CRITICAL NOTES.]
Zephaniah 1:10.] Siege of Jerusalem. Gate] which stood near fish-market (2 Chronicles 33:14; Nehemiah 3:3). Second] A part of the city given (2 Kings 22:14; 2 Chronicles 34:22). Hills] within the walls, Zion and Moriah. Crashing] Breaking to pieces of what now exists, not merely fall of buildings, as Isaiah 15:6. A cry at the threat of utter destruction [Keil].
Zephaniah 1:11. Maktesh] A rock in form of a mortar, where they hulled rice and corn. “The name probably chosen to express how their false hopes, grounded on the presence of God’s temple among them, while by their sins they profaned it, should be turned into true fears” [Pusey].
Zephaniah 1:12. Candles] Diligently and thoroughly (Luke 15:8); the enemy would let no corner escape them. Lees] Quiet, retaining harshness, and growing turbid and thick. It denotes perseverance, confirmation in moral indifference (Jeremiah 48:11). Say] Denied God’s providence, put him level with idols, who did neither good nor ill (Isaiah 41:23; Jeremiah 10:5).
Zephaniah 1:13.] God proved to be ruler and judge, by giving up their wealth to plunder, and punishing them as despisers of his name (Deuteronomy 28:30; Amos 5:11).
Zephaniah 1:14]. The hint of Zephaniah 1:7 carried out further; the nearness and terrible character of judgment described Great] in effects (Joel 2:11). Bitterly] For he cannot save himself from the foe; the might of the heroes and the city utterly fails.
Zephaniah 1:15.] All the words supplied by the language crowded together to describe the terrors of judgment [cf. Keil]. He first, as the day of wrath (Isaiah 19:18). The effect of wrath, distress and pressure (Job 15:24): then a reduplication (cf. Nahum 2:11); desolation, &c. (Job 30:3; Job 38:27). Lastly,
Zephaniah 1:16.] “Indicating still more closely the nature of the judgment, as a day of the trumpet and the trumpet-blast, i.e. on which the clangour of the war trumpets will be heard over all the fortifications and castles, and the enemy will attack, take, and destroy fortified places amidst the blast of trumpets [Keil].
Zephaniah 1:17.] No help nor counsel in this distress. Blind] Groping insecurely, or rushing headlong to destruction (Deuteronomy 28:29; Nahum 2:6). Dust] Of as little value and in as great quantity (Genesis 13:16; cf. 2 Kings 13:7). Flesh] From a root to eat; equivalent to food (Job 20:23) [cf. Lange]. “Their flesh here called bread, because doomed to be the food of worms” [Drusius].
Zephaniah 1:18.] With silver and gold they cannot save themselves. No heed given to riches by the enemy (cf. Isaiah 13:17; Jeremiah 4:30; Ezekiel 7:19). Fire] will devastate; cause speedy and complete destruction. “A consumption, and that a sudden one” [Calvin].
HOMILETICS
THE DOOMED CITY.—Zephaniah 1:10-12
The vision of Divine judgment which swept the earth, and settled in dark clouds over the land of Judah, is now depicted as falling on the city. Jerusalem, the metropolis, the centre of national vice and luxury, is besieged by Nebuchadnezzar. The advance of the enemy, the ruin of the buildings, and the miseries of the inhabitants, are set forth in impressive figures.
I. The anguish at the gate. “A sound of crying from the fish gate.” Massive walls and iron gates cannot keep out Divine visitations in the city; wealth and grandeur are no barrier to retribution in the family. God can disturb our towns and markets, our business and societies, and create want and anguish on every hand.
II. The desolation at the centre. From the entrance the enemy goes on to the centre, or second part of the city. The second wall hinders not; the sacred temple and the school of the prophets are battered by rams and fall crash to the ground. When God assails, what can withstand! Neglect of duty and indulgence in sin will bring a fearful “cry of destruction” (Isaiah 15:5).
III. The conquest of the city. When God begins, he will make an end. Judgments penetrate most secret places, and destroy the highest citadel. The horrors of the siege increase. The storm sweeps everything before it. The inhabitants gather on the surrounding hills, and howl at the devastation before them. “A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the Lord that rendereth recompense to his enemies” (Isaiah 66:6).
IV. The destruction of the inhabitants. “Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh,” &c. Not only the city in its grandeur, but the people in their wickedness are all destroyed.
1. Wealthy merchants were overtaken. “All the merchant people are cut down.” The Maktesh (lit. mortar), in which they dwell, is a type of the method in which they suffer. They will be pounded and crushed. The silver with which they lade themselves will weigh them down to death. Abused prosperity makes judgments severe. It is folly to dream of safety in any place from which God is banished. Mercantile gains and heaps of silver cannot deliver men “in the day of the Lord’s wrath.” They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord,” &c. (Ezekiel 7:19; James 5:1).
2. Men of business were carried off. “All they that bear silver are cut off.” The traders of the city had become very Canaanites in greed and gain (cf. Hosea 12:7; Ezekiel 16:3). The invaders seized the wealthy first, and carried away their booty (cf. Zephaniah 1:13). Traffic and trade are good things, but are not the real basis on which a kingdom stands. When carried on by injustice and violence they will cause depression in business, failure in banks, and ruin in the country. God never allows any dishonesty to go unpunished. “By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted; but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.”
DIVINE SCRUTINY AND RETRIBUTION.—Zephaniah 1:12-18
God is not indifferent to human affairs. We may forget that God sees us, but the fact is not altered by our forgetfulness.
I. Human conduct is under Divine inspection. This indicates—
1. A thorough scrutiny. “I will search Jerusalem with candles.” When God comes forth—to make evil glare out by his fierce light—the secret sins and the secret sinners cannot be hidden. No hiding-place can keep out the light that makes manifest.
2. The detection of the guilty. “Men that are settled (curded or thickened). The imagery is taken from the process of preparing wine, and emphatically sets forth—(a) The evil of carnal self-satisfaction (Jeremiah 48:11). Prosperity fostered pride; ease generated presumption; absence of dislodging changes resulted in aggravated spirit of impunity. This self-security should be detected; and (b) Practical atheism should be exposed. “That say in their heart, the Lord will not do good,” &c. Practical atheism was the outcome of debasing indulgence. God’s watchfulness, justice, and government were flagrantly ignored. His patience was thought to be unconcern. They talked in their hearts, held mental monologues, and charged God with being alike indifferent to do good or evil, to bestow blessing or visit with calamity. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” Note the manifestation of a similar spirit in the days of the Apostle Peter (2 Peter 3).
II. Punishment is threatened for wrong-doing. “I will punish, because they have sinned against the Lord” (cf. Zephaniah 1:12-17). God’s anger is not awakened by trifles, neither is it disproportionate to the offence. The same faithfulness and power are concerned in the fulfilment of great and terrible threatenings as of “exceeding great and precious promises.” The space mercifully allotted for repentance was nearly over. The day of grace was ending, and stern justice was drawing near.
1. The punishment would not be delayed. “The great day of the Lord is near, it is near and hasteth greatly.”
2. The punishment would be most exacting. “The curse causeless shall not come.” The penalty for sin may
(1) make the sinner’s labour profitless. “They shall build houses, but not inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof.” The advent of justice may
(2) render the offenders homeless. “Therefore their goods shall become a booty, and their houses a desolation.” Judgment may
(3) terrify with manifold alarms (Zephaniah 1:15-17). Retributions
(4) make the whole land desolate. “The whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy.”
3. The punishment would not be evaded.
(1) There would be no exemption by purchase. “Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them.”
(2) The doom would be inclusive and complete. “For he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land” [Matt. Braithwaite].
THE DILIGENT SEARCH AND THE CERTAIN DISCOVERY.—Zephaniah 1:12-14
God will now come in terrible judgment, go through the city, trying house by house, and 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 the 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.”
I. The nature of the search. “I will search with candles.”
1. It is a determined search. An earnest and diligent search of persons and places; a sifting one by one in every corner until the thing searched be discovered. The woman “lit a candle, and swept the house, and sought diligently till she found” the lost coin (Luke 15:8; Psalms 44:21).
2. It is a universal search. None can escape. Josephus tells in the destruction of Jerusalem how princes and priests were dragged out of tombs, pits, and caves, in which they had hidden themselves in fear of death. Ungodly men hate the light, would extinguish the candle, and hide themselves from punishment. But this is impossible. “Though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence.” (a) No bribe can avert it. (b) No strength can resist it. The might of the city and the courage of the warrior would fail. So irresistible would be the attack that “the mighty man” would abandon himself to shrieks of hopeless grief (Zephaniah 1:14). There is only one way of escape for the guilty: to examine his own ways, to condemn his own offences, and abandon all pleas, to trust in Christ.
II. The design of the search. God searches the city, and penetrates the inward parts of the soul to expel darkness, discover guilt, and bring men to himself.
1. To rouse the spiritually hardened. Idleness and ease beget moral indifference. Men sit down upon their lees, draw themselves together, and get hardened in sin. They rest on the vilest, the sediment and refuse of their nature; become defiled by lusts, and confirmed in habitual wickedness.
2. To reprove the practically indifferent. Men who deny not God’s existence may reason themselves into atheism, may wish and believe in their hearts, and by acts inure themselves into the belief that God is far away from them; that he does not govern the world; and “will not punish men with eternal destruction for the sins of this short life.” God sits in heaven heedless of what men do or suffer, and will neither interfere in this world nor in the next. Why then fear him? Why not give themselves to lusts and pleasures? This spirit is rebuked by the prophet. If men do not see God in the merciful visitations, he will terrify them by judgments in life.
3. To punish the worldly-minded. Men pursue their ordinary course of labour and of sin, eat and drink, build houses and plant vineyards, until the day overtakes them, and deprives them of all they have (Matthew 24:38-39).
(1) They hoard up and cannot keep. “Therefore their goods shall become a booty.” God refutes men’s notions by his providence, and makes them feel that he cares for what they do by taking what they possess, and leaving them homeless and penniless. “And their houses a desolation.”
(2) They labour and do not reap the benefit. They “build houses, but do not inhabit them; plant vineyards, but do not drink the wine thereof.” God proves the verity of the threatening by his execution, disappoints men of happiness and enjoyment by his justice. If we forget God in prosperity, get intoxicated with pleasure, and revolt in threatened punishment, we shall be convinced of our folly. God will visit our cities and marts, and search our shops and families. We shall be frustrated in our pursuits, and robbed of all our possessions. “Thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein; thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof” (cf. Deuteronomy 28:30; Amos 1:2).
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
The three acts of punishment. The first falls upon the princes who indulge in the customs of the heathen (Zephaniah 1:8-9). The second falls upon the rich (Zephaniah 1:10-11). The third falls upon the careless despisers (Zephaniah 1:12-13) [Lange].
1. Ease, prosperity, and lack of change, beget false security, disregard of God’s providence, and spiritual indifference.
2. God refutes the language, and makes practical atheists alarmed at his judgments.
3. When God strips any people of their possessions they will find that their enjoyment and abuse of them have been a snare to them. Therefore (i.e. because these things have had such an effect) “their goods shall become a booty.” “Religion and morality are two spheres which cannot be separated. An upright heart can only have one God, and in cherishing other gods besides God lies a falseness which bears its fruit in the field of morals. Whilst the heart, in its profoundest depths, is actuated by two diametrically opposite opinions, it is necessary that those influences should finally neutralise one another. In this way arises indifference towards motives drawn from eternal things. The indifference has a twofold result. First, temporal motives, among which the most powerful are pride (fashion) and avarice, take the place of eternal. In the second place, the other result of this fearless, practical atheism is: God does no good and no evil” [Lange].
HOMILETICS
THE GREAT DAY OF THE LORD.—Zephaniah 1:14-18
To rouse the self-secure in their ease, Zephaniah carries out the hint of Zephaniah 1:7, of the near approach and awful character of the judgment. The warning to Judah and Jerusalem should make sinners in Zion tremble. It is the day, the great day of the Lord, “a specimen of the day of judgment, a kind of doomsday, as the last destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans is represented to be in our Saviour’s prediction in Matthew 24:27.”
I. A day of profound darkness. Darkness and gloominess, clouds and thick darkness. Everything looks threatening, and nothing encourages. No hope, no light. “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.”
II. A day of Divine wrath. “That day is a day of wrath;” wrath treasured up for awhile, but now overflowing and irresistible—manifest, and felt in distress of every kind and degree, in calamity without relief. If the wrath of a king is like a messenger of death, how much more the wrath of an offended God? (Proverbs 16:14; Malachi 3:2).
III. A day of material destruction.
1. The cities will be destroyed. “Against the fenced cities, and against the high towers” (Zephaniah 1:16). Whatever the strength and structure of fortifications, they would afford no protection.
2. The land will be wasted. The blast of God will turn all fertility into waste. The dreary monotony of desolation appears everywhere. The earth is wasted with havoc, and broken into ruin. “A day of wasteness and desolation.”
IV. A day of human misery. “A day of trouble and distress” (Zephaniah 1:15; Zephaniah 1:17).
1. Great helplessness. (a) No escape by ransom; (b) no escape by flight. Men sink into anguish beyond expression; into misery beyond relief.
2. Great blindness. Hemmed in, they turn first to one place and then another; stagger like drunken men (Job 12:25); and walk like blind men. Bereft of counsel, strength, and hope, “they meet with the darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night.”
3. Great slaughter. “Their blood shall be poured out as dust.” Life was of no value, blood would be utterly disregarded, treated as contemptible, and spilt in abundance (Psalms 79:3). Their flesh would decay, putrefy, and become offensive, and lie like dung upon the land. All this “because they have sinned.” “The most offensive disgusting physical corruption,” says Pusey, “is but a faint image of the defilement of sin.”
4. Great despair. Amid darkness, distress, and murder, the war trumpet sounds louder and louder, strikes terror into every heart, and despair is read in every eye. The fire of jealousy devours the land, and “a speedy riddance is made of all them that dwell” in it. “He shall make an utter, yea, altogether (nothing but) a terrific destruction of all the dwellers of the earth” (cf. Psalms 104:29; Isaiah 65:23).
V. A day of speedy approach. “It is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly.” Each hour tells the knell of approaching doom. Conscience, Scripture, and providence, like the voice of God, proclaim that it is near. Near, adds the prophet, to impress us the more. It is at hand to each. It hasteth greatly, and may come before we are aware. Nothing will hasten it more than carelessness in sin and security in judgment. Prepare now, before its voice is heard; arise, ye dead, and come to judgment. “For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”
“I see the Judge enthroned! the flaming guard!
The volume opened! opened every heart!
A sunbeam pointing out each secret thought!
No patron! intercessor none! now past
The sweet, the element mediatorial hour!
For guilt no plea! to pain, no pause! no bound!
Inexorable all! and all, extreme” [Young].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
Zephaniah 1:10-11. These verses describe the state of Jerusalem, when besieged by Nebuchadnezzar. Through the fish gate he entered the city. It received its name from the fish market, which was near it. Through it passed those who used to bring fish from the lake of Tiberias and Jordan. It answers to what is now called the Damascus gate [Henderson].
Zephaniah 1:11. Maktesh, the mortar, a name applied to the valley of Siloam from its hollow shape [Jerome]. It is called by Josephus, “the cheese-maker’s valley,” and by the present inhabitants, el-Wâd, i.e. the valley, and also the mill-valley. The name “mortar” was probably coined by Zephaniah, to point to the fate of the merchants and men of money who lived there [Keil].
Zephaniah 1:12-13. Neither the majesty of God, nor his government or glory, consists in imaginary splendour, but in those attributes which so meet together in him that they cannot be severed from his essence. It is the property of God to govern the world, to take care of the human race, to distinguish between good and evil, to relieve the wretched, to punish all crimes, to restrain unjust violence; and if any one would deprive God of these, he would leave nothing but an idol [Calvin].
“Even God’s providence
Seeming estranged” [Thos. Hood].
Zephaniah 1:14-18. Day. When iniquity hath played her part, vengeance leaps upon the stage; the comedy is short, but the tragedy is long. The black guard shall attend you; you shall eat at the table of sorrow; and the crown of death shall be upon your heads, many glistering faces looking upon you [Hy. Smith]. You can muzzle your fear, and you can silence your conscience, and you can go on making money by ways which God abhors, and which every honest man ought to abhor, and you can, in the mean time, have comparative peace; but there is a great difference between staying off judgment now, and staving off revelation and judgment then [H. W. Beecher].