Albert Barnes Commentary Zephaniah 3:17

"Jehovah thy God is in the midst of thee, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love; he will joy over thee with singing." — Zephaniah 3:17 (ASV)

The Lord your God in the midst of you is mighty; He will save—What then can He not do for you, since He is Almighty? What will He not do for you, since “He will save”? Whom then should we fear? If God be for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31).

But He was especially “in the midst of” us then, when God the Word became flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and Truth (John 1:14). From then on He always is in the midst of His own.

He with the Father and the Holy Spirit come unto them and make Their abode with them (John 14:23), so that they are “the temple of God.” He will save, as He says, My Father is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand.

I and My Father are One (John 10:29–30). Concerning the same time of Christ, Isaiah says almost in the same words: Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees, Say to them that are of a feeble heart, Be strong, fear not, behold your God will come, He will come and save you (Isaiah 35:3–4); and of the Holy Trinity, He will save us (Isaiah 33:22).

He will rejoice over you with joy—Love, joy, peace in man are shadows of that which is in God, by whom they are created in man. Only in God do they exist undivided, uncreated. Therefore, God speaks in the manner of men, concerning that which truly is in God.

God rejoices “with an uncreated joy” over the works of His Hands or the objects of His Love, as man rejoices over the object of “his” love. So Isaiah says, As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee (Isaiah 62:5).

As with uncreated love the Father rests in good pleasure in His well-beloved Son, so God is well-pleased with the sacrifices of loving deeds (Hebrews 13:16); and, the Lord delighteth in thee (Isaiah 62:4); and, I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in My people (Isaiah 65:19); and, the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good (Deuteronomy 30:9). And so in a twofold way God meets the longing of the heart of man.

The soul, until it has found God, is always seeking some love to fill it, and can find none, since the love of God Alone can content it. Then too it longs to be loved, even as it loves. God tells it that every feeling and expression of human love may be found in Him; if anyone loves Him, one only loves Him, because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Every inward and outward expression or token of love is heaped together to express the love of Him who broods and, as it were, yearns “over” (it is twice repeated) His own whom He loves. Then too He loves you as He bids you to love Him. Since the love of man cannot be like the love of the Infinite God, He here pictures His own love in the words of man’s love, to convey to its soul the oneness with which love unites it to God.

He here echoes, in a manner, the joy of the Church, to which He had called her (1 John 4:14), in words that are the very same or mean the same.

We have “joy” here for “joy” there; “singing,” or the unuttered, unutterable jubilee of the heart, which cannot express in words its joy and love, and rejoices and loves all the more in its inmost depths because it cannot express it.

This is a shadow of the unutterable, because Infinite, Love of God, and this is repeated three times, as representing the eternal love of the Ever-blessed Trinity.

This love and joy the prophet speaks of is an exuberant joy, one which bounds within the inmost self. Again, it is wholly “silent in His love,” as the deepest, tenderest, most yearning love broods over the object of its love, yet is held still in silence by the very depth of its love.

Then, again, it breaks forth in outward motion, leaps for joy, and utters what it cannot form in words. For truly, the love of God in its unspeakable love and joy is past belief, past utterance, past thought.

Rup.: “Truly that joy with which He will be silent in His love, that exultation with which He will joy over thee with singing, Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man (1 Corinthians 2:9).”

The Hebrew word also contains the meaning, “He in His love shall make no mention of past sins, He shall not bring them up against you, shall not upbraid you, indeed, shall not remember them” (Jeremiah 31:34; Jeremiah 33:8; Micah 7:18). It also may express the still, unvarying love of the Unchangeable God.

And again, know that the very silence of God, when He seems not to hear (as He did not seem to hear Paul), is a very fruit of His love. Yet that entire forgiveness of sins and that seeming absence are but ways of showing His love.

Therefore, God speaks of His very love itself, He will be silent in His love, as, before and after, He will rejoice, He will joy over thee.

In the next few verses, Zephaniah 3:18-21, still continuing the number “three,” the prophecy closes with the final reversal of all which, in this imperfect state of things, seems turned upside down: when those who now mourn shall be comforted, those who now bear reproach and shame shall have glory, and those who now afflict the people of God shall be undone.