Albert Barnes Commentary Zephaniah 3:7

"I said, Only fear thou me; receive correction; so her dwelling shall not be cut off, [according to] all that I have appointed concerning her: but they rose early and corrupted all their doings." — Zephaniah 3:7 (ASV)

I said, surely you will fear Me - God speaks of things here as they are in their own nature. It was inevitable that, in the very presence of the Hand of God—destroying others but still sparing them—they must learn to fear Him. They must stand in awe of Him for His judgments on others; they must be in filial fear of Him for His loving longsuffering toward themselves. “You will receive instruction,” corrected and taught through God’s correction of others and the lighter judgments on themselves, as Solomon says, “I looked, I set my heart: I saw, I received instruction” (Proverbs 24:32). He says, “receive,” making it man’s free act. God brings it near, commends it to him, exhorts, entreats, but leaves him the awful power to “receive” or to refuse.

God speaks with a wonderful tenderness. “Surely you will stand in awe of Me; you will receive instruction; you will now do what until now you have refused to do.” There was (so to speak) nothing else left for them, in sight of those judgments. He pleads their own interests. The lightning was ready to fall. The prophet had, in vision, seen the enemy within the city. Yet even now God lingers, as it were, “If you had known in this your day, the things which are for your peace” (Luke 19:42).

So their - (her) dwelling should not be cut off—His own holy land which He had given them. A Jew paraphrases, “And He will not cut off their dwellings from the land of the house of My Shechinah” (God’s visible presence in glory). Judah, who was before addressed “you,” is now spoken of in the third person, “her;” and this also had wonderful tenderness. It is as though God were musing over her and the blessed fruits of her return to Him: “it shall not be needed to correct her further.”

“Howsoever I punished them”—literally, “all” (that is, ‘all’ the offenses) “which I visited upon her,” as God says of Himself, “‘visiting’ the ‘sins’ of the fathers ‘upon’ the children” (Exodus 20:5; Exodus 34:7; Numbers 14:18)—and this is mostly the meaning of the words “visit upon.” Amid and notwithstanding all the offenses which God had already chastised, He, in His love and compassion, still longs not utterly to remove them from His presence, if they would but receive instruction “now”; but they would not.

“How often,” our Lord says, “would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not” (Matthew 23:37).

“But indeed”—“probably, truly” (it is a word strongly affirming what follows)—“they rose early, they corrupted all their doings.” God gave them His warnings and awaited the result. They lost no time; they began with morning light. They hastened to rise, burdened themselves, and made sure of having the whole day before them—to seek God as He had sent His prophets, “rising early and sending them?” (Jeremiah 7:13; Jeremiah 7:25; Jeremiah 11:7; Jeremiah 26:5; Jeremiah 29:19).

No, nor even simply to do wrong, but with set purpose: to do, not this or that corruptly, but “to corrupt all their doings.” Jerome: “They with diligence and eagerness rose early, that, with the same haste with which they ought to have returned to Me, they might show forth in deed what they had conceived amiss in their mind.” There are as many aggravations of their sin as there are words. The four Hebrew words bespeak eagerness, willfulness, completeness, and enormity in sin. They “rose early,” themselves deliberately “corrupted,” of their own mind made offensive, “all” their “doings”—not slight acts, but “deeds,” great works done with a high hand.