I will also 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 Chemarims with the priests;
I will also stretch out mine hand - indicating some remarkable and unusual work of vengeance (Isaiah 5:25, "For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still;" Isaiah 9:12; Isaiah 9:17; Isaiah 9:21).
Upon Judah - including Benjamin. These two tribes are to suffer, which thought themselves perpetually secure, because they escaped the captivity in which the ten tribes were involved.
And upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem - the fountainhead of the evil. God "begins at his sanctuary" (Ezekiel 9:6); and those who are nigh Him (Leviticus 10:3, "I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me"). "Judgment must begin at the house of God" (1 Peter 4:17).
I will cut off the remnant of Baal - the remains of Baal-worship, which as yet Josiah was unable utterly to eradicate in remoter places. Baal was the Phoenician tutelary god. His name means lord; and the feminine deity corresponding, and generally associated with him, was Ashtoreth. As he was represented by the sun, so she was the goddess answering to the moon and the rest of the heavenly hosts. In fact, it was the worship of nature: a worship to which correspond the pantheism and scientific exaltation of nature and her laws in our own days, as if God were the slave of His own world and its laws, instead of its Lord, Creator, and Sustainer, who can at will modify, alter, and suspend the order of the present system of things, according to His own sovereign pleasure, and in furtherance of the higher moral laws, in subserviency to which the laws of nature exist. From the time of the Judge (Judges 2:13) Israel had fallen into this idolatry; and Manasseh lately had set up this idol within Yahweh's temple itself (2 Kings 21:3; 2 Kings 21:5; 2 Kings 21:7, "He reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove ... and worshipped all the host of heaven (Ashtoreth or Astarte) ... and he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord said, In Jerusalem will I put my name. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord." "And he set a graven image of the grove (the symbol of the heavenly host) that he had made in the house, of which the Lord said to David, and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put my name forever"). Josiah began his reformation in the twelfth year of his reign (2 Chronicles 34:3-4; 2 Chronicles 34:8), and in the eighteenth had as far as possible completed it.
Chemarims - idol priests, who had not reached the age of puberty; meaning 'ministers of the gods' (Servius on 'AEneid' 11:) the same name as the Tyrian Camilli, r and l being interchangeable (cf. margin Hosea 10:5, 'the priests thereof'-namely, of the calves of Beth-aven: "Chemarim"). Josiah is expressly said (margin, 2 Kings 23:5 [kªmaariym], "the idolatrous priests") to have 'put down the Chemarim.' The Hebrew root means black (from the black garments which they wore, or the marks which they branded on their foreheads); or zealous, from, their idolatrous fanaticism. The very 'name,' as well as themselves, shall be forgotten. The Chemarim were probably subordinate ministers to the priests, and their duty was to fell the victim at the altar. The root х kaamar (H3648)] means, to burn or blacken. If, however, it be preferred to take these to be the idol-priests themselves, then "the priests," with them who are here distinguished from them, must be understood to be the priests in the due Aaronic order, who, however, instead of opposing, tacitly, and in some cases avowedly, sanctioned idolatry. The term х hakohªniym (H3548)] is often applied to idol-priests (Genesis 41:45; Genesis 41:50). I therefore prefer taking the "Chemarim" of the black-attired ministers of the priests; and "the priests" as including both the idol-priests and the Aaronic priests, who were bound to serve Yahweh alone, but who abetted idolatry in secret.
The priests - of Yahweh, who ought to have used all their power to eradicate, but who secretly sanctioned, idolatry (cf. Zephaniah 3:4, "Her priests have polluted the sanctuary;" Ezekiel 8:1-18; Ezekiel 22:26; Ezekiel 44:10). From the priests Zephaniah passes to the people.