Zephaniah 1

(1 : 14-18). Elmslie.—For the general scope of this chapter the reader is referred to 2 K. 23 : 26, 27.

3. The stumbling-blocks are the idol gods which have proved such a stumbling-block of ruin to the people. This shows that the reformation under Josiah entirely failed to save the land from its sins, and hence from its deserved doom

4. God would utterly finish the destruction of Baal, including the idols, their priests, and their worshippers, and would exterminate the very “name of the Chemarims,” a word always applied by the Jews to the priests of idols. The history (2 K. 23 : 5) states that Josiah put down the Chemarims, “whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places,” etc. ; but ultimately the Lord, by the long captivity in Babylon, made much more thorough work in rooting them out from among His people and burying their very name in oblivion. H. C.

5,6. From the priests the prophet passes to the people ; and the very form of his language, which cannot be preserved in a translation, indicates that he divided them into three classes : open idolaters ; those who professed to worship God and really served idols ; such as in other ways had cast off the fear of God. B. C.

7. Silence in the spirit of profound reverence and solemn awe is enjoined, “because the day of the Lord is near,” a day of judgment on the people. “The Lord hath prepared a sacrifice”—here in the sense of a great slaughter, as in Isa. 34 : 6 : “The Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumen.”

9. The parallel clause—“who fill their masters’ houses with violence and deceit”—i.e., with goods, property, obtained by violence and deceit, shows that robbers are thought of. Hence the probable sense of leaping upon the threshold is, invading the sanctity of other men’s houses ; violently leaping upon and over their thresholds, to enter their houses for robbery and spoil. H. C.

12,13. The enemy that has entered by the northern gate and made his way to the southern side will not only overthrow all who stand in his way, and the traders in the Mortar, he will enter the houses of the rich who live at ease, and will ransack them. He will search every nook and corner as with candles. (Cf. Luke 15 : 8.) The moral condition of these Jewish epicureans that called for this severe punishment is expressed by the prophet in a forcible figure, they are settled on their lees, more literally in the margin, curded or thickened. The language is very like that of Jeremiah respecting Moab, he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel (48 : 11), but it is stronger. The wine had not only remained undisturbed, acquiring strength and flavor, it had become thick. This expresses the apathy, the spiritual insensibility of the rich. They, like Dives in the parable, are not charged with any gross sins, but they had become blind to all tokens of God’s moral government. Therefore the possessions in which they put their trust would be torn from them. Nothing short of this would rouse them. It seems to be implied that they would go on building and planting to the last. (Cf. Amos 5 : 11 ; Luke 17 : 26-30.) They would bring on themselves the very curse foretold by Moses, De. 28 : 30, 39, as the contrary blessings are promised in Isa. 65 : 22. B. C.

12. He condenses into one expressive figure the characteristic and prevailing tone of its inhabitants. They were “drawn together on their lees” (verse 12), or, to express the figure fully, they were like wine that is settled on its lees, taking harsh and foul flavors from its dregs. That is to say, they were cradling themselves on their lusts, resting on what was vilest in them, on the sediment and refuse of their nature ; their whole character was being impregnated with the harsh fumes of their baser passions ; they were taking their tone from that in them which was lowest and worst. Fixed in their devotion to the flesh and the world, they were saying in their hearts, “Jehovah doeth neither good nor evil.” They were not at the pains to deny His existence. They had not reasoned themselves into atheism. They were not so utterly foolish as to say, even in their hearts, “There is no God.” But though they did not deny God, they forgot Him. They had no vital faith in Him or in His administration of human affairs. For them He sat in heaven, heedless what men did, suffering the world to take its own course, not penetrating and guiding that course with the pure counsels of His eternal will, neither causing all things to work together for the good of them that served Him, nor executing His idle threats against the rebellious and ungodly. Why, then, should they fear Him ? What profit should they have if they served Him ? Why not give the reins to their lusts, and carry themselves as though there were no God ? In short, they had sunk into that practical but unreasoned atheism so common in large cities, when their inhabitants have long been corrupted with luxury and vice. It is this practical atheism, the atheism of the market-place and the stews, which the prophet sets himself to rebuke. Because they have eyes and yet cannot see God in the ordinary and benignant course of His providence, He will come out of His place to judge and to condemn them. Because, when their days go lightly and smoothly they forget Him who “sets their days upon the score,” He will send them a day of terrors on which their very heart and flesh will cry out for God. He will come to them. He will go through the city making diligent search, trying house by house, man by man. As the vintner goes through his cellars, torch in hand; or as the head of the household, taper in hand, searches every nook and corner of his house before Passover, lest any morsel of leaven should be hidden in it; so Jehovah will “search Jerusalem with candles,” hunting the evil out of every dark nook in which they have concealed themselves, suffering none to escape. No strength will be able to resist Him, no bribe to avert the due reward of their deeds. He will bring evil upon them that they may learn how good He is, how imperatively He demands truth and goodness in men. In their prosperity they have forgotten Him and wronged their own souls; by the stripes of adversity He will bring them to a better mind and turn their heart back again unto Himself.

14-18. As Zephaniah contemplates the scene, as he beholds temple and city and palace fall, and the unhappy thousands who have escaped the sword carried away captive into a strange land, he breaks into that sublime song, that solemn dies ira with which the chapter closes:

“The great day of Jehovah is near, Near, and hastening greatly. Hark! the day of Jehovah! Bitterly shrieketh the mighty man. A day of fury is this day, A day of anguish and distress, A day of desolation and ruin, A day of darkness and gloom, A day of clouds and of cloudy night, A day of the trumpet and the trumpet-blast Against the fortified cities, And against the lofty battlements, And I will bring men into straits, And they shall walk like the blind, Because they have sinned against Jehovah; And their blood shall be poured out like dust, And their flesh like dung. Even their silver, even their gold, Shall not be able to rescue them In the day of Jehovah’s fury; But in the fire of His wrath Shall the whole earth be consumed: For He will make an end, yea, a sudden end, Of all the inhabitants of the earth.”

There are no grander verses, none more sombre and tragic, none in which terror is more picturesque, in the literature of the world. They are to be felt rather than critically analyzed and explained. In order to impress on us the terrors of that great day of the Lord, the prophet exhausts the copious Hebrew vocabulary of its terms for gloom and horror. That day is the day of the overflowing irresistible wrath of God; the day on which men sink into an anguish and distress beyond expression, beyond relief; the day on which the whole earth is wasted with havoc and broken into ruin; the day of a darkness so profound that day itself is changed into its very opposite and becomes a night, and a night wrapped in clouds through which no star can shoot a ray of hope; and out of the thick darkness, stabbing all hearts with an agony of fear, the war-trumpets peal louder and louder, till, in their misery and terror, men “walk like the blind,” brooding in a sullen despair over their sins, desperate of escape.

Because the Hebrew prophets were so strong in the conviction of the beneficent uses of “judgments,” they could dwell on them as they did. Nothing, for example, is more strange and painful to many minds than the way in which Zephaniah lingers over the details of “the day of judgment.” He elaborates his description of it, adding touch to touch, piling epithet on epithet, as though he were reluctant to leave it, as though he took a stern and almost malignant pleasure in contemplating it. Until we understand that Zephaniah believes judgment to be mercy, that he is depicting terrors through which men must pass in order that they may be cleansed by them, and that as they pass through them they may find the mercy in them, we can have no sympathy with him, we can only be repelled by the stern exultation with which he hails the great and terrible day of the Lord.

Nor do I see how we can face the facts of human life, and hold fast our faith in God, until we share Zephaniah’s conviction that God judges and afflicts men in order that He may cleanse and restore their souls. Has not every nation in its turn passed through these days of anguish and distress, of ruin and desolation? Why, then, should we carp at Zephaniah’s words, when facts equally loaded with terror and gloom are the common staple of the human story? We ought rather to be thankful for his words; we should rejoice, that even on a day so dark he could see a great light of hope, and teach us to see it. Let us learn of him the

mercy of judgment; let us hold fast to the conviction that even the judgments which are most penetrating and of the widest sweep are only as a surgeon’s probe, which carries a healing balm to the very seat of disease, that they simply sheathe and convey the “saving health” of the Divine compassion and love. Cox.