Zephaniah 1
McGeeCHAPTER 1THEME: Judgment of Judah and Jerusalem
Zephaniah 1:1
Zephaniah identifies himself as being of the royal family. Hezekiah, king of Judah, was his great-great-grandfather. Zephaniah prophesied during the days of the reign of Josiah, which was the period of the last spiritual movement that took place in the southern kingdom of Judah. There was a revival during that timeit wasn’t a great one, it didn’t last long, but there was a revival. Zephaniah knew something of the reigns of Amon, an evil king, and of Manasseh, also a terrible king. He saw that judgment was coming upon his nation and upon his people, and his message is a very harsh one.
Zephaniah 1:2
This is certainly strong language. God says, “I intend to judge, and when I do, I will actually scrape the land. The land will be as if a dirt scraper had been run over it. Just as you wipe clean a dish, that is the way I intend to judge them.” As we move further into this prophecy, we will recognize that this judgment covers more than just the land of Israel. It is a worldwide devastation that is predicted here. The Book of Revelation confirms this and places the time of this judgment as the Great Tribulation period. During that period, this earth will absolutely be denuded by the judgments that will come upon it. This will occur right before God brings in the millennial Kingdom and renews the earth.
Zephaniah 1:3
“I will consume man and beast"all living creatures are included in this judgment. When I was in the land of Israel, I was told that they have a zoo somewhere up around the Sea of Galilee. They are making an effort to gather together the animals that were in existence in Bible days and to put them in this zoo. Obviously, as the population of Israel increases, the same thing will happen as has happened in the United States. Certain animal species will become extinct and disappear. God says that this is exactly what is going to happen when He judges that land. Many speciesin fact, all of themwill become extinct at that time. This is to be a very severe judgment.
Zephaniah 1:4
“I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” God now makes it clear that Judah and Jerusalem are to be singled out for judgment. “I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place.” The thing that brings the judgment of God upon the land is very specific"it is idolatry. In the prophecy of Habakkuk, God mentions five woes He was going to bring upon the people because of certain sins which they had committed. Idolatry was the last one; it was the fifth woe. But here Zephaniah narrows it down and puts his hand on idolatrythat is, false religion. The Scriptures, beginning with the Book of Judges, teach a philosophy of human government, which you will find was true of God’s people and which has been true of every nation. The first step in a nation’s decline is religious apostasy, a turning from the living and true God. The second step downward for a nation is moral awfulness. The third step downward is political anarchy. A great many people in the United States today think that our problem is in Washington, D.C.I don’t think so. Another group of people feel that if people could be reformed, if we could get people to act nicely, not be violent and not steal, if we could just lift our moral standards, then that would solve our problems. Again, I don’t think that is the problem. Very frankly, I believe that the problem in this country is religious apostasy. The problem is out yonder with you and right here with me. The problem is that the church has failed to give God’s message.
I am not talking about every church or your church necessarily. There are many Bible-teaching churches across this country which have wonderful pastors who are standing for Godand I thank God for them. But the great denominations, by and large, have now departed from the faith. They have come to the place where they no longer give an effective message to the nation. As a result, from this religious apostasy have flowed moral awfulness and political anarchy. If you think that this is just the wild raving of a fundamentalist preacher, you are wrong. Let me quote an excerpt from an editorial in a major metropolitan newspaper a number of years ago. Speaking of the failure of the churches to present any spiritual message whatsoever, the editorial concluded: This betrayal of Christ in the name of Christianity is one reason for the moral and spiritual malaise with which this country is afflicted. The melancholy fact is that the churches no longer influence the development of national character. People go to church mainly because of an impulse to participate in a service of worship, not because of any spiritual guidance they expect from the clergyman. What a note of condemnation this is! This is true not just of our nation but of every nation. The historian Gibbon concluded that there were five reasons for the decline and fall of Rome. Gibbon was not a Christian, but here is why he says Rome fell: (1) The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society. (2) Higher and higher taxes; the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace. (3) The mad craze for pleasure; sports becoming every year more exciting, more brutal, more immoral. (4) The building of great armaments when the great enemy was within; the decay of individual responsibility. (5) The decay of religion, fading into mere form, losing touch with life, losing power to guide the people. The message of Zephaniah carries out this scriptural principle of human government, and he puts his finger right down on the sore spot in the southern kingdom of Judahidolatry. Zephaniah saw what was happening. The people were now on the toboggan; they were on the way down and out, and judgment was coming. Idolatry is where every great nation has gone off the track. When a nation departs from the living and true God or when it gives up great moral principles which were based on religion, when it goes into idolatry, these factors eventually lead it into gross immorality and into political anarchy. The interesting thing is that three kinds of idolatry, I believe, are mentioned to us here. “I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place.” The first form of idolatry is the worship of Baal which was introduced into the northern kingdom by Jezebel whose father was the high priest of the worship among the Sidonians. In the southern kingdom, the worship of Baal was popularized and the altars of Baal were rebuilt during the reign of Manasseh. This is an instance which illustrates why it would be wonderful to study at the same time the corresponding portions of the prophetic and historical books of Scripture. At this point it would be helpful to read the background of the reign of Manasseh (see 2 Kings 21; 2 Chron. 33). No king ever departed as far from God as this man did. He reintroduced the worship of Baal, which was a very immoral form of worship.
Along with the worship of Baal was worship of Ashtoreth. When the female principal is introduced in deity, you have gross immorality; and that, of course, came into the life of the nation during this period. Baal worship was a form, therefore, of nature worship and was very crude indeed. When Josiah became king (he was a good king), the first thing he did was to try to remove the worship of Baal. “And the name of the Chemarims with the priests.” Chemarims actually means “black priests"they wore black garments. Have you noticed that those who engage in the worship of Satan today don black garments? It is quite interesting that it is not original with them. It comes all the way down from these idolatrous priests who wore black robes. Zephaniah says that these priests are to be judged.
Zephaniah 1:5
“And them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops.” Zephaniah now mentions the second form of idolatry that became prevalent in that land. It was more subtle and very dangerous indeed. Their housetops were flatthat is true even today in the land of Israel. It is the place where the family gathered in the evening. In fact, God gave a law about putting a banister, a railing, around the roof so that no one would fall off. Zephaniah says that the housetop became a place of worship, and you can see how idolatry was moving into the homes. It meant that actually every home was a little heathen temple where idolatry was practiced; idolatry was really reaching into the homes. “Them that worship the host of heaven"the sun, the moon, the stars. It was a worship of the creature rather than the Creator. They worshiped that which had been made rather than worshiping the Creator. This was the second form of idolatry which they adopted. The worst, the most sophisticated, and the most subtle of all the forms of idolatry, is the one that is mentioned next"and them that worship and that swear by the LORD, and that swear by Malcham.” Malcham is the name of Molech, the god of the Ammonites. It was a worship in which they actually sacrificed their children. The subtlety of it was that at the same time they professed to worship the living and true God. They went to the temple. They said that they knew the Lord, that they believed in God. But they also worshiped Molechthey were doing both. This is the subtle thing that is also taking place today. There are many so-called churches that by the wildest stretch of the imagination could never be called Christian churches. The true church is built around a person, and that person is Jesus Christ. The early church met together to worship and adore Him, to come to know Him, and to have fellowship around Him. Everything they did pointed to Jesus Christ. How many churches do you know of where Christ is not even mentioned?
If He is mentioned, He is mentioned in a derogatory manner. In other words, His deity is denied. They deny that He is God. They do not worship Him, but they give lip service to Him. They talk about the teachings of Jesus and about what a wonderful man He was. They even call Him a “superstar”!
But they deny everything that has been set down in the Scriptures for us as Christians. It is a castrated Christianity that is abroad today. This is the kind of subtle idolatry that was coming up in the land of Judah in that day. People were still going through the rituals, still going to the temple on the Sabbath. I don’t think they came any other time, but they were there then. However, they were actually worshiping Molech. Molech was the god of the flesh. It was a fleshly worshipagain, there was gross immorality.
Likewise today, there are those who go to churchthey have a churchianity but not a Christianity. They deny the great facts of the Christian faith. They practice immorality, or they practice things that are contrary to the Word of God. This is the picture of Judah in that day, and it is the subtlety of the hour in which we live. A great many people think that if a building has a steeple on it, a bell in that steeple, an organ, a big center aisle for weddings, a pulpit down front, and a choir loft, these make it a church. My friend, it may be one of the worst spots in town!
It may be worse than any barroom, any gambling establishment, or any brothel in town. This is the thing that is so deceptive. The thing that undermined the nation of Judah is that they pretended that they were serving the living and true God, but they were giving themselves over to Molech idolatry.
Zephaniah 1:6
The people have turned completely from God. Two classes are mentioned: backsliders and those who were never saved.
Zephaniah 1:7
“Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD.” The suggestion is, “Hush, hush. Don’t talk out. Don’t speak out. No protesting. You are in the presence of the living God.” There is a great lack of reverence for God today. This notion that Jesus is sort of a buddy, that God is the man upstairs, and that we can be very flippant when we speak of Him, is all wrong. May I say to you, our God is a holy God. If you and I were to come within a billion miles of Him, we would fall down on our faces before Him because of who He is. He is the great God, the Creator of the universe, and we are merely little creatures. “Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD.” Why? “For the day of the LORD is at hand.” This is the first mention of the Day of the Lord in this book. The Day of the Lord is presented here primarily as the time of judgment. If you want to fit it into God’s program, it is the Great Tribulation periodthat is when it begins. Today, you and I are living in the day of Christ, the day of grace. The Day of the Lord will begin when the church leaves this earth. Then God will begin to move in judgment. Prior to that day, which is still in the future, there have been times which have been likened unto the Day of the Lord. When Nebuchadnezzar finally came and destroyed Jerusalem, burned it to the ground, and plowed it under, he left that land denuded. If you go to that land today, there are very few trees. Oh, I know that Israel has planted millions of trees, but you see barren hills everywhere. At one time those hills were all covered with trees and vineyards. It was a land of milk and honey, but it is not that today.
There is still evidence of that which the enemy did. The Babylonians who came under Nebuchadnezzar were followed later by the Medo-Persians, then Alexander the Great, and finally the Romans. Enemy after enemy has come into that land. As a result, very few trees are left, and the land is almost completely denuded today. God made it very clear that that was what He was going to doand He did it. The evidence is still there today.
That judgment was for those people “the day of the LORD,” but it does not completely satisfy these prophecies. Zephaniah makes it very clear that the Day of the Lord is that day which is yet in the future and which will be consummated when Christ comes and establishes His Kingdom here upon this earth. With almost biting sarcasm, Zephaniah says, “For the LORD hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests.” The guests are going to be the sacrifice, by the way, and the sacrifice is the judgment that is coming upon this nation.
Zephaniah 1:8
The thought here is that the rulers had turned away from God. All you have to do is to refer to the time when Zedekiah reigned. He was the last of the kings, and he actually saw his own children killed right before his eyes, and then his own eyes were put out (see 2 Kings 24-25). That was surely harsh judgment, but they had had the warning from God. To these people, this was like the Day of the Lord.
Zephaniah 1:9
Dr. Charles Feinberg (Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Malachi, p. 48) writes, “What is referred to is the zeal with which the servants of the rich hastened from their homes to plunder the property of others to enrich their masters.” There were those who would take over the land and the homes of the poor. What was happening in that day was that the great middle class disappeared and you had the extreme rich and the extreme poor. The same thing is certainly happening in my own country today. God says to these people that He is going to judge them for this.
Zephaniah 1:10
“And it shall come to pass in that day"this is clearly a reference to the Day of the Lord. “That there shall be the noise of a cry from the fish gate.” The fish gate is what is known today as the Damascus Gate. It was the gate through which they brought the fish from the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. It is located on the north side of the city of Jerusalem. “And an howling from the second, and a great crashing from the hills.” The Damascus Gate today is down in a rather low place. If you are acquainted with Jerusalem, you know that the city is surrounded by hills. Zephaniah is saying that in any direction you would want to move, there will be this wailing of the people when the time of judgment has come upon them.
Zephaniah 1:11
Maktesh means “mortar.” There is supposed to have been a depression in the city of Jerusalem where the marketplace was situated. It was perhaps the cheesemakers’ valley. It was the valley that went alongside the temple where the Wailing Wall is todaywhich is a good place for it. “Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh, for all the merchant people are cut down; all they that bear silver are cut off.”
Zephaniah 1:12
“And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles.” In other words, it is like taking a flashlight and going to look for an individual who is hiding in the dark. God says, “I intend to search out Jerusalem just like that. I will bring to light all the evil and the sin.” “And punish the men that are settled on their lees.” This is an idiomatic expression that corresponds, I think, to our idiom today when we say, “Take it easy.” These people were taking it easy. They did not believe they would be judged any more than people today believe that we are to be judged as a nation. “That say in their heart, The LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil.” They are saying, “God’s doing nothing. God is not going to do anything about it.” Habakkuk’s question was, “Why don’t you do something about the evil, Lord?” God told him, “I am doing something.” And when Habakkuk was given a vision and saw what God was really doing, he cried out to God for mercy for the people. A great many people today say, “I’ll ignore God. He doesn’t do good. He doesn’t do evil.” They are absolutely neutral about God. This type of thinking, of course, is what led to the abominable theology that God is dead.
Only a society like ours could have produced that kind of theology, because people in an affluent society say, “We don’t need God at all.” As a result, they think that He doesn’t do good, He doesn’t do evil, He doesn’t do anything. But they are greatly mistaken, and Zephaniah is going to make that very clear to us.
Zephaniah 1:13
“Therefore their goods shall become a booty.” The goods which they took by plundering and pillaging and robbing are going to be taken away from them in just the same way as they got them. “And their houses a desolation"in other words, there would be ghost towns in Israel. “They shall also build houses, but not inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof.” God had given a law to these people that when a man planted a vineyard, he was not to go to war until he had eaten the fruit of that vineyard. Another law said that if a man married, he was to be excused from going to war for a year. Here God is saying that they are going to plant vineyards, but they are not going to drink the wine of them because they have sinned. They won’t be able to take time off from warfare. Neither will they be able to take time off when they get married because the enemy is going to come in like a flood.
Zephaniah 1:14
“The great day of the LORD is near.” This great Day of the Lord is the time of the Great Tribulation in the future. In Zephaniah’s day, after Josiah ruled, there never arose in the southern kingdom another good king. Every one of them was bad. Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiahevery one of them was a corrupt king. Now judgment is going to come upon the nation and upon the people for their departure from God. But they are going to experience only a very small portion of what is in the future in the great Day of the Lord. Zephaniah says, “It is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the LORD: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly.” In other words, the concept of the Wailing Wall would come into existence. And it is going to be there until after the Great Tribulation period because Israel will never know peace until the Prince of Peace comes and they acknowledge their Messiah.
Zephaniah 1:15
Dr. Charles Feinberg is an excellent Hebrew scholar, and he calls our attention to many things that you and I would normally pass over. I would highly recommend to you his work on the minor prophets. There is a play upon words in this verse that Dr. Feinberg brings out which we miss in the English, of course: “The Hebrew words for wasteness and desolationsho’ah and umesho’ahare alike in sound to convey the monotony of the destruction.” But we do have in the English an alliteration that reveals something of it. It is a day of trouble, then distress, desolation, darkness, and thick darkness, so that there is a play upon words even in the English. Zephaniah is speaking here of the harshness, the intensity of the judgment that is coming, and the question naturally arises: How can a God of love do a thing like this? We will find before we finish our study of this book that it is like the story I told in the Introduction of the father who took his little child to the surgeon to be operated upon. The picture can be presented in such a way that it looks like he is being cruel and harsh to bring her to the doctor who will plunge his knife into her. But actually, everything the father did was out of love for his little girl. Even the great day of wrath is a judgment of God, but it has in it the love of God. Regardless of what takes place, God is love.
It is like the farmer who had on his barn the weather vane which said on it, GOD IS LOVE. The farmer explained it by saying, “Regardless of which way the wind blows, God is love.” That is true, my friend. Even in judgment, God is still a God of love. And He judges because it is essential for Him to judge that which is evil. He does that because He has to be true to Himself, and He could not be good to His creatures unless He did that. If God is going to permit sin throughout eternity, if God does not intend to judge sin, if you and I are going to have to wrestle with disease and with heartbreak and with disappointment and with sorrow throughout eternity, I cannot conceive that He is a God of love. But if you tell me that God is going to judge sin, that He is coming in with a mighty judgment, and that He is going to remove sin from His universe, I’m going to say, “Hallelujah!” And I will believe that He is a God of love even when He does that.
Zephaniah 1:16
When God gave to the nation Israel the trumpets that they were to blow on the wilderness march, there were several ways in which they were to be used. Having mentioned the different ways the two silver trumpets were to be used, the Lord says in Num_10:9, “And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.” Zephaniah says here that it is “a day of the trumpet”; they are going to blow the alarm, but God does not intend to deliver them. Why? He intended to judge them. He intends to deliver them over to the enemy, not deliver them from the enemy. It is to be “A day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers.”
Zephaniah 1:17
This is extreme judgment, I’ll grant you. But, you know, surgery today is extreme. After my doctor operated on me the first time for cancer, I was asking him about the operation. He told me, “I cut on you until there was almost a question as to which pile was McGee!” It’s a pretty harsh thing to cut on a fellow like that, but my doctor didn’t do it because he was angry with me. He didn’t do it even in judgment. He did it actually to save my life, and I believe that on the human level he did save my life by that severe method. May I say to you, God will judge, and He does it in an extreme way. He does extreme surgery, but He does it for the sake of the body politic.
Zephaniah 1:18
It has been quite interesting that this nation in which I live has spent billions of dollars throughout the world trying to buy friends, trying to win friends and influence people. But we are hated throughout the world todaywe are not loved. You cannot buy love; you cannot win people over with silver and gold. But in this country we still believe that money solves all the ills of this life, that money is the answer to all the problems. God says that when He begins to judge, “neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD’s wrath.” “But the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.” God removed them from the land. Why did He do that? He did that because He loved them. If He had not done it, it would have been necessary to exterminate totally succeeding generations. For the sake of the future generationsso not all would have to be slainGod had to move in and cut away the cancer of sin that was destroying the nation.