Zephaniah 3
RileyZephaniah 3:1-19
—OR THE AND Zephaniah 1:1 to Zephaniah 3:19A RECENT writer says, “The Book of Zephaniah is one of the most difficult in the prophetic canon.” And then he proceeds to show that its text is damaged, that it has unusual grammatical forms and phrases; its date difficult; and it is probably corrupted by interpolations, etc! On the contrary, we believe the Book of Zephaniah presents fewer problems than almost any other of the Minor Prophets. No man reading it but will be impressed with the remarkable unity and harmony of the composition, the splendid dignity of the style, the accurate predictions of impending judgments, and the clear Apocalyptic vision vouchsafed to the author.His family history, and the time of his writing, are as plainly stated as the Prophet’s pen could write them. “The Word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah”, is the marvelous introduction. In that single phrase we have the unmistakable claim of inspiration, “The Word of the Lord”. The Prophet is not dealing in original productions, but passing on Divinely given sentences, “Which came unto Zephaniah”. He is not telling what visions others have had, or what heavenly words others have heard; he is reporting information at first hand; he is saying, “God has spoken to me, and that directly.” He is declaring his office of Prophet, “As God spake to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, and to Ezekiel, and to Hosea, and to Obadiah, and others so God has spoken to me.” “And if you want to know who I am,” he adds, “I am the fourth generation from Hizkiah, the king.
My father was Cushi, his father Gedaliah, Gedaliah’s father was Amariah, and Amariah was the son of Hizkiah. I belong to a royal household.” How marvelous!
Let us remark, in passing, that God despises all our little paper-partitions of society. Two lessons ago we were speaking of Micah, the Morashthite—the villager, the man of whose family nothing was known; who boasted no royal blood, but confessed himself to belong to the common people—and he was God’s Prophet! God is not shut up to the rich when He wants to select a Prophet. Today we deal with Zephaniah, God’s Prophet—the descendant of a king. God is not shut up to the houses of the poor, when He wants to raise up for Himself a spokesman. And, lest the critics to come should dislocate Zephaniah’s utterance and by processes of reasoning as strange as specious, set Zephaniah in an age to which he did not belong, he writes, “These things belong to the days of Josiah, king of Judah” and forever fixes the date definitely—the time of that good king’s adminstration, between the years 642 and 611 B.
C.Now that we know whence this man received his message, what his name was, to what house he belonged, and in what period of the world’s history he wrote, let us pass on to consider his message. It opens withTHE OF JUDEA “I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. “I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling-blocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord. “I will also stretch out Mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarims with the priests; “And them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship and that swear by the Lord, and that swear by Malcham; “And them that are turned back from the Lord; and those that have not sought the Lord, nor enquired for Him. “Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God: for the day of the Lord is at hand: for the Lord hath prepared a sacrifice, He hath bid His guests. “And it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord’s sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel. “In the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their masters’ houses with violence and deceit” (Zephaniah 1:2-9). It is God’s sentence against sin. Nothing else would ever tempt such words from the lips of the Living God. He is not one who delights in anathemas; He is not one who finds pleasure in boasting His power; He is not one who is tempted to hurl His thunderbolts of judgment just because they are subject to His commands. There are some men in the world for whom position is dangerous because they proceed immediately to employ their power in crushing their competitors, or scourging their enemies. There are some men in the world who, if they were put on the police force and felt that they had the city government back of them, would employ a billy on half the men they meet; the innocent are as likely to fall victim to their stroke as are the guilty.But Jesus Christ, who was the express image of the Father, God incarnate, in the flesh, showed another disposition altogether. You will remember that when Judas came, and with him a great multitude, to take Jesus, and they laid hands on Him,—“Behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear. “Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into its place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels”? And then, with such power at His command, Christ calls not for a one of them; on the contrary He calmly contains Himself, when He knew that the easiest thing in the world to accomplish was the crushing of His opponents. But with all of His ability at consuming them He struck not a blow, uttered not a sentence of judgment! That is the image of the Father. Sin, and sin alone, brings from Him such sentences as this, “I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heavens, etc.”We have not yet learned the meaning of the Apostle when he spoke of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. It is the one thing, and the only thing in all the universe of God that rouses His anger, stirs His wrath, and against which He speaks a consuming sentence.
When we realize this, it ought to result in our searching to see if there be any evil way in us. It ought to send us on a heart-investigation to find if one black spot is there.
The Mohammedans have the saying, “In every human being there are two black spots of sin”, and a story to the effect that their great Prophet Mahomet was not originally free from this common lot of man; but an angel was sent to take his heart and squeeze these black drops out of it, and that that was the secret of his holiness and success. That mystical legend contains a lesson men ought to learn, for even the heathen seem to understand that sin is the one thing God will not abide, and against which His sentence is ever sure.God particularizes the points of their offense. He tells the people of Judah that they are guilty of idolatry, and the neglect of the Lord. He remarks upon the luxury of their princes, and the violence and deceit of their peasants. He calls attention to the prosperity which has fruited in insolence on the part of the people. Baal-worship was in the midst of them.
They were also bowing down to the hosts of heaven and swearing by Malcham. The princes, the king’s children, were running after the fashions, and the worldlings about them, while the rich filled their houses with violence and deceit.It has been interesting to me to note that God never executes judgment against people without reviewing for them their offenses.
What an exhibition of His perfect justice! One might say, “God saw all this; God knew the evil of it all, and if He executed dreadful judgment in silence, He would be justified. No, that is not the part of the Judge! He may know that the man on trial before him is guilty; he may know all the criminal steps which he took in coming to the court; he may know that he deserves severe punishment, but he has no right to sentence him without reviewing the whole crime in the presence of the guilty man, that he may see himself also as he is seen of others. I do not suppose that these people of Judea appreciated to what depths they had fallen until Jehovah exploited their iniquities at the lips of Zephaniah. Satan has a custom of blind-folding his subjects so that as they descend they shall not see just why they are going down, nor yet how rapidly.
One of the greatest preachers of the past century remarked, “I think that men in evil courses are all like persons who go down winding stairs. The upper stairs hide the lower ones, so that they can see only three or four steps before them.
Men go down courses of pleasure and vice and crime, seeing only one or two steps in a whole career. And so each step is a slight one; although the whole of their career may be monstrous there is no one single point of it, clear down to its very last stages that excites their conscience, or raises their fear. * * They are gradually demoralized and carried down.” And I seriously question whether all of them know the way by which they came, or the depths to which they have descended. And yet, when at last their monstrous characters call for such a sentence as is here pronounced, God proposes that they shall see themselves as He has seen them, and so He reviews the whole history of their descent, and dwells, in passing, upon the malignant, growing offense. Not that He takes delight in it any more than an affectionate father could find pleasure in the reproof of his prodigal child, but that he must have the condemned understand that He is “justified when He speaks and clear when He judges.”But, God also pleads the saving power of repentance.How like Jehovah that! This Prophet reminds one again of Jonah; through the streets of Nineveh he went, crying, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”. It was the sentence of judgment.
There did not seem to be one ray of hope for the redemption of these people; and yet, when Sardanapolus, the king, humbled himself, and sat in ashes, and his people from the greatest to the least of them repented their sin, God saved them. Shall He not do as much for His own elect?There is no inconsistency in the statement, “I will utterly consume all things”, and the appeal,“Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired; “Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord’s anger come upon you. “Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought His judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger” (Zephaniah 2:1-3). The sentence was passed and that sentence is going to be executed. But God is saying that if any man repent him of his evil deeds and seek righteousness, he shall escape, as Noah escaped when the world was whelmed; and as Lot escaped when Sodom burned as an oven; and as Rahab escaped when Joshua put all Jericho to the edge of the sword; and as the thief on the cross escaped when his brother beside him perished.Oh, the saving power of repentance! Who is able to measure its meaning? It is little wonder that this was the burden of John’s preaching, “Repent ye”! It is little wonder that the Son of God Himself repeated the sentence! It is little wonder that every Apostle proved himself a true successor to the Prophet in calling men to the same, for they that repent perish not. And when at last the hour is on for the opening of the sixth seal, and men are livid in the light of the coming judgment, “And kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb”, those who have repented of their sins, who have sought the righteousness of which the Prophet speaks, shall be hid in the hollow of God’s all-keeping hand!But, having finished with Judea, the Prophet now turns his attention to others and speaks ofTHE END FOR GOD’S ENEMIES Zephaniah 2:4-7 He names them every one. Moab, and Ammon, Ethiopia and Nineveh! There are hours when it is dreadful to hear one’s name called! There are moments when to be named is to be doomed! That hour and that moment is come for the people of Gaza, and Ashkelon, and Ashdod, and Ekron. That hour and that moment is come for the inhabitants of the sea coast, and the dwellers in Philistia!
That hour and that moment is come for that great city Nineveh, which had heard the sentences of Jonah, and seemed repentant, to return again to grosser sin; which had listened to the anathemas of Nahum, and imagined at last that God did not mean what His Prophets were saying. Zephaniah adds his word, and Nineveh is signaled out, not for sentence, that had been passed before, but for execution for “the day of wrath” had come. I have an idea that men living in sin indulge the skepticism that God does not know them by name, and with Ingersoll, doubt His ability to count the hairs of one’s head, or sit beside every sparrow dying in the street. But, if He call His own by name, as He says, knoweth He not also the wicked? Did you ever think of the first Psalm as an illustration of this thought? “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. “But his delight is in the Law of the Lord; and in His Law doth he meditate day and night “And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. “The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. “Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. “For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish”. He suits the sentence to the sin. If you will examine the offenses of these nations you will find that every one is reaping whereon he has sown. Those that have rebelled shall be destroyed; those that have worshiped at false shrines shall famish for gods; those that have taken the sword shall perish by the sword, those that have employed their powers for oppression shall be themselves oppressed. It is an interesting thing to run through the Old Testament to see how God has illustrated there the law, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”. You remember Haman built a gallows for Mordecai; but Haman hung thereon himself. You will remember that Absalom proposed to dethrone his father, and the very head, ambitious to wear the crown, was lifted up in death on an oak limb.
You will remember that Adoni-bezek had seventy kings whose thumbs and great toes he had cut off, crawling about his palace, eating the crumbs that fell from his table. But when Judah went up and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and Perizites into their hands, and they caught Adoni-bezek, the king, they cut off his thumbs and his great toes, and he said, “As I have done, so God hath requited me”. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”.It seems also clear from this Scripture that the day for sentence against sin is definitely fixed. “Wait ye upon Me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for My determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them Mine indignation, even all My fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy” (Zephaniah 3:8).
One does not follow history far before he finds the day of judgment for these nations. And as that prophecy was fulfilled for them, so it will surely come to pass for us. The day of the Lord will reveal all secrets, and the impenitent shall face their sins, and read them in the bright light of His awful presence. I never think along this line without recalling Hawthorne’s graphic picture of this truth. It is written into “The Scarlet Letter.” A great wrong has been committed, sin against self, against confidence, against society, and against God, and hence the necessity of keeping it secret. But as time goes on, it burns in his bones, as did the same iniquity destroy David until sleep goes from his eyes, and Arthur Dimmesdale, under the shroud of night, ascends the scaffold erected for the purpose of exposing to shame those who had sinned, and stands there alone, remembering that he had been the cause of the public disgrace of another on that very spot.
And, lo, while he waits, Hester and little Pearl pass, and join him, and while the three stand on that awful spot, suddenly a light gleamed far and wide over the night. It was doubtless one of those meteors which night-watchers have often observed, “burning out to waste in the atmosphere.
So bright was its radiance that it thoroughly illuminated the night between heaven and earth.” And then, having described, as only Hawthorne could, the weird aspect of all the earth about them, he adds, “And there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart, and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered letter, glittering on her bosom, and little Pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between those two. They stood in the noon of that sudden and solemn splendor as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets.” And who shall speak of that other day when that light itself is on! No pen can picture it! No tongue can tell its solemn awe! Suffice it to say it will be the day of judgment for all such as have rejected God, and delighted themselves in inquity.How grateful one ought to be that Zephaniah does not conclude with this picture, but passes on toTHE PROPHET’S The day of the Lord is prophesied. Let no man tell me that when the day of the Lord is on it will reveal nothing but judgment, and that all will be devoured in the fierceness of Divine anger! It is not so! The Lord has always some faithful men, some pure women, some holy children; and He always will have them. And to the very conclusion of this declaration, “all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy”, He adds, “I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the Name of the Lord” (Habakkuk 3:8; Habakkuk 3:12). To me, this is a remarkable sentence, and with the majority of the students of this Scripture I believe that it is Apocalyptic, that it refers not alone to that bit of ancient history, but also to that “great day of the Lord” described by John in Revelation; and to that righteous remnant, known to nearly every Prophet of the Old Testament, and often described in the New; but inasmuch as I have discussed this remnant, on other occasions, I wish to remark only, this time, that God describes them as “An afflicted and poor people”.
Truly, as Joseph Parker remarked, “However various the interpretations that may be put upon this sentence it would seem to fall into harmony with the words of the Lord Jesus when He said, “The poor always ye have with you”.One never thinks of such persecution as has taken place in Armenia, and of such martyrdom as that to which the Jews of Russia and Poland have lately been subjected, without remembering that the most steadfast faith in God is commonly found with “an afflicted and poor people”. It might be well, therefore, for those churches which are ambitious to get in the rich and the cultured of earth, those churches which boast their high social standing, and speak so often of “the first families” of their membership, to remember that the Prophet’s Apocalypse finds God’s people among the afflicted and poor, and that no little history has already been made in warrant of the Divine Word.Again, The Prophet puts into the lips of God’s people a song.“Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. “The Lord hath taken away thy judgments, He hath cast out thine enemy: the King of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more. “In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not: and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack” (Zephaniah 3:14-16). No man can believe that this prophecy has been wholly fulfilled. There was a righteous remnant saved in the old day, and restored to Jerusalem, but of them it could not have been said, “Thou shall not see evil any more”. On the contrary all the prophecies concerning the affliction of God’s ancient people have gone on in literal fulfillment from year to year for centuries, and is going on now.But, blessed be God, it cannot go on forever. There is coming a time when to these it shall be said, “Thou shalt not see evil any more”. Just because there is coming a time when the Lord God is going to be in the midst of them, and that in His might, and He will save, and He will rejoice over them with joy, they shall rest in His love, and He will joy over them in singing. There is coming a time when He will save them and gather them that were driven out, a time when He will bring them again and make their name a praise among all the people of the earth, that is the great day of the Lord.I want to commend the reading of A.
J. Gordon’s book “Ecce Venit”, and especially the chapter on “The Restoration of Israel” where he sagely interprets this Scripture, “For you know it is true of the New Testament also that ‘Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in’” But already God is showing the approaching end of that time, for did He not say by Jeremiah, concerning this scattered people, “I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion”?
And He has been about it; and is about it today.That is only the earnest of that greater gathering to come, concerning which He has spoken, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the Children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but, the Lord liveth, that brought up the Children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither He had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers”. The hour is coming, when, according to His own promise ‘[He shall] plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God’ (Amos 9:15). I like to dwell upon that day; in part because it means salvation for God’s ancient people, but also because it means “The day of the Lord” for all those who, by faith, have become the children of Abraham. That day Jew and Gentile shall become the brethren indeed, by their acceptance of Jehovah God, and their common faith in His Son Jesus Christ. That day the Church which has waited so long, wondering what will be the end, shall find the literal fulfillment of Zephaniah’s words, “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy”. It is the great realization of all Christian hope; it is the great consummation of all Christian endeavor; it is the crowning day of Christ; it is the day when those who have suffered with Him shall be invited to sit with Him on His throne; it is the day of which ThomasHastings wrote: “Hail to the brightness of Zion’s glad morning! Joy to the lands that in darkness have lain! Hushed be the accents of sorrow and mourning; Zion in triumph begins her mild reign.
“Hail to the brightness of Zion’s glad morning, Long by the Prophets of Israel foretold! Hail to the millions from bondage returning, Gentiles and Jews the blest vision behold.
“Lo I in the desert rich flowers are springing, Streams ever copious are gliding along; Loud from the mountain-tops echoes are ringing, Wastes rise in verdure and mingle in song.
“See, from all lands, from the isles of the ocean, Praise to Jehovah ascending on high; Fallen are the engines of war and commotion, Shouts of salvation are rending the sky.”