Albert Barnes Commentary Zephaniah 1:17

"And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against Jehovah; and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as dung." — Zephaniah 1:17 (ASV)

I will bring distress upon men - I will hem them in, in anguish on all sides. God Himself shall meet them with His terrors, wherever they turn. “I will hem them in, that they may find it so.”

That they shall walk like blind men - Utterly bereft of counsel, seeing no more than the blind which way to turn, grasping blindly and frantically at anything, and going on headlong to their own destruction.

So God forewarned them in the law: Thou shalt grope at noon day, as the blind gropeth in darkness (Jeremiah 10:29). Job also speaks of the wicked generally: They meet with the darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night (Job 5:14); and, They grope in the dark without light, and He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man (Job 12:25). Isaiah, foretelling of those times, says: We grope for the wall, as the blind; and we grope, as if we had no eyes; we stumble in the noon-day as in the night. Because they have sinned against the Lord (Isaiah 59:10), and so He has turned their wisdom into foolishness; and since they have despised Him, He has made them objects of contempt.

Their blood shall be poured out like dust (1 Samuel 2:30), as abundant and as valueless; utterly disregarded by Him. As Asaph complains, their blood have they shed like water (Psalms 79:3). They will be contemptible and disgusting as the vilest things; “their flesh as the dung,” refuse, decayed, putrefied, offensive, enriching by its decay the land which had been the scene of their luxuries and oppressions.

Yet, the most offensive, disgusting physical corruption is but a faint image of the defilement of sin.

This punishment, in which the carrion remains would be entombed only in the bowels of vultures and dogs, was especially threatened to Jehoiakim: He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, dragged and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 22:19).