Albert Barnes Commentary Zephaniah 1:2

"I will utterly consume all things from off the face of the ground, saith Jehovah." — Zephaniah 1:2 (ASV)

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).