Zephaniah 3
ButlerGod rose up early, to send them His prophets, to reduce and reclaim them; but they were up before Him, to shut and bolt the door against them. Their wickedness was universal; all their doings were corrupted, and it was all owing to themselves, they could not lay the blame upon the tempter, but they alone must bear it; they themselves wilfully and designedly corrupted all their doings. H.
8-20. The rest of the prophecy divides naturally into four parts, of which one (verses 8-10) contains reasons for hope and patience; two (verses 11-13), a description of Israel when restored; three (verses 14-17), a song of triumph; four (verses 18-20), a renewed assurance of restoration.
8. The words can only apply to the meek of the land (2:3), the remnant that God would spare, with which the future welfare of the nation was bound up. Therefore, because God would surely execute judgment upon the guilty, let the pious wait upon Him, patiently, trustfully, for He had good things in store for them; the punishment of the nations, of which mention is made immediately, should be followed not only by their admission to the knowledge and worship of God, but by the restoration of Israel.
9. The fruit of this pure lip is the sincere worship of God. Such is the meaning of the phrase to call upon the name of the Lord. Here public worship is referred to, as is shown by what follows. To serve Him with one consent. In the Hebrew it is with one shoulder, as of men helping one another to support a heavy load. So, steadily, strenuously. B. C.
Instead of saying that men will be raised to a purer and more spiritual use of language, he represents Jehovah as saying, “I will turn to the nations a pure lip,” a cleansed and sinless lip, in order “that” in place of defiling themselves with invocations addressed to false gods, and with the foul strains sung in their honor, “they may all invoke the name of Jehovah.” Instead of saying that men will be happily united in their service of Heaven, he represents Jehovah as predicting that, when men speak with purified lips, they will “serve Him with one shoulder”—that is, they will walk with even shoulders under the yoke and burden of His law, walk in unity, in a happy consent of obedience, each bearing his full share of the load, each keeping step with the rest, and thus making the burden unburdensome to any. Now, speech is the flower, as deeds are the fruit, of the soul. Our words indicate character, as the blossom the tree. If these are pure, we are pure; if these are impure, we are impure. Hence it is that the Scriptures lay so heavy a stress on the use of the tongue. To have a pure lip is to have a pure soul. And the judgments of God come on men to make them pure—pure within, that they may be pure in all that expresses their inward nature. The terrors of the Lord reach their end only as they purge the lips of men, and constrain them to show forth His praise and “worthily magnify His holy name.” Cox.
Religion is our “reasonable service.” It involves the consent of all our powers; the mind embracing divinely discovered truth, the conscience recognizing a supreme obligation, the heart yielding to gracious heavenly influence, and the will bowing to that higher will which is “holy and just and good.” Waite.
As the denunciation of judgment melts into the call to repentance, so the call to repentance melts into the promise of good. In chap. 3:8 the prophet invites the faithful to “wait” for the day of judgment in an attitude of hope; and in verse 9 and the verses which follow it he gives them ground and reasons for hope: the day of judgment is to bring in the year of redemption; the fire, which is to destroy, is also to renew the world. Hitherto, the thought of the Divine judgment and its terrors has been uppermost in his mind; now he sees judgment issuing in mercy, mercy rejoicing over judgment. The storm is over and gone; the air is soft and clear, the bow of hope shines with tender hallowing radiance on the clouds, the earth breathes her sweetest fragrance, and the birds fill the air with notes of joy and praise. Cox.
10. The reader will readily recall the case of an “eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of Ethiopia, who came to Jerusalem to worship” (Acts 8:27 ff.), and who went home with more of the Gospel than he had ever known before. The case proves that there were some dispersed people there, probably Jews, who remembered Zion, and that a purer knowledge of God went among them after the Christian era. It would seem that there have been nominal Christians in Abyssinia ever since. They were found there by Bruce in his travels, early in the present century.
12. The few spared and surviving, after the many had fallen under sore judgments, are blessed by what they have suffered, and by what they have seen others suffer; and these return to the Lord their God. Of this promise there have been many fulfilments. H. C.
14-17. The prophet bids Zion rejoice and sing in prospect of future happiness. Trials and calamities were before her citizens, but they might be armed with patience; nay, rejoice in tribulation, because their sufferings, however severe, would surely be followed by such consolations and joys as they had never yet known. The grounds of rejoicing are three: The removal of chastisement and the sure tokens of the presence of the Great King among them. Their perfect safety. The manifestation of God’s almighty power and tender love. B. C.
While he thus depicts the happy estate of the restored Zion, which he throughout regards as the centre and throne of a redeemed world, Zephaniah breaks into a rapture, a prophetic ecstasy (verses 14-17). Addressing himself to the impersonated Israel, he piles word on word, epithet on epithet, image on image, like one in a transport beyond the power of language to express. He sees God “removing the judgments” and “clearing away the enemies” of the New Jerusalem, preparing it for the habitation of His redeemed, sweeping out every trace of disorder, whatsoever defileth or loveth a lie, shedding light through the windows that have so long been darkened with cloud and storm. The city and temple being restored and cleansed, he sees Jehovah, the King of Israel, once more seated on the throne, revealing Himself no longer as “a fire involved in a cloud,” as a judicial purifying energy wrapped in mystery and terror, but as a gracious familiar Presence, redeeming men from all evil, infusing into them a saving health, rejoicing over them with sacred rapture. As he gazes into this bright future, the prophet discerns that God is so manifestly and graciously in the midst of His people that the nations who have brought back His dispersed ones behold His presence from afar, and cry:
“Fear not, O Zion! Let not Thy hands drop down! Jehovah, Thy God, is in thy midst, The Mighty One who saves. He rejoiceth over thee with rapture: He is silent in His love; He exulteth over thee with cries of joy.”
There are no bolder words in Scripture, and few that are more sublime in their simplicity. Not only does the prophet, with the fearless audacity of perfect trust, attribute to God Himself the rapture under which his own heart reels and faints; not only is he sure that all human love is but a pale reflection of the love of God; he even ventures to take two of the commonest forms in which human love expresses itself when it mounts toward ecstasy, and to transfer these to the Almighty. As man in the rapture of his passion is at times dumb, finding no words that will even shadow forth his emotion, and at other times vents his unworkable rapture in vague inarticulate sounds and cries; so Zephaniah conceives of God as kindling into a rapture of love over His redeemed, which can find no utterance—“He is silent in His love,” or which can only express itself in vague unsyllabled outcries: “He exulteth over thee with cries of joy.” The Eternal Lover of men Zephaniah portrays as exulting over men with an ecstasy like that of the bridegroom rejoicing in the beauty and tenderness of his bride; even as the Lord Jesus portrays Him as like a father who runs to meet his returning son while yet he is a great way off, and falls on his neck and kisses him. Cox.
17. He will save.** You believe the Lord’s might; He is able to save; His word declares this, and His work proves His willingness; exercise your faith upon His will to save you both from all your fears and all your foes; cast your all upon the will of Jesus; for:
He will rejoice over thee with joy. It was His joy to bleed and die in agony and blood for thee; it is His joy that thou comest and criest to Him as a lost sinner for salvation; He will rejoice in His work for thee, His grace in thee, and His salvation of thee. Oh, well mayest thou be called on, “Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again, I say, rejoice.” W. Mason.
Rest in His love. If He is at all, He is tenderness itself. If He is at all, never did sire so yearn over son as God yearns over all His creatures. . . . The nature which God has given man is the noblest style of nature known. It is even the noblest conceivable. It is a moral nature; capable of knowing, admiring, loving, freely choosing, and magnificently possessing and enjoying God and virtue in apparently ever-increasing degrees. No other nature is capable of so high an order of enjoyment as this. No other can glorify the Maker so much. The intelligent appreciation and voluntary homage of such a being must be the most precious and dear thing on which the Eternal Father looks down. Burr.
O the pure delights between God and glorified souls! God looks on them with an engaged eye, as His own by many dear titles, and is ravished with the reflex of His own excellencies shining in them. “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride (it is the language of Divine love), so their God rejoices over them. The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love; He
will rejoice over thee with singing.” He is infinitely delighted in the communication of His goodness to them. And what a blessed rest do they find in the complete fruition of His goodness! All their desires quietly expire in His bosom. What triumphs of joy follow! Can we frame a fuller conception of happiness than to be perfectly loved by the best and most blessed being, and perfectly to love Him, and to partake of the richest emanations of His loving-kindness, that is far more valuable and desirable than life itself? Bates.