Albert Barnes Commentary Zephaniah 1:18

"Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of Jehovah`s wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he will make an end, yea, a terrible end, of all them that dwell in the land." — Zephaniah 1:18 (ASV)

Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord’s wrath - Gain unjustly gotten was the cause of their destruction. For, as Ezekiel closes a similar description: They shall cast their silver into 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; they shall not satisfy their souls nor fill their bowels: because it is the stumbling-block of their iniquity (Ezekiel 7:19). Much less shall any possession, outward or inward, be of avail in the Great Day; since in death the rich man’s pomp shall not follow him (Psalms 49:17), and every gift which he has misused, whether of mind or spirit, even the knowledge of God without doing His will, shall but increase damnation. Sinners will then have nothing but their sins.

Here the prophet uses images belonging more to the immediate destruction; at the close, the words again widen and belong, in their fullest literal sense, to the Day of Judgment. The prophet declares that the whole land—or rather, as implied from the start of the prophecy, the whole earth—shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy; for He shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land. More accurately, “He shall make an utter, indeed altogether a terrific destruction of all the dwellers of the earth.”

What Nahum had foretold of Nineveh, He shall make the place of it an utter consumption, Zephaniah foretells of all the inhabitants of the world. For what is this, the whole earth shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy, but what Peter says, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up? (2 Peter 3:13).

And what does it mean when he says, He shall make all the dwellers of the earth an utter, indeed altogether a hasty destruction, but a general judgment of all who belong to the world—those whose home, citizenship, and whole mind are in the world? This is unlike true Christians, who are strangers and pilgrims here, and whose citizenship is in heaven (Hebrews 11:13; Philippians 3:20).

Upon these, God shall bring an utter, terrific, speedy destruction—a living death, so that they shall at once both exist and not exist: exist, as continued in being; not exist, as having no life of God, but only a continued death in misery.

And this shall be through the jealousy of Almighty God, that divine quality in Him by which He loves and wills to be loved, and does not endure those who give to others the love for which He gave so much and which is so wholly due to Himself Alone.

Augustine writes (Confessions Book 1, Chapter 5, page 3, Oxford Translation): “You demand my love, and if I do not give it, are angry with me, and threaten me with grievous woes. Is it then a slight woe not to love You?”

What will be that anger, which is Infinite Love, but which becomes, through man’s sin, Hate?