Albert Barnes Commentary Zephaniah 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 – It seems likely that more of the prophet's forefathers are named than is the custom in Holy Scripture, because the last so named was someone remarkable. It is not impossible that Zephaniah could have been the great-grandson of King Hezekiah. For although Holy Scripture commonly names only the one son who is in the sacred line, and although he was one generation further removed from Hezekiah than Josiah was, yet if each had a son early, Zephaniah might have been contemporary with Josiah.

The names also seem to be mentioned for the sake of their meaning; at least, it is remarkable how the name of God appears in most. Zephaniah, “whom the Lord hid;” Gedaliah, “whom the Lord made great;” Amariah, “whom the Lord promised;” Hezekiah, “whom the Lord strengthened.”

I will utterly consume all things - Better “all.” The word is not limited to “things” animate or inanimate or men; it is used individually of each, according to the context; here, without limitation, of “all.” God and all stand in opposition to one another; God and all that is not of God or in God. God, he says, will utterly consume all from the land (earth). The prophet sums up in few words the subject of the whole chapter, the judgments of God from his own times to the Day of Judgment itself.

And this Day Itself he brings the more strongly before the mind, in that, with wonderful briefness, in two words which he conforms one to the other, in sound also, he expresses the utter final consumption of all things. He expresses at once the intensity of action and blends their separate meanings, “Taking away I will make an end of all;” and with this he unites the words used of the flood, “from off the face of the earth.”

Then he goes through the whole creation as it was made, pairing “man and beast,” which Moses speaks of as created on the sixth day, and the creation of the fifth day, “the fowls of the heaven and the fishes of the sea;” and before each he sets the solemn word of God, “I will end,” as the act of God Himself.

The words can have no complete fulfillment until the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up (2 Peter 3:10), as the Psalmist too, having gone through the creation, sums up, You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust (Psalms 104:29); and then speaks of the re-creation, You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth (Psalms 104:36), and, Of old You have laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands; they shall perish, but You shall endure, yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture You shall change them, and they shall be changed (Psalms 103:25).

Local fulfillments there may be, in their degree. Jerome speaks as if he knew this to have happened. He writes: “Even the brute animals feel the wrath of the Lord, and when cities have been wasted and men slain, there comes a desolation and scarcity of beasts also and birds and fishes; witness Illyricum, witness Thrace, witness my native soil (Stridon, a city on the confines of Dalmatia and Pannonia), where, apart from sky and earth and rampant brambles and deep thickets, all has perished.”

But although this fact, which he alleges, is supported by natural history, it is distinct from the words of the prophet. The prophet speaks of the fish, not of rivers (as Jerome does), but of the sea, which can in no way be influenced by the absence of man, who is only their destroyer.

The use of language from the histories of the creation and of the deluge implies that the prophet has in mind a destruction commensurate with that creation.

Then he foretells the final removal of offenses, in the same words that our Lord uses of the general Judgment: The Son of Man shall send forth His Angels and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity (Matthew 13:41).

The stumbling-blocks with the wicked - Not only will the wicked be utterly brought to an end, or, in the other meaning of the word, “gathered into bundles to be taken away,” but all causes of stumbling as well; everything through which others can fall, which will not be until the end of all things. Then, he repeats, yet more emphatically, I will cut off the whole race of man from the face of the earth, and then he closes the verse, like the previous one, with the solemn words, saith the Lord. All this will be fulfilled in the Day of Judgment, and all other fulfillments are pledges of the final Judgment.

They are witnesses of the ever-living presence of the Judge of all, that God does take account of man’s deeds. They speak to men’s conscience, they attest the existence of a divine law, and with it, of the future complete manifestation of that law, of which they are individual sentences. Not until the prophet has brought this circle of judgments to a close does he pass on to the particular judgments on Judah and Jerusalem.

I will also stretch out Mine Hand – As before on Egypt. Judah had gone in the ways of Egypt and learned her sins, and sinned worse than Egypt. The mighty Hand and stretched-out Arm (Jeremiah 2:10–11), with which she had been delivered, will be again stretched out, yet, not for her but upon her, upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. In this threatened destruction of all, Judah and Jerusalem are singled out, because judgment shall begin at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17; Jeremiah 25:29). Those who have sinned against the greater grace will be most signally punished. Yet, the punishment of those whom God had so chosen and loved is an earnest of the general judgment. This too is not a partial but a general judgment upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

And I will cut off the remnant of Baal – that is, to the very last vestige of it. Isaiah unites name and residue (Isaiah 14:22), as equivalents, together with the proverbial, posterity and descendant. Zephaniah distributes them in parallel clauses, the residue of Baal and the name of the Chemarim. Good and evil have each a root, which remains in the ground, when the trunk has been hewn down. There is a remnant according to the election of grace, when the rest have been blinded (Romans 11:5), (Romans 11:7); and this is a holy seed (Isaiah 6:13) to carry on the line of God. Evil too has its remnant, which, unless diligently kept down, shoots up again, after the conversion of peoples or individuals.

The mind of the flesh remains in the regenerate also. The prophet foretells the complete excision of the whole remnant of Baal, which was fulfilled in it after the captivity, and will be fulfilled as to all which it shadows forth, in the Day of Judgment. From this place; for in their frenzy, they dared to bring the worship of Baal into the very temple of the Lord (2 Kings 23:4). Ribera: “Who would ever believe that in Jerusalem, the holy city, and in the very temple idols should be consecrated? Whoever sees the ways of our times will readily believe it. For among Christians and in the very temple of God, the abominations of the pagan are worshiped. Riches, pleasures, honors, are they not idols which Christians prefer to God Himself?”

And the name of the Chemarim with the priests – Of the idolatrous priests the very name will be cut off, as God promises by Hosea, that He will take away the names of Baalim (Hosea 2:17), and by Zechariah, that He will cut off the names of the idols out of the land (Zechariah 13:2). Yet this is more. Not the name only of the Chemarim, but themselves with their name, their posterity, will be blotted out; still more, it is God who cuts off all memory of them, blotting them out of the book of the living and out of His own.

They had but a name before, that they were living, but were dead (Revelation 3:1). Jerome: “The Lord will take away names of vain glory, wrongly admired, out of the Church; indeed, the very names of the priests with the priests who vainly flatter themselves with the name of Bishops and the dignity of Presbyters without their deeds. Therefore he pointedly says, not, and the deeds of priests with the priests, but the names; who only bear the false name, of dignities, and with evil works destroy their own names.”

The priests are priests of the Lord, who live not like priests, corrupt in life and doctrine and corrupters of God’s people (Jeremiah 5:31). The judgment is pronounced alike on what was intrinsically evil, and on good which had corrupted itself into evil.

The title of priest is nowhere given to the priest of a false god without some mention in the context implying that they were idolatrous priests; as the priests of Dagon (1 Samuel 5:5), of the high places as ordained by Jeroboam (1 Kings 13:2, 1 Kings 13:33; 2 Kings 23:20; 2 Chronicles 11:15), of Baal (2 Kings 10:19; 2 Kings 11:18; 2 Chronicles 23:17), of Bethel (Amos 7:10), of Ahab (2 Kings 10:11), of those who were not gods (2 Chronicles 13:9), of On, where the sun was worshiped. The priests then were God’s priests, who in the evil days of Manasseh had manifoldly corrupted their life or their faith, and who were still evil.

The priests of Judah, with its kings, its princes, and the people of the land, were in Jeremiah’s inaugural vision enumerated as those, who shall, God says, fight against thee, but shall not prevail against thee (Jeremiah 1:18–19). The priests said not, Where is the Lord? and they that handle the law knew Me not (Jeremiah 2:7–8). In the general corruption, A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land, the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule at their hands (Jeremiah 5:30–31): the children of Israel and the children of Judah, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, have turned unto Me the back, and not the face (Jeremiah 32:32–33).

Jeremiah speaks specifically of heavy moral sins. From the prophet even unto the priest everyone dealeth falsely (Jeremiah 6:13; Jeremiah 8:10); both prophet and priest are profane (Jeremiah 23:11); for the sins of her prophets, the iniquities of her (Lamentations 4:13). And Isaiah says of her sensuality: the priests and the prophets have erred through strong drink; they are swallowed up of wine; they are out of the way through strong drink (Isaiah 28:7).

And those who worship the host of heaven upon the (flat) housetops. This was fulfilled by Josiah, who destroyed “the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz” (2 Kings 23:12). Jeremiah speaks as if this worship was almost universal, as though nearly every roof had been profaned by this idolatry: “The houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink-offerings unto other gods” (Jeremiah 19:13). “The Chaldeans that fight against this city, shall come and set fire on this city, and burn it with the houses, upon whose roofs they have offered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink-offerings to other gods, to provoke Me to anger” (Jeremiah 32:29).

They worshiped on the housetops, probably to have a clearer view of that magnificent expanse of sky—“the moon and stars which” God had “ordained” (Psalms 8:3)—the “queen of heaven,” whom they worshiped instead of God Himself. There is something so mysterious in that calm face of the moon as it “walketh in beauty” (Job 31:26). God seems to have invested it with such delegated influence over the seasons and the produce of the earth that they stopped short in it and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator.

It is much like how people today talk of “Nature,” admire “Nature,” and speak of its “laws”—not as laws God imposed upon it, but as laws inherent in it, affecting us and our well-being. They observe its ever-varying changes but fail to recognize these as “doing whatsoever God commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth, whether for correction, or for His land or for mercy!” (Job 37:12–13). The idolaters of old “worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, Who is blessed forever” (Romans 1:25); modern people equally make this world their object, only they idolize themselves and their discoveries, and worship their own intellect.

This worship on the housetops individualized the public idolatry; it was a rebellion against God, family by family—a sort of family prayer of idolatry. “Did we,” say the mingled multitude to Jeremiah, “make our cakes to worship her, and pour out our drink-offerings unto her, without our men?” (Jeremiah 44:19). Its family character is described in Jeremiah: “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto other gods” (Jeremiah 7:18). The idolatry spread to other cities. “We will certainly do,” they say, “as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem” (Jeremiah 44:17).

The incense went up continually “as a memorial to God” from the altar of incense in the temple. In contrast, the “roofs of the houses” were so many altars from which, street by street and house by house, the incense went up to her for whom they dethroned God, “the queen of heaven.” It was an idolatry with which Judah was especially obsessed, believing that they received all good things of this world from these idols and not from God. When punished for their sin, they repented of their partial repentance and maintained to Jeremiah that they were punished for “leaving off to burn incense to the queen of heaven” (Jeremiah 44:2; Jeremiah 44:15; Jeremiah 44:18).

And those who worship ... the Lord—but with a divided heart and service; those who “swear by the Lord” (or rather, to the Lord), swearing allegiance and loyal service to Him, while they commit acts that deny it, in that “they swear by Malcham.” This Malcham is better understood not as a descriptive title (though related to one), but as “their king”—most probably, I think, “Moloch.”

This idolatry had been their enduring idolatry in the wilderness, after the calves had been annihilated. It is the worship against which Israel is warned by name in the Law (Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:2–4). Then, throughout the history of the Judges, we hear of the kindred idolatry of Baal, the Lord (who was also called “eternal king” and from whom individuals named themselves “son of (the) king,” or “servant of (the) king”), or the manifold Baals and Ashtaroth or Astarte. But after these had been removed on the preaching of Samuel (1 Samuel 7:6; 1 Samuel 12:10), this idolatry does not reappear in Judah until the intermarriage of Jehoram with the house of Ahab (2 Kings 8:16–18, 26-27; 2 Chronicles 21:6, 12-13; 2 Chronicles 22:2–4).

The kindred and equally horrible worship of “Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon” (1 Kings 11:7), was brought in by Solomon in his decay, and endured until his high place was defiled by Josiah (2 Kings 23:13–14). It is probable then that this was “their king” of whom Zephaniah speaks, whom Amos and after him Jeremiah called “their king,” but speaking of Ammon. Him, the king of Ammon, Judah adopted as “their king.” They owned God as their king in words; Molech they owned by their deeds. They worshiped and swore allegiance to the Lord, and yet they swore by their king. His name was familiarly in their mouths; to him they appealed as the Judge and witness of the truth of their words; his displeasure they invoked on themselves if they swore falsely.

Cyril: “Those in error were accustomed to swear by heaven and, as a matter of reverence, to call out, ‘By the king and lord Sun.’ Those who do so must of set purpose and willfully depart from the love of God, since the Law expressly says, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and serve Him alone, and swear by His Name” (Deuteronomy 6:13).

The first group, who “worshipped on the roofs,” were mere idolaters. The second group “worshiped,” as they thought, “the Lord.” They bound themselves solemnly by oath to Him, but with a reserve, joining a hateful idol to Him, in that they, by a religious act, owned it also as a god. The act they committed was, in direct words or by implication, forbidden by God. The command to “swear by the Lord” implied that they were to swear by no one else. It was followed by the prohibition to go after other gods (Deuteronomy 6:13–14; Deuteronomy 10:30; Jeremiah 4:2). Conversely, to swear by other gods was forbidden as a part of their service: “Be very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the Law of Moses, neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, but cleave unto the Lord your God” (Joshua 23:6–8). “How shall I pardon thee for this? Thy children have forsaken Me, and have sworn by those who are no gods” (Jeremiah 5:7). “They taught My people to swear by Baal” (Jeremiah 12:16).

They thought perhaps that because they professed to serve God, paid greater homage to Him, and professed and bound themselves to be His (such is the meaning of “swear to the Lord”), they might, without renouncing His service, do certain things, such as “swear by their king,” although in effect they thereby owned him also as a god.

To such people Elijah said, “How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). And God by Jeremiah rejects with abhorrence such divided service: “Ye trust in lying words, which will not profit. Will ye steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods, and come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, saying, We are delivered to do all these abominations” (Jeremiah 7:8–10). And Hosea: “Neither go ye to Beth-aven, and swear there, The Lord liveth” (Hosea 4:15).

Jerome says such are Christians: “who think that they can serve together the world and the Lord, and please two masters, God and Mammon; who, “being soldiers of Jesus Christ” and having sworn allegiance to Him, “entangle themselves with the affairs of this life” (2 Timothy 2:3–4) and “offer the same image to God and to Caesar.”” To such people, God, whom they own with their lips, is not their God. Their idol is, as the very name says, “their king,” whom alone they please, thereby displeasing and dishonoring God. We must not only fear, love, and honor God, but love, fear, and honor all else for Him Alone.