Notes on Zephaniah 1

Overwhelming ruin is the keynote of the first chapter. “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 (or idols) with the wicked; and I will cut off man from the land, saith the Lord” (verses 2, 3). Such a result was to be obtained from the judgments which were coming, and for which God was preparing the means. “The Lord hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests” (verse 7). The word “bid” should be sanctified or consecrated (see margin). This is an interesting illustration of the use of the word sanctified in the Scriptures. It has no necessary application to character, although almost exclusively so applied in modern religious thought. As the Chaldeans were set apart to inflict punishment upon Judah, they were sanctified, just as in later years the Medes were God’s “sanctified ones” (Isa. 13:3) to inflict His predetermined punishment upon them. The thorough-going character of the overthrow is vividly portrayed in relation to Jerusalem. “A cry from the fish-gate (probably somewhere in the north-east of the city), a howling from the second quarter (or lower city), and a great crashing from the hills,” suggests the dismay of the inhabitants. They are spoken of as “the inhabitants of Maktesh,” a word which really means mortar, and is here applied metaphorically to a portion of the city lying in a hollow, and which naturally suggests the pounding of the people as the contents of a mortar are pounded by a pestle. Blood as dust, and flesh as dung (verse 17), complete the picture of the discomfiture of the people, which is summed up at the end of the chapter—“the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy; for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all that dwell in the land.”

1907 Christadelphian p 149