Albert Barnes Commentary Zephaniah 2:4

"For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation; they shall drive out Ashdod at noonday, and Ekron shall be rooted up." — Zephaniah 2:4 (ASV)

For - As a reason for repentance and perseverance, he discusses pagan nations upon whom God’s wrath was to come.

Jerome notes: “As Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, after visions concerning Judah, turn to other nations all around and, according to the character of each, announce what will happen to them, and dwell at length upon it, so does this prophet, though more briefly.”

And so, by considering five nations located to the west, east, south, and north, he includes all humankind on every side. He further categorizes them according to their respective characters toward Israel, as they are either alien to or hostile to the Church:

• The Philistines (Zephaniah 2:4–7), as a near, malicious, and troublesome enemy;
• Moab and Ammon (Isaiah 2:8–10), peoples related to Israel (as heretics are to the Church), yet always rejoicing in her troubles and sufferings;
• The Ethiopians (Isaiah 5:12), distant nations at peace with her, who are, for the most part, spoken of as to be brought to her;
• And Assyria (Isaiah 13-15), as the great oppressive power of the world, upon which the full desolation therefore rests.

In the first fulfillment, because Moab and Ammon, by aiding Nebuchadnezzar (and all of them, in various ways, wronging God’s people: Isaiah 16:4; Amos 1:13–15; Amos 2:1–3; Jeremiah 48:27–30, 48:42; Jeremiah 49:1; Ezekiel 20:3, 20:6, 20:8), trampled on His sanctuary, overthrew His temple, and blasphemed the Lord, the prophecy was turned against them.

So then, before the captivity came, while Josiah was still king, and Jerusalem and the temple were not yet overthrown, the prophecy was directed against those who mocked them.

Gaza shall be forsaken. Out of the five cities of the Philistines, the prophet pronounces woe upon the same four as Amos (Amos 1:6–8) did before him, Jeremiah (Jeremiah 25:20) soon after, and Zechariah (Zechariah 9:5–6) later.

Gath, then, the fifth city, had probably remained with Judah since the time of Uzziah (2 Chronicles 26:6) and Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:8). In the sentencing of the rest, attention was paid (as is so frequent in the Old Testament) to the names of the places themselves, so that, from then on, the name of the place might suggest the doom pronounced upon it.

The names expressed boastfulness and so, in the divine judgment, carried their own sentence with them; this sentence was pronounced by a slight change in the word. Thus ‘Azzah’ (Gaza), ‘strong,’ was to become ‘Azoobah,’ ‘desolated’; “Ekron, deep-rooting,” was to “Teaker, be uprooted”; the “Cherethites” (cutters off) were to become (Cheroth) “diggings”; “Chebel, the band” of the sea coast, was in another sense to be “Chebel,” an “inheritance” (Zephaniah 2:5, 2:7), divided by line to the remnant of Judah; and “Ashdod” (the waster) was to be taken in its might—not by craft, nor in the way of robbers, but “driven forth” violently and openly in the “noon-day.”

For Gaza shall be forsaken - Some changes in fortune for these towns have been noted already. The fulfillment of the prophecy is not restricted to a specific time; the one marked contrast is that the old pagan enemies of Judah would be destroyed, while the house of Judah would be restored and would re-enter the possession of the land promised to them long ago.

The Philistine towns, it seems, had nothing to fear from Babylon or Persia, to whom they remained faithful subjects. The Ashdodites (who, probably as the most important, represent the whole group) combined with Sanballat, the Ammonites and the Arabians (Nehemiah 4:7), to obstruct the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. An army was even gathered, headed by Samaria (Nehemiah 2).

They portrayed themselves as loyal, and Jerusalem as rebellious (Nehemiah 2:19; Nehemiah 6:6). With the old sin remaining, Zechariah renewed Zephaniah’s sentence against the four cities (Zechariah 9)—a prophecy that even an unbeliever has recognized as picturing the march of Alexander.

Indeed: “All the other cities of Palestine having submitted,” Gaza alone resisted the conqueror for two (or five) months. It had come into the hands of the Persians during Cambyses’ expedition against Egypt. After all the men of Gaza perished fighting at their posts, Alexander sold the women and children and repopulated the city with people from the surrounding area. Palestine lay between the two rival successors of Alexander—the Ptolemies and Seleucids—and suffered from their wars.

Gaza fell by misfortune into the hands of Ptolemy, 11 years after the death of Alexander. Soon after, it was destroyed by Antiochus (198 B.C.), “preserving its faith to Ptolemy” as it had previously to the Persians, in a way admired by a pagan historian.

In the Maccabean wars, Judas Maccabaeus primarily destroyed the idols of Ashdod but also “spoiled their cities” . Jonathan set Ashdod on fire, along with its temple of idols, which served as a kind of citadel for it . Ascalon submitted to him ; Ekron with its borders was given to him by Alexander Balas ; and he burned the suburbs of Gaza .

Simon took Gaza, expelled its inhabitants, filled it with believing Jews, and fortified it more strongly than before . However, after a year’s siege, it was betrayed to Alexander Jannaeus, who killed its senate of 500 and razed the city to the ground.

Gabinius restored Gaza and Ashdod. After Herod’s death, Ashdod was given to Salome; Gaza, being a Greek city, was detached from the realm of Archelaus and annexed to Syria. It was destroyed by the Jews in their revolt when Florus was “procurator” (55 A.D.).

Ascalon and Gaza must still have been strong and likely had a distinct population in the early times of Antipater, Herod’s father. This was when Alexander and Alexandra set him over all Idumaea, since “he is said” at that time “to have made friendship with the Arabs, Gazites and Ascalonites, likeminded with himself, and to have attached them by many and large presents.”

Yet, although the inhabitants were changed, the hereditary hatred remained. Philo, in his Embassy to Caius (40 A.D.), used the strong words: “The Ascalonites have an implacable and irreconcilable enmity to the Jews, their neighbors, who inhabit the holy land.” This hatred continued toward Christians.

Some horrible atrocities, of almost inconceivable savagery, committed by those of Gaza and Ascalon (361 A.D.), are related by Theodoret and Sozomen. Gregory of Nazianzus, speaking of the times of Julian, asks: “Who is ignorant of the madness of the Gazaeans?” This was before the conversion of the great temple of Marna in Gaza into a Christian Church by Eudoxia.

On the occasion of Constantine’s exemption of Maiumas Gazae from their control, it is alleged that they were “extreme heathen.” In the time of the Crusades, the Ascalonites are described by Christians as their “most savage enemies.”

It may be that a likeness of sin brought with it a likeness of punishment. But the primary prediction was against the people, not against the walls. The sentence, Gaza shall be forsaken, would have been fulfilled by the removal or captivity of its inhabitants, even if they had not been replaced by others. A prediction against any ancient British town would have been fulfilled if the Britons in it had been replaced or exterminated by Danes, these by Saxons, and these in turn subdued by the Normans, even if those who displaced them became wealthy and powerful in their stead.

Even on the same site, it would not be the same Gaza when the Philistine Gaza became Edomite, the Edomite Greek, and the Greek Arabian. Ashdod (as well as Gaza) is spoken of as a city of the Greeks. New Gaza is described as a mixture of Turks, Arabians, Fellahin, and Bedouins from Egypt, Syria, and Petraea.

Felix Faber says, “there is a wonderful com-mixture of divers nations in it, Ethiopians, Arabs, Egyptians, Syrians, Indians and eastern Christians; no Latins.” Its Jewish inhabitants fled from it in the time of Napoleon; now, with few exceptions, it is inhabited by Arabs.

But these—Ghuzzeh, Eskalon, Akir, Sedud—are, at most, successors to the Philistine cities, of which no trace remains above the surface of the earth. It is common to speak of “remnants of antiquity” as being found or not found in any of them; but this means that where these exist, they are remains of a Greek or Roman city, not of a Philistine one.

Of the four cities, “Akkaron” (Ekron), meaning “the firm-rooting,” has not left a vestige. After biblical times, it is mentioned by name only by some who passed by it. There was “a large village of Jews” so-called in the time of Eusebius and Jerome, “between Azotus and Jamnia.”

Now a village of “about 50 mud houses without a single remnant of antiquity except 2 large finely built wells” bears the name of Akir. Jerome adds, “Some think that Accaron is the tower of Strato, afterward called Caesarea.” This idea was perhaps derived from a misunderstanding of his Jewish instructor, but it shows how completely all knowledge of Ekron was then lost.

Ashdod - Or Azotus, which, at the time Zephaniah prophesied, held out against a twenty-nine-year siege by Psammetichus, is now replaced by “a moderate sized village of mud houses, situated on the eastern slope of a little flattish hill,” and is “entirely modern, not containing a vestige of antiquity.” “A beautiful sculptured sarcophagus with some fragments of small marble shafts,” found “near the Khan on the southwest,” of course, belong to later times.

“The whole south side of the hill also appears as if it had once been covered with buildings, the stones of which are now thrown together in the rude fences.” Its bishops are mentioned from the Council of Nicaea to 536 A.D., and so probably continued until the Muslim devastation. It is not mentioned in the Talmud. Benjamin of Tudela calls it Palmis and says, “it is desolate, and there are no Jews in it.” Furthermore, “Neither Ibn Haukal (Yacut), Edrisi, Abulfeda, nor William of Tyre mention it.”

Ascalon and Gaza each had a port, Maiuma Gazae and Maiuma Ascalon, literally meaning “a place on the sea” (an Egyptian name), belonging to Ascalon or Gaza. The name implies that Ascalon and Gaza themselves, the old Philistine towns, were not on the sea.

They were, like Athens, built inland, perhaps (as has been conjectured) from fear of pirate raids or incursions from those who (like the Philistines themselves probably, or some tribe of them) might come from the sea. The port for both was probably built much later; the Egyptian name implies that they were built by Egyptians, after the time when its kings Neco and Apries (Pharaoh-Necho and Pharaoh-Hophra, who took Gaza –Jeremiah 47:1) made Egypt a naval power. This inland location with a separate port became a characteristic of these Philistine cities.

They themselves lay more or less inland and had a city connected with them of the same name on the shore. Thus there was an “Azotus by the sea” and an “Azotus Ispinus.” There were “two Iamniae, one inland.” But Ashdod lay further from the sea than Gaza; Jamnia (the Yabneel of Joshua 15:11; in Uzziah’s time, Yabneh, 2 Chronicles 26:6) was further from the sea than Ashdod. The port of Jamnia was burned by Judas .

The name “Maiumas” does not appear until Christian times, though “the port of Gaza” is mentioned by Strabo. Alexander brought the siege engines with which he took Gaza itself to this port from Tyre. That port, then, must have been at some distance from Gaza.

Each port became a town large enough to have its own bishop in Christian times. The Epistle of John of Jerusalem, inserted in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople (536 A.D.), written in the name of Palestine I, II, and III, is signed by a Bishop of Maiumen of Ascalon as well as by a Bishop of Ascalon, and by a Bishop of Maiumas of Gaza as well as by a Bishop of Gaza. Yabne, or Jamnia, was on a small eminence, a 6 to 12 hour journey from the sea.

Maiumas Gazae became better known. Because it was Christian, Constantine gave it the right of citizenship, named it Constantia after his son, and made it a city independent of Gaza. Julian the Apostate restored to Gaza (which, despite having bishops and martyrs, still had a pagan temple at the beginning of the 5th century) its former jurisdiction over Maiumas. Though about 20 furlongs away, Maiumas was called “the maritime portion of Gaza.”

From then on, it had the same municipal officers. However, Sozomen adds, “as regards the Church alone, they still appear to be two cities; each has its own Bishop and clergy, and festivals and martyrs, and commemorations of those who had been their Bishops, and ‘boundaries of the fields around,’ by which the altars that belong to each Episcopate are separated.”

In Sozomen’s time, the provincial Synod decided against the wishes of a Bishop of Gaza who wanted to bring the clergy of the Maiumites under his own authority, ruling that “although deprived of their civil privileges by a pagan king, they should not be deprived of those of the Church.”

In 400 A.D., then, the two cities were distinct, not joined nor merging into one another.

Jerome mentions it as “Maiumas, the emporium of Gaza, 7 miles from the desert on the way to Egypt by the sea.” Sozomen speaks of “Gaza by the sea, which they also call Maiumas.” Evagrius describes it as “that which they also call Maiumas, which is opposite the city Gaza,” and “a little city.”

Mark the Deacon (421 A.D.) says, “We sailed to the maritime portion of Gaza, which they call Maiumas.” Antoninus Martyr, around the close of the 6th century, wrote, “we came from Ascalon to Mazomates, and came from there, after a mile, to Gaza - that magnificent and lovely city.”

This perhaps explains how an anonymous Geographer, listing the places from Egypt to Tyre, says so distinctly, “after Rinocorura lies the new Gaza, being itself also a city; then the desert Gaza” (writing, we must suppose, after some of Gaza’s destructions). Jerome could also say with equal certainty: “The site of the ancient city scarcely yields the traces of foundations; but the city now seen was built in another place in place of that which fell.”

Keith, who explored the spot in 1844, found widespread traces of an extinct city. He reported:

“At seven furlongs from the sea, the numerous but minute remains of an ancient city are yet in many places to be found. Innumerable fragments of broken pottery, pieces of glass (some beautifully stained), and of polished marble, lie thickly spread in every level and hollow, at a considerable elevation and various distances, on a space of several square miles. In fifty different places they profusely lie, in a level space far firmer than the surrounding sands, from small patches to more open spaces of twelve or twenty thousand square yards.”

“The oblong sand-hill, greatly varied in its elevation and of an undulating surface, throughout which they recur, extends to the west and west-southwest from the sea nearly to the surroundings of modern Gaza. In attempts to cultivate the sand (in 1832) hewn stones were found near the old port. Remains of an old wall reached to the sea. Ten large fragments of wall were embedded in the sand.”

“About 2 miles off are fragments of another wall. Four intermediate fountains still exist, nearly entire, in a line along the coast, doubtless belonging to the ancient port of Gaza. For a short distance inland, the debris is less frequent, as if marking the space between it and the ancient city, but it again becomes plentiful in every hollow. About half a mile from the sea we saw three pedestals of beautiful marble. Holes are still to be seen from which hewn stones had been taken.”

On the other hand, since the old Ashkelon—like Gaza, Jamnia, and Ashdod—had a seaport town that belonged to it but was distinct from it (the city itself lying distinct and inland), and since there is no space for two distinct towns within the circuit of the Ashkelon of the Crusades (which is limited by the nature of the ground), it seems there is no choice but that the city of the Crusades, and the present ruins, must have been Maiumas Ascalon, the seaport.

The change could have occurred more readily because the title “port” was often omitted.

The new town obliterated the memory of the old, as Neapolis (Naples), on the shore, has taken the place of the inland city (whatever its name was). Similarly, Utrecht, it is said, has displaced the old Roman town, the remains of which are three miles off at Vechten; or Sichem is called Neapolis (Nablus), which yet was 3 miles off (Jerome).

Erriha is probably at least the second representative of the ancient Jericho; the Jericho of the New Testament, built by Herod, not being the Jericho of the prophets. The Corcyra of Greek history gave its name to the island; it is replaced by a Corfu in a different but near locality, which equally gives its name to the island now. The name of Venetia migrated with the inhabitants of the province, who fled from Attila, some 23 miles, to a few of the islands on the coast, to become again the name of a great republic.

In our own country, “Old Windsor” is said to have been the residence of the Saxon monarchs; the present Windsor was originally “New Windsor.” Old Sarum was the Cathedral city until the reign of Henry III. But, as the old towns decayed, the new towns came to be called Windsor or Sarum, though not the towns which first had the name. What is now called Shoreham, not many years ago, was called “New Shoreham,” in distinction from the neighboring village.

William of Tyre describes Ashkelon as “situated on the sea-shore, in the form of a semi-circle, whose chord or diameter lies on the sea-shore; but its circumference or arc on the land, looking east. The whole city lies as in a trench, all declining toward the sea, surrounded on all sides by raised mounds, on which are walls with numerous towers of solid masonry, the cement being harder than the stone, with walls of due thickness and of height proportionate; it is surmounted also with outer walls of the same solidity.” He then describes its four gates: east, north, and south toward Jerusalem, Gaza, and Joppa, respectively; and the west, called the sea-gate, because “by it the inhabitants have an egress to the sea.”

A modern traveler, whose description of the ruins exactly agrees with this, says, “the walls are built on a ridge of rocks that winds round the town in a semicircular direction and terminates at each end in the sea; the ground falls within the walls in the same manner that it does without, so that no part of it could be seen from the outside of the walls.”

“There is no bay nor shelter for shipping, but a small harbor advancing a little way into the town toward its eastern extremity seems to have been formed for the accommodation of such small craft as were used in the better days of the city.” The harbor, moreover, was larger during the Crusades and enabled Ascalon to receive supplies of corn from Egypt, thereby prolonging its siege. Sultan Bibars filled up the port and cast stones into the sea (1270 A.D.) and destroyed the remains of the fortifications, for fear that the Franks, after their treaty with the king of Tunis, should bring back their forces against Islamism and establish themselves there. Yet Abulfeda, who wrote a few years later, calls it “one of the Syrian ports of Islam.”

This city, so placed on the sea, and into which the sea also enters, cannot be the Ashkelon that had a port which was a town distinct from it. The Ascalon of the Philistines, which existed down into Christian times, must have been inland.

Benjamin of Tudela in the 12th century, who had been on the spot and is an accurate eyewitness, says, “From Ashdod are two parasangs to Ashkelonah; this is new Ashkelon which Ezra the priest built on the sea-shore, and they at first called it Benibra.” Jerome mentions another Benamerium, north of Zoar, now N’mairah (see Tristram, Land of Moab, p. 57).

A well in Ascalon is mentioned by Eusebius: “There are many wells (named) in Scripture and are yet shown in the country of Gerar, and at Ascalon” (see under φρέαρ (phrear)). William of Tyre says: “It has no fountains, either within the compass of the walls, or near it; but it abounds in wells, both within and without, which supply palatable water, fit for drinking.”

“For greater caution the inhabitants had built some cisterns within, to receive rain-water.” Benjamin of Tudela also says, “There in the midst of the city is a well which they call Beer Ibrahim-al-khalil (the well of Abraham the friend (of God)) which he dug in the days of the Philistines.” Keith mentions “20 fountains of excellent water opened up anew by Ibrahim Pasha” (p. 274), and it is distant from the old Ashkelon, which is desolate, four parasangs. When the old Ashkelon perished is unknown. If, as seems probable from some of the antiquities dug up, the Ashkelon at which Herod was born and which he beautified was the seaport town, commerce probably attracted to it gradually the inhabitants of the neighboring town of Ascalon, just as the population of Piraeus now exceeds that of Athens.

The present Ashkelon is a ghastly skeleton: all the framework of a city, but no one there. “The soil is good,” but the “peasants who cultivate it” prefer living outside in a small village of mud-huts, exposed to winds and sand-storms, because they think that God has abandoned it and that evil spirits (the Jinn and the Ghoul) dwell there.

Even the remains of antiquity, where they exist, belong to later times. A hundred men excavated in Ashkelon for 14 days in hopes of finding treasure there. They dug 18 feet below the surface and found marble shafts, a Corinthian capital, a colossal statue with a Medusa’s head on its chest, a marble pavement, and a white-marble pedestal. The excavation reached no Philistine Ashkelon.

“Broken pottery,” “pieces of glass,” “fragments of polished marble,” “of ancient columns, cornices etc.” were the relics of a Greek Gaza.

Though it is then a superfluity of fulfillment, and what can be found belongs to a later city, still what can be seen has an impressive correspondence with the words: Gaza is “forsaken”; for there are miles of fragments of some city connected with Gaza. The present Gaza occupies the southern half of a hill built with stone for the Moslem conquerors of Palestine. “Even the traces of its former existence, its vestiges of antiquity, are very rare; occasional columns of marble or gray granite, scattered in the streets and gardens, or used as thresholds at the gates and doors of houses, or laid upon the front of watering-troughs. One fine Corinthian capital of white marble lies inverted in the middle of the street.” These, then, belong to times later than Alexander, since whose days the very site of Gaza must have changed its aspect.

Ashkelon shall be a desolation - The site of the port of Ascalon was well chosen: strong, overhanging the sea, fenced from the land, stretching forth its arms toward the Mediterranean as if to receive in its bosom the wealth of the sea, yet shunned by the poor farmworkers around it. It lies in such a living death that it is “one of the most mournful scenes of utter desolation” which a traveler, “even in this land of ruins ever beheld.” But this too cannot be the Philistine city. The sands which are pressing hard upon the solid walls of the city, held back by them for the time, yet threatening to overwhelm “the spouse of Syria,” and which accumulated in the plain below, must have buried the old Ashkelon, since in this land, where old names so cling to the spot, there is no trace of it.

Ekron shall be uprooted - And at Akir and Esdud, “celebrated at present for its scorpions,” the few stones which remain, even of a later town, are but as gravestones to mark the burial place of departed greatness.

Jerome comments: “In like manner, all who glory in bodily strength and worldly power and say, ‘By the strength of my hand I have done it,’ shall be left desolate and brought to nothing in the day of the Lord’s anger.” And “the waster”—they who by evil words and deeds injure or destroy others and are an offense to them—these shall be cast out shamefully into outer darkness. Rupertus adds: “when the saints shall receive the fullest brightness” in the ‘mid-day’ of the Sun of Righteousness.

The judgment shall not be in darkness, except to them, but in mid-day, so that the justice of God shall be clearly seen, and darkness itself shall be turned into light, as was said to David, “You did this thing secretly, but I will do it before all Israel and before the sun” (2 Samuel 12:12). And our Lord said, “Whatever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which you have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops” (Luke 12:3). And Paul writes, “the Lord shall come, Who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart” (1 Corinthians 4:5). And “they who by seducing words in life or in doctrine uprooted others, shall be themselves rooted up” (Matthew 15:13).