Albert Barnes Commentary Zephaniah 3

The “woe,” having gone around the pagan nations, again circles back to where it began: Jerusalem that killed the prophets and stoned those that were sent unto her (Matthew 23:37). Woe upon her, and joy to the holy Jerusalem—the new Jerusalem (Revelation 3:12; Revelation 21:10), the Jerusalem which is from above, the mother of us all—conclude this prophecy.

Both aspects are presented figuratively: her destruction and that of the whole earth, in time, are the emblem of eternal death; and the love of God is the foretaste of endless joy in Him.

Woe – Rebellious and polluted; you oppressive city! The address is all the more abrupt, and bursts more forcefully upon her, because the prophet does not name her. He uses as her proper name—not her own name, city of peace—but rebellious, polluted; then he sums it up in one phrase: you oppressive city!

Jerusalem’s sin is threefold: actively rebelling against God, then inwardly defiled by sin, and finally cruel to man. Thus, toward God, in herself, and toward man, she is wholly turned to evil—not in passing acts, but in her abiding state:

1. Rebellious
2. Defiled
3. Oppressive

She is known only by what she has become and by what has been done for her in vain. She is rebellious, and so she had the law; she is defiled, and so she had been cleansed; and therefore, her state is all the more hopeless.

She did not obey the Voice - of God, by the law or the prophets, teaching her His ways; and when, disobeying, He chastened her, “she did not receive correction,” and when He increased His chastisements, she, in the declining age of the state and deepening evil, did not turn to Him, as in the time of the judges, nor cease to do evil.

In the Lord she did not trust - but in Assyria or Egypt or her idols.

Our practical relation to God is summed up in the four words, “Mis-trust self; trust God.” Man reverses this, and when “self-trust” has of course failed him, then he “mistrusts God.”

“Such people rarely ask of God what they hope they may obtain from man. They strain every nerve of their soul to obtain what they want; they canvass, flatter, fawn, bribe, court favor; and turn to God when all human help fails. They would be indebted not to God, but to their own diligence. For the more they receive from God, the less, they see, they can exalt their own diligence, the more they are bound to thank God and obey Him more strictly.”

To her God she did not draw near - even in trouble, when all draw near to Him who are not wholly alien from Him. She did not draw near by repentance, by faith, hope, or love, or by works fitting for repentance, but in heart remained far from Him.

And yet He was “her” own “God,” as He had shown Himself in times past, who does not change while we change; is faithful to us while we fail Him; is still our God while we forget Him; “waits, to have mercy upon us;” shines on us while we interpose our earth-born clouds between us and Him.

Dionysius writes: “Not in body nor in place, but spiritually and inwardly do we approach the uncircumscribed God,” acknowledging Him as our Father, to whom we daily say Our Father.

The prophet, having declared the wickedness of the whole city, recounts how those in both Church and state—the ministers of God in each sphere—who should have corrected the evil, themselves aggravated it. It is not enemies from outside who destroy her, but Her princes within her - in the very midst of the flock, whom they should, in God’s place, “feed with a true heart,” destroy her as they please, having no protection against them. Her judges are evening wolves ; these, who should in the Name of God redress all grievances and wrongs, are themselves like wild beasts when most driven by famine. They gnaw not the bones until the morrow or on the morrow (literally, in the morning). They reserve nothing until the morning light but do the works of darkness in darkness, shrinking from the light, and, in extreme rapacity, devouring at once the whole substance of the poor.

As Isaiah says, Thy princes are rebellious and companions of thieves (Isaiah 1:23), and The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of His people and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard: the spoil of the poor is in your houses (Isaiah 3:14).

And Ezekiel states, Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves, ravening the prey to shed blood, to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain (Ezekiel 22:27).

Her prophets are light—boiling and bubbling up, like water boiling over, empty boasters claiming the gift of prophecy, which they do not have; “boldly and rashly pouring out what they willed as they willed;” promising good things which will not be. So they are “her” prophets, to whom they prophesy smooth things , “the prophets of this people” not the prophets of God; “treacherous persons” (literally, men of treacheries) wholly given to manifold treacheries against God in whose Name they spoke and to the people whom they deceived.

Jerome: “They spoke as if from the mouth of the Lord and uttered everything against the Lord.” The leaders of the people, those who profess to lead it aright, Isaiah says, are its misleaders (Isaiah 9:15; Isaiah 9:16 in English). Your prophets, Jeremiah says, have seen vain and foolish things for you; they have seen for you false visions and causes of banishment (Lamentations 2:14).

Her priests have polluted her sanctuary—Literally, “holiness,” and so holy rites, persons (Ezra 8:28), things, places (as the sanctuary), sacrifices.

All these they polluted, being themselves polluted. They polluted first themselves, then the holy things which they handled, handling them as they should not: carelessly and irreverently, not as ordained by God; turning them to their own use and self-indulgence, instead of the glory of God. Then they polluted them in the eyes of the people, making them to abhor the offering of the Lord (1 Samuel 2:17), since, living scandalously, they themselves regarded the Ministry entrusted to them by God so lightly.

Their office was to put difference between holy and unholy and between clean and unclean, and to teach the children all the statutes which the Lord has spoken to them by Moses (Leviticus 10:10–11); that they should sanctify themselves and be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy (Leviticus 11:44; Leviticus 19:2, etc.).

But they on the contrary, God says by Ezekiel, have done violence to My law and have profaned My holy things; they have made no difference between holy and profane, and have taught none between clean and unclean (Ezekiel 22:26). “Holy” and “unholy” being the contradictory of each other, these changed what God had hallowed into its exact contrary. It was not a mere shortcoming, but an annihilation (so to speak) of God’s purposes.

Cyril: “The priests of the Church then must keep strict watch, not to profane holy things. There is not one mode only of profaning them, but many and diverse. For priests should be purified both in soul and body, and to cast aside every form of abominable pleasure. Rather, they should be resplendent with zeal in well-doing, remembering what Paul says, Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16).”

They have oppressed, done violence, to the law—Openly violating it; or straining it, or secretly wresting and using its forms to wrong and violence, as in the case of Naboth and of Him, of whom Naboth to this extent bore the image. We have a law, and by our law He ought to die (John 19:7).

Law exists to restrain human violence; these reversed God’s ordinances. Violence and law changed places: first, they did violence to the majesty of the law, which was the very voice of God, and then, through profaning it, did violence to man.

In this, they were forerunners of those who, when Christ came, transgressed the commandment of God, and made it of none effect by their traditions (Matthew 15:6); omitting also the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy and faith; full of extortion and excess! (Matthew 23:23, Matthew 23:25).

But, besides these “evening wolves in the midst of her,” there stands Another “in the midst of her,” whom they did not know, and so, very near to them although they would not draw near to Him. He was near to behold all the iniquities which they did in the very city and place called by His Name and in His very presence. He was in her to protect, foster her with a father’s love, but she, presuming on His mercy, had cast it off. And so He was near to punish, not to deliver; as a Judge, not as a Saviour.

Dionysius writes: “God is everywhere, Who says by Jeremiah, I fill heaven and earth (Jeremiah 23:24). But since, as Solomon attests, The Lord is far from the wicked (Proverbs 15:29), how is He said here to be in the midst of these most wicked men?”

“Because the Lord is far from the wicked, as regards the presence of love and grace; still in His Essence He is everywhere, and in this way He is equally present to all.”

The Lord is in its midst; He will not do iniquity. Dionysius explains: “Since He is the primal rule and measure of all righteousness, therefore from the very fact that He does anything, it is just, for He cannot do amiss, being essentially holy. Therefore He will give to every man what he deserves. Therefore we chant, The Lord is upright, and there is no unrighteousness in Him (Psalms 92:15).” Justice and injustice, purity and impurity, cannot be together.

God’s presence then must destroy the sinners, if not the sin. He was “in the midst of them” to sanctify them, giving them His judgments as a pattern for theirs. He will not do iniquity; but if they did not heed it, the judgment would fall upon themselves. It would be for God to become such an one as themselves (Psalms 50:21), and to connive at wickedness, if He were to spare at last the impenitent.

Every morning—(literally, “in the morning, in the morning”)—He brings His judgment to light one after another, quickly, openly, daily, continually, bringing all secret things, all works of darkness, to light. As He said to David, Thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun (2 Samuel 12:12).

Does He bring His judgments to light so that no sin should be hidden in the brightness of His Light? As He said by Hosea, Thy judgments are a light which goeth forth.

Cyril states: “Morning by morning, He shall execute His judgments, that is, in bright day and visibly, not restraining His anger, but bringing it forth in the midst, and making it conspicuous, and, as it were, setting in open vision what He had foreannounced.” Day by day God gives some warning of His judgments.

By chastisements which are felt to be His on this side or on that, or all around, He gives examples which speak to the sinner’s heart. He faileth not.

As God said by Habakkuk, His promises, although they seem to “linger,” were not “behind” the real time, which lay in the Divine Mind (Habakkuk 2:3). So, conversely, neither are His judgments; His hand is never missing at the appointed time.

But the unjust—he whose very being and character is “iniquity,” the exact contrary to what he had said of the perfection of God, Who doth not iniquity, or as Moses had taught them in his song, all His ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He (Deuteronomy 32:4)—this one knoweth no shame.

As God says by Jeremiah, Thou refusedst to be ashamed (Jeremiah 3:3). Similarly, They were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush (Jeremiah 6:15; Jeremiah 8:12).

Even so, they would not be ashamed of their sins, that they might be converted and God might heal them (Isaiah 6:10).