, not faith in God. Faith in God must be taught, as well as rejoicing and gratitude in God’s comforts. The soul must be taught to toil on in the wilderness, without repining, water or no water, confident in God. For this purpose, to teach this habit of faith, it may be necessary for God to cut off the soul from every stay, and throw it entirely and only upon Himself and His promises. This is the faith of which the example is so beautiful in Habakkuk. This is faith in God, and not merely in God’s blessings; it is faith and joy in God, irrespective of His blessings. G. B. C.

18. Yet I will rejoice. A great word, with many an echo in the New Testament, as, “Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, Rejoice.” The two words chosen by Habakkuk imply exultation and strong emotion, the outcome of the faith which gives life and fulness of joy. Of my salvation. A word expressing most fully the ground of the prophet’s rejoicing; it refers specially to verses 8, 13; and shows also how thoroughly Habakkuk realized the promise of 2: 4. B. C.

He is yours who possesseth all things, and what can you want? He is yours who can do all things, and what should you fear? He is yours who is goodness and love itself, how then can you be miserable, or what imperfection can there be in your felicity? His faithfulness is pledged to make all things work together for your good. The most afflictive events, like the furnace or pruning hook, shall only purge away your dross, or render you more fruitful. So that you may well rejoice in the Lord. R. W.

Those who, when they were full, enjoyed God in all, when they are emptied and impoverished can enjoy all in God; and can sit down upon the ruins of creature comforts, and even then can sing to the praise and glory of God as the God of their salvation. This is the principal ground of our joy in God, that He is the God of our salvation, our eternal salvation; and if He be so, we may rejoice in Him as such in our greatest distresses, since by them our salvation cannot be hindered, but may be furthered. Joy in God is never out of season; nay, it is in a special manner seasonable when we meet with losses and crosses in the world, that it may then appear that our hearts are not set upon these things, nor our happiness bound up in them. H.

So jubilant is the heart of the man whose soul is filled and feasted with the God of his salvation, and the salvation of his God. True Christianity is a joyful thing, not indeed with foolish laughter like the crackling of thorns under a pot, but with a joy too deep to be loud, too pure to be transient. Such a man has all the sources and motives for joy which the heart can ask. Salvation unfolds into manifold gladnesses—rare and profound. There is in it forgiveness, which makes us “hear joy and gladness, that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.” There is companionship with God and Christ, and such society makes “our hearts burn within us.” There is obedience to His will, and then His statutes become the “joy of our hearts.” There is a bright hope beyond, and “in that hope of the glory of God we can rejoice.” We are independent of externals, possessing that which no change can affect and of which nothing can bereave us. So we can sing the old song: “Though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” How different the false and fleeting joys of earth, when men resort to their broken cisterns that can hold no water! The grim words of the prophet are only too true about all other springs of gladness: “They came to the pits, and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty. They were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads.” A. M.

A heart rejoicing in God delights in all His will, and is surely provided with the most firm joy in all estates; for if nothing can come to pass beside or against His will, then cannot that soul be vexed which delights in Him and hath no will but His, but follows Him at all times, in all estates, not only when He shines bright on them, but when they are clouded. That flower which follows the sun doth so even in dark and cloudy days; when it doth not shine forth, yet it follows the hidden course and motion of it. So the soul that moves after God keeps that course when He hides His face; is content, yea, even glad at His will in all estates, conditions, or events. Abp. Leighton.

1:1 THE word of the LORD which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.

2,3. I will utterly consume all things from off the face of the ground, saith the LORD. 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 face of the ground, saith the LORD. And I will stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarim with the priests; and them that worship the host of heaven upon the house-6 tops; and them that worship, which swear to the LORD and swear by Malcam; and them that are turned back from following the LORD; and those that have not sought the LORD, nor inquired after him.

7. Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD: for the day of the LORD is at hand: for 8 the LORD hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath sanctified his guests. And it shall come to pass 9 in the day of the LORD’s sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s sons, and all 9 such as are clothed with foreign apparel. And in that day I will punish all those that leap 10 over the threshold, which fill their master’s house with violence and deceit. And in that 11 day, saith the LORD, there shall be the noise of a cry from the fish gate, and an howling from 11 the second quarter, and a great crashing from the hills. Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh, 12 for all the people of Canaan are undone: all they that were laden with silver are cut off. 12 And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles; and I will 13 punish the men that are settled on their lees, that say in their heart, The LORD will not do 13 good, neither will he do evil. And their wealth shall become a spoil, and their houses a 14 desolation: yea, they shall build houses, but shall not inhabit them; and they shall plant 14 vineyards, but shall not drink the wine thereof. The great day of the LORD is near, it is near and 15 hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the LORD; the mighty man crieth there bitterly. 15 That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, 16 a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet 17 and alarm, against the fenced cities, and against the high battlements. And I will bring dis- 18 tress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the 18 LORD: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as dung. Neither their 18 silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD’s wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make an end, yea, a terrible end, of all them that dwell in the land.

Introduction.

Of this prophet, his own introduction gives us the names of his immediate ancestors through four generations, of whom, however, nothing is known to us certainly except their names. It gives also the much more important statement that this word of the Lord came to him in the days of Josiah, king of Judah. Josiah’s reign of thirty-one years fell B.C. 642-611. A careful comparison of this Book of Zephaniah with the history of Josiah’s reign, as found 2 K., chaps. 22 and 23, and yet more fully 2 Chron., chaps. 34 and 35, will throw yet more light upon the precise date of his writings and upon the much more important point of its definite aim and purpose. Let it be borne in mind that after the great reformation wrought by Hezekiah with the aid of Isaiah and other prophets during his reign of twenty-nine years, a fearful relapse followed during Manasseh’s long reign of fifty-five years; that the brief history sets forth in very strong terms the horrible influence of this wicked king, who “made Jerusalem and Judah do worse than the heathen” (2 Chron. 33:9); that his repentance occurring late in life, while it may have saved his own soul in answer to a godly father’s prayers, yet seems scarcely to have at all arrested the strong currents of national wickedness; that his son Amon, reigning two years most wickedly, and then losing his life by conspiracy among his own servants, must have left the nation yet waxing worse and worse; and then that Josiah, coming to the throne at the tender age of eight years, began to seek after the God of his fathers at the age of sixteen, commenced a vigorous reform yet four years later—i.e., at the age of twenty, which was the twelfth year of his reign, and had gone over the work with commendable thoroughness at the end of six years’ labor—i.e., in the eighteenth year of his reign. That was the era of a remarkable passover, kept with great solemnity and with hopeful results. But the roots of wickedness had gone deep into the national life. Hence this reform, as to the mass of the nation, could not have penetrated much beneath the surface. This reign of the good Josiah was the Lord’s last call of the nation to repentance. Toward this result, Zephaniah and Jeremiah lent their aid—the latter beginning to prophesy in the thirteenth year of Josiah, and the former probably about the same time. Zephaniah (1:4) predicts: “I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place,” etc., and the history states (2 Chron. 34:3, 4) that Josiah began this very work in his twelfth year, and closed it in his eighteenth. It may also be noted that Zephaniah (2:13-15) predicts the fall of Nineveh, which occurred B.C. 625—i.e., in the seventeenth year of Josiah. It was to aid King Josiah in his great work of reforming the nation and of saving it from ruin under the long-accumulating wrath of God, that Zephaniah was commissioned to reiterate the solemn declarations of Jehovah—“I will utterly consume this whole land”—especially every vestige of its idolatry, and not sparing its fearfully corrupt and wicked people. This is the one great thought throughout the first chapter. The next chapter heightens the force of this dread decree by assuring the people that the adjacent nations, sunk low in general corruption and idol worship, were also doomed to fearful devastations—the Philistines, Moab, Ammon, Ethiopia and Assyria, with her proud capital, Nineveh. In this general sweep of desolating judgments Judah could by no means hope to escape, save by earnest and thorough repentance before God. Chapter 3 sets forth yet more fully the extreme corruption of her prophets, priests and princes, but closes with merciful promises of salvation in a future day for the remnant of His people. H. C.

It was the prophet’s task to interpret the facts of his time, the omens and portents in the facts, and to impress their significance on the hearts and consciences of men. In the Scythian inroad he saw a symbol of future invasions still more destructive and fatal; in that day of darkness he descried the portents of a still greater and more terrible day of the Lord—a day of fury, a day of anguish and distress, a day of desolation and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of cloud and of cloudy night, a day of the trumpet and the trumpet blast, a true dies irae, the terrors of which should cover the whole earth and shake the hearts of all its inhabitants with fear and trembling. Neither Judah nor Jerusalem should be spared in that day. Nay, the judgment would begin at the house of God. Nor was that day distant; it was even now sweeping up like chaff driven before the wind. Nor must they hope to escape it; “not even their silver, not even their gold,” would be able to rescue them in the day of the Lord’s fury. If they were wise, they would not so much as wish to escape it; for this day of judgment was also a day of sovereign mercy. The very heathen were to be smitten by its terrors, in order that all nations, “every one from its place, might worship Him,” the only true God, and find rest in serving Him; while of the Jews, as many as humbled themselves under the mighty hand of God should “see evil no more:” Jehovah would reveal Himself in their midst as “the Mighty One who saves;” He would dwell among them and rejoice over them now in the silent ecstasy of a love which can find no words, and again in the rapture which breathes itself in cries of joy. This, in brief, is the general scope and purport of Zephaniah’s pathetic and sublime poem. Cox.

His theme appears to be judgment, but on closer inspection that is seen to be but a means to the real end and goal of the prophet’s hopes, to wit, the creation of the kingdom of God among men. The judgment is, therefore, conceived not as an outburst of Divine anger, not as mere retribution on sin, but as a purging and remedial process destined to issue in redemption. Traces of Old Testament limitation of idea there are throughout, but the prophet’s conception should win our admiration for its large-hearted comprehensiveness. As all nations are included in the judgment, so all peoples are embraced in the regeneration. If the heavenly kingdom has as its centre Zion and its kernel Israel, nevertheless its citizenship covers mankind, and its circumference is wide as the world. Preliminary fulfilments of the prophet’s predictions history speedily furnished, but the vision he saw and the truths he taught will not be exhausted till God’s government of men in its twofold aspect of judgment and of mercy be complete. Elmslie.

In “the goodly fellowship of the prophets” Zephaniah is conspicuous for the comprehensiveness of his words. He does not confine himself to the destiny of his own people. When he mentions other nations, he seems to single out from west and east, south and north (2: 4-15), such as would serve as examples of his great subject—the universal government of God as Judge of all. His far-reaching gaze takes in the judgments and mercies of God as extending over all the earth (1: 1-3; 2: 11; 3: 8, 9). He has indeed no prediction of the Messiah Himself, but he foresees the time when all nations shall unite in the worship of the true God (3: 9). Hence his short book has been well described by Bucer as “a compendium of all prophecy.” And this peculiarity agrees well with the frequent use he makes of the earlier Scriptures. In his own language, if not in a translation, his familiarity with the words of Deuteronomy and Isaiah is constantly seen. B. C.

Chap. 1. The prophet perceives the imminent end of the present age of human sin and Divine patience; final judgment is decreed, it falls with destructive force on all classes of religious offenders in Jerusalem (1: 2-7). Every form of sin in every quarter—luxury, violence, dishonesty, indifference—shall be reached, and receive inevitable retribution (1: 8-13). For near is the great day of judgment, terrible, resistless, not to be bought off, universal and final