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Zephaniah Chapter Two

 

Zephaniah 2

Chapter Contents

An exhortation to repentance. (1-3) Judgments upon other nations. (4-15)

Commentary on Zephaniah 2:1-3

(Read Zephaniah 2:1-3)

The prophet calls to national repentance as the only way to prevent national ruin. A nation not desiring that has not desires toward God is not desirous of his favour and grace has no mind to repent and reform. Or not desirable not having any thing to recommend them to God; to whom God might justly say Depart from me; but he says Gather together to me that you may seek my face. We know what God's decree will bring against impenitent sinners therefore it highly concerns all to repent in the accepted time. How careful should we all be to seek peace with God before the Holy Spirit withdraws from us or ceases to strive with us; before the day of grace is over or the day of life; before our everlasting state is determined! Let the poor despised and afflicted seek the Lord and seek to understand and keep his commandments better that they may be more humbled for their sins. The chief hope of deliverance from national judgments rests upon prayer.

Commentary on Zephaniah 2:4-15

(Read Zephaniah 2:4-15)

Those are really in a woful condition who have the word of the Lord against them for no word of his shall fall to the ground. God will restore his people to their rights though long kept from them. It has been the common lot of God's people in all ages to be reproached and reviled. God shall be worshipped not only by all Israel and the strangers who join them but by the heathen. Remote nations must be reckoned with for the wrongs done to God's people. The sufferings of the insolent and haughty in prosperity are unpitied and unlamented. But all the desolations of flourishing nations will make way for the overturning Satan's kingdom. Let us improve our advantages and expect the performance of every promise praying that our Father's name may be hallowed every where over all the earth.

── Matthew HenryConcise Commentary on Zephaniah

 

Zephaniah 2

Verse 1

[1] Gather yourselves together yea gather together O nation not desired;

Gather yourselves — Call a solemn assembly proclaim a fast.

Not desired — Or not desirous. Unwilling to return and unworthy to be received on your return.

Verse 2

[2] 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.

The decree — Before God's decree is put in execution.

The day — Before the day of your calamities.

As the chaff — Carry you away as the wind carries chaff away.

Verse 3

[3] 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.

Seek — Fear worship depend on him alone.

Ye meek — Ye humble ones.

Wrought his judgment — Obeyed his precepts.

Seek righteousness — Continue therein.

Seek meekness — Patiently wait on the just and merciful God.

Hid — Under the wing of Divine Providence.

Verse 4

[4] For Gaza shall be forsaken and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day and Ekron shall be rooted up.

For — It is time to seek God; for your neighbours as well as you shall be destroyed.

Gaza — A chief city of the Philistines.

They — The Babylonians.

Shall drive — Into captivity.

At the noon day — It shall be taken by force at noon.

Verse 5

[5] Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast the nation of the Cherethites! the word of the LORD is against you; O Canaan the land of the Philistines I will even destroy thee that there shall be no inhabitant.

The inhabitants — All the Philistines.

Cherethites — Or destroyers men that were stout fierce and terrible to their neighbours.

O Canaan — That part that the Philistines kept by force from the Jews.

Verse 6

[6] And the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds and folds for flocks.

For shepherds — Instead of cities full of rich citizens there shall be only cottages for shepherds.

Verse 7

[7] And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed thereupon: in the houses of Ashkelon shall they lie down in the evening: for the LORD their God shall visit them and turn away their captivity.

The coast — The sea-coast the land of the Philistines.

The remnant — That survive the captivity.

Shall feed — Their flocks.

In the houses — In places where these formerly stood.

They — Both shepherds and flocks.

Shall visit — In mercy.

Verse 8

[8] I have heard the reproach of Moab and the revilings of the children of Ammon whereby they have reproached my people and magnified themselves against their border.

I — God.

Magnified themselves — Invading their frontiers.

Verse 9

[9] Therefore as I live saith the LORD of hosts the God of Israel Surely Moab shall be as Sodom and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah even the breeding of nettles and saltpits and a perpetual desolation: the residue of my people shall spoil them and the remnant of my people shall possess them.

Of nettles — Not cultivated but over-run with nettles.

Salt-pits — A dry barren earth fit only to dig salt out of.

The residue — That return out of Babylon.

Possess them — Settle upon those parts of their lands that are fit for habitation.

Verse 11

[11] The LORD will be terrible unto them: for he will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship him every one from his place even all the isles of the heathen.

Famish — Take away all their sacrifices and drink-offerings.

The gods — Idols of those lands.

From his place — Not only at Jerusalem but every where.

Verse 12

[12] Ye Ethiopians also ye shall be slain by my sword.

By my sword — The Chaldeans are called God's sword; because God employed them.

Verse 13

[13] And he will stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation and dry like a wilderness.

He — God.

The north — Assyria which lay northward of Judea and due north from Babylon.

Verse 14

[14] And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar work.

All the beasts — All sorts of beasts which are found in those countries.

The bittern — A bird that delights in desolate places.

Verse 15

[15] This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly that said in her heart I am and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss and wag his hand.

This — So the prophet triumphs over her.

There is none — None like me or that can contend with me.

── John WesleyExplanatory Notes on Zephaniah

                             

 

02 Chapter 2

 

Verses 1-3

Zephaniah 2:1-3

Seek ye the Lord all ye meek of the earth.

Sin and repentance the bane and antidote

An exhortation to the men of Judah to repent ere the Chaldean invaders approach and wreak destruction on their land.

I. Sin exposes man to ruin. It was sin in the form of idolatry and gross immorality that exposed the Jewish people to the terrible doom that was now hanging over them.

1. The suffering that follows sin is sometimes very terrible. Sin brings to a people famines pestilences wars hells.

2. The suffering expresses God’s antagonism to sin. “The fierce anger of the Lord ” or as Henderson has it the “burning anger of Jehovah.” The connection between sin and misery is a beneficent arrangement. It is well that misery should pursue wrong.

II. That repentance delivers man from ruin.

1. The preparation for repentance. “Gather yourselves together.” It is well for sinners in the prospect of their doom to meet and confer concerning their relations to Almighty God.

2. The nature of repentance. “Seek ye the Lord all ye meek of the earth”; or as Henderson renders it “Seek ye Jehovah all ye humble of the earth.” There are two seekings here.

3. The urgency of repentance. “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.” (Homilist.)

Seek righteousness seek meekness.

True way of seeking God

The prophet defines what the true and rightful way of seeking God is and that is when righteousness is sought when humility is sought. By righteousness he understands the same thing as by judgment; as though he had said “Advance in a righteous and holy course of life for God will not forget your obedience provided your hearts grow not faint and ye persevere to the end.” We hence see that God complains not only when we obtrude external pomps and devices I know not what as though He might like a child be amused by us; but also when we do not sincerely devote our life to His service. And he adds humility to righteousness; for it is difficult even for the very best of men not to murmur against God when He severely chastises them. We indeed find how much their own delicacy embitters the minds of men when God appears somewhat severe with them. Hence the prophet in order to check all clamours exhorts the faithful here to cultivate humility so that they might bear patiently the rigour by which God would try them and might suffer themselves to be ruled by His hand (1 Peter 5:6). The prophet requires humility in order that they might with composed minds wait for the deliverance which God had promised. They were not in the interval to murmur nor to give vent to their own perverse feelings however severely God might treat them. We may hence gather a profitable instruction. The prophet does not address here men who were depraved and had wholly neglected what was just and right but he directs his discourse to the best the most upright the most holy: and yet he shows that they had no other remedy but humbly and patiently to bear the chastisement of God. It then follows that no perfection can be found among men such as can meet the judgment of God. (John Calvin.)

It may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.--

Prayer and providence

Zephaniah could not promise the people exemption from the trials that should come upon them from the Chaldeans. But neither was it possible for him or any other to say how much in the way of mitigation of those threatened evils might be effected by prayer by effort by an humble seeking unto the Lord their God. “It may be”--a theology from which these words should be excluded would if it met with universal acceptance go far towards turning the world upside down. It would paralyse all the powers of our religious nature. It would take from under us all grounds for trusting in a moral providence. Let certainty in relation to the Divine Being be as fixed a thing as you will I must have some room left for a peradventure--must be permitted to believe that there are possibilities in the future of indeterminate issue. This indeterminateness may be looked at in two different ways.

I. As it bears upon the principles of a Divine administration. Is the use of such language as “ it may be ” compatible with that fixed order of procedure by which it is commonly assumed the Almighty governs the world?

1. These words suppose if they do not directly affirm the doctrine of a moral providence; as opposed to the doctrine of fatalism; or of irresistible necessity. There is a constant continuous moral superintendence over the affairs of men for moral purposes. God never permits secondary agencies to go out of His own hands. This view is not more a disclosure of revelation than it is an essential element of our first conceptions of an Infinite Being. On the Christian showing of what God is we cannot admit His existence without admitting His providence also. Of course nothing more is contended for than the fact of a special providence overruling the affairs of men. Of the methods of our preservation or deliverance in trying circumstances we often know nothing.

2. Take the words “it may be ” as against that unchanging fixity of natural laws which it is the fashion of a modern philosophy to make the grand autocratic power in the universe of God. The form of the objection is that since cause and effect in the natural world are joined together by a nexus of undeviating certainty all prayer for the modification of events occurring in the order of physical law is “absurd.” But this not only limits the agency of the Divine Being in the natural world but strikes at the root of all our conceptions of God as a moral governor. God and nature upon this theory make up the universe and the only relation which God has to nature is to keep the wondrous machine going. A high and impersonal abstraction governs all things. Free moral agents in this apparatus of eternal sequences there are none either in relation to God or man. What is the foundation fallacy of this reasoning? But prayer asks for no violation of any inevitable law of sequence. It is merely an appeal to Infinite Wisdom to devise some method for our relief. This is the fault we charge upon the so-called scientific objection. It assumes that all the events in this world’s history however intimately affecting man’s happiness depend for their accomplishment on physical laws only rather than as they do upon those laws liable to be modified in their operation by the intervention or volition of moral agents. Just here where a fixed thing is intercalated with an unfixed thing room is left for the putting forth of human effort and the offering up of faithful prayer. The assumption is entirely gratuitous that in praying against any form of apprehended danger I expect the laws of the material world to be suspended or altered or put out of course in any miraculous way. My prayer only goes upon the supposition that there are multitudinous agencies in God which may be employed to turn a threatened evil aside or to modify its operation before it reaches me.

II. Consider the subject in relation to human agency. Or what man may and ought to do towards the same object.

1. Seek the Lord by earnest prayer.

2. Take care not to stipulate for any particular form of relief. (D. Moore M. A.)

The saint’s hiding-place

Notice the matter of the exhortation to the godly which is “To seek the Lord to seek righteousness to seek meekness.” The subjects or persons upon whom this exhortation falls. “The meek of the earth.” And the motive pressing thereto. “It may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.” Ye shall surely be hidden from the wrath to come and it may be from the wrath present.

I. God hath His days of anger. Take anger properly for a passion and then there is none in God. Take anger for the effects and fruits thereof and so it is not with God as mercy is. Yet He hath His days of anger. The more excellent a person the sooner he is moved to anger. Now there is most excellency in God and therefore sin being a contempt of Him He cannot but be moved to anger. Anger is the dagger that love wears to save itself and to hurt all that wrongs the thing loved: there is infinite love in God and therefore there must needs be anger too. God has three houses that He puts men into: an house of instruction an house of correction an house of destruction. It is not in itself unlawful to be angry only your anger must be unto reformation as God’s is. If there be wrath m God how infinitely are our souls bound unto Jesus Christ by whom we are delivered from the wrath to come reconciled to God and made friends to Him. And being friends His very wrath and anger are our friends also.

II. In days of angst God is very willing to hide save and defend His people. God knows how to deliver from danger by danger from death by death from misery by misery. Much of the saints’ preservation is put into the hand of angels. Those that hide the saints are sure to be hidden by God. Those that keep the word of God’s patience have a promise to be hidden by God. Those are sure to be hidden by God in evil times that fear not the fears of men. And those that remain green and flourishing in their religion notwithstanding all the scorching heats of opposition that do fall on them. And the “meek of the earth shall be hidden by God.

III. Though God is willing to hide His own people in evil times yet He doth sometimes leave them at great uncertainties. They have more than a “may be” for their eternal salvation. But as for our temporal and outward salvation God doth sometimes leave His people to a “may be.” God loves to have His people trust to the goodness of His nature.

IV. When His people have only a ‘‘may be ” it is their duty to seek unto God. There is no such way to establish our thoughts as to commit our ways unto God. The text points unto three things--

1. Seek the Lord Himself not His goods but His goodness.

2. Seek righteousness.

3. Seek truth.

V. If any man can do any good in the day of God’s anger it is the meek of the earth. Therefore the text calls on them specially to seek the Lord. The meek have the promise of the earth. The meek do most honour Christ the way of Christ and the Gospel. A meek person leaves his cause with God and his revenge to Him. The meek person is most fit for the service of God. Hereby even your meekness ye walk as becometh the Gospel ye inherit the earth are made like unto Jesus Christ have a great power and credit in heaven for yourselves and others and shall be hidden in the evil day. (W. Bridge M. A.)

Divine discipline

(with chap. 3. Zephaniah 3:11-12):--The prophet spoke and in fact it happened that judgment fell; the nations passed Israel was chastised; it went into captivity. And there did come back that meek that poor that afflicted people despised even of the Samaritans--those feeble Jews. They came back trusting in Jehovah; they laid the foundations of that piteous and miserable new temple. Its very foundations cause contempt; those who remember the old temple could but weep. But this new temple was to be clothed with a glory which the old temple had never known. It was the religion of humanity that Was to come out from that regenerated and purged people--that little band of the meek of the earth. Brethren we speak of poetical justice and we mean by that generally when we want to see the lines of ideal actions clear and unblurred. We have to look to our great works of fiction to some great drama or poem or novel and there if they are great of their kind we see the ideal lines of Divine judgment and of human progress standing out clear and vivid in that which the imagination of the artist conceives. And the artist must conceive it for us and teach us through these ideal lines because in the most of our ordinary experience the lines of Divine action of human experience are blurred and confused in the mixture and confusion of this common earthly scene. But it is not always so. There are days of the Lord. The days of the Lord are the moments in history when the ideal issues appear and the Divine hand is plain. Such a moment was the judgment and the restoration of Israel. There have been other such moments in history like the decay of Spain like the French Revolution like the collapse of Napoleon. There are moments in history when God bares His arms and speaks plainly. It might be so again one day upon what is proud and exalting in this English nation of ours. Anyway God does it. Beyond our sight He will do it or m our sight from time to time He does it. That is the Divine method. Always it is through this discipline whereby God must single out for progress those who will consent to be chastened into meekness. But for to-day let us leave again the scene of political and social history and trace this method of God again in the individual soul. There again the method of Divine discipline the method whereby we individual after individual are prepared for effective fruitfulness is this same method of chastening. One after another in our pride and our haughtiness we have to be chastened into that quality which--it is the very paradox of Divine justice--is the one really strong and effective quality in the progress of the human soul and it is meekness. Disciplined into effective meekness--that is the verdict which might be written upon the history of every single human soul which fulfils in any real measure the purpose of God. Englishmen are proud; we know it. In a certain way we are proud of being proud. Look round about in the world. What are the spectacles the strange and overpowering spectacles which we behold of the insolence of human pride? From time to time the record of some millionaire in America or South Africa or England is laid bare to us--some one who confessedly and before the eyes of men bids defiance to all the laws of mercy and simply sets himself to scrape together gold almost professedly making gold his god and trampling under foot the laws of mercy and of justice and of consideration. And there are smaller men who never rise into note or come before the public either in their rise or their catastrophe who are in their humbler sphere doing the same thing. Or look at him that rich young man that Superbus who feels that the land is made for him. Look at him as he goes out into life with his preposterous claim for amusement for luxury for self-satisfaction with the recklessness of his selfish lusts as he does despite to every law that ought to bind men in mercy and consideration and purity because he must gratify his passion at all costs in that claim for amusement in that almost riotous estimation of himself; so that as one looks at him in his arrogance one wonders why God stands it and why a very little thunderbolt is not sent about its business to despatch him there in the impotence of his vanity. God does not strike them with thunderbolts; God has other methods. He is the Father of each one. In slow and patient silence God waits; God provides for them His judgment. It waits upon them; it will come at last in this world so that we can see it; or beyond this world where it is dark to our vision God will judge them. But the question is this--When the judgment falls how will it strike? Surely they will know that God is God they will know at the last it is the fool that saith in his heart “There is no God.” Yes they will know that they were fools. But the question is in what disposition of mind? Will it be to them mere punish-meat mere retribution or will it be to them purging healing disciplining chastisement? That is the question. No question so far as the intention of God is concerned; in God’s intention these judgments are for chastisement for discipline for recovery. But there is a soul that has worked itself into a stubbornness which will not bend and perforce can only be broken. That is the question. Pharaoh is in the old story raised up in the scene of human history to stand as the type of the soul that must be broken because it will not bend. But on the other hand our Bible Old and New Testament is full of the gracious pictures of those whom the chastisement of God has slowly and at last disciplined into that effective meekness which is the one charm the beauty of the children of God. Moses brought up in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and in the splendid opportunities of that court--we read of him how in the pride of strong manhood he went out to be the deliverer of his people. He met with nothing but rebuffs. “Who made thee a leader and deliverer?” and he fled alarmed and baffled and in the back side of the desert through the long discipline of silence away from all political interests Moses learned the lesson of meekness and he goes back that old call of God not withdrawn now effective because meek. Moses was very meek. “O Lord I am not eloquent neither now nor since. Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant.” Pass to the New Testament. Think of those words to Peter “When thou wast young thou girdest thyself; when thou shalt be old others shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” It is the record of experience of every one. Limitations crowd in upon us. There are multitudes of things which in our hateful arrogance we thought we would do. We find we cannot do them. Limitations close in upon us--hindrances disappointments sufferings pain. How are we to bear it all? Are we to become all the more querulous resentful irritating or is each stroke of the Divine discipline to be the learning to us all a lesson so that all the more stroke after stroke the soul learning its limitations is forced into the line of Divine correspondence and made meek is made effective? So it was with the proud and the impulsive Peter so that that late writing of his that epistle of his is full as hardly any other book of the New Testament is full of the rich power of the spirit of meekness. Or Saul the Pharisee yielding at last with one blow to the Divine claim and becoming for all that Jewish pride of his once and for ever the slave of the meek Jesus. These are the meek of the earth; because they are meek therefore in the kingdom of God the effective--the men who do fruitful things the men whose work lasts because they are the followers of Him who was meek and lowly in heart. Jesus had no pride to be overcome. What are you expecting of this human life of yours? It matters so much what we expect. Pleasure success? Ah yes! There is in this human heart of ours an inextinguishable thirst for happiness. And it is there God-given. Do not listen to those altruistic philosophers of our modern time who would tell us that to have care for ourselves is simple and radical selfishness. Nay the Bible throughout is true to what I call the ineradicable instinct of the human heart. God made us and because He made us we are made for happiness we are made to realise ourselves. But the question is How? Look for happiness make it your aim hunt for pleasure and you are baffled. It is by the law of indirectness that we are to realise happiness. He that sayeth his life seeketh his own life he shall lose it; he that loseth it he shall save it. That is the law. Here in this world we are set to gain character. So we are to expect discipline. It is one of the simple laws of human life character develops by discipline develops through pain. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” Therefore this is the point a point of supreme importance when you come to think about your life. Am I I as I am to-day I being the sort of man I am am I yielding myself so that God by disciplining me can make me meek and in meekness effective? That very thing which I have always said is the one thing I could not stand when it comes as it probably does come if I set myself too much to rebel against it--when it comes how do I take it? Have I that measure of spiritual insight and thoughtfulness which enables me to say “This is just that moulding graving tool which is so necessary to rub off that sharp angle to blot out that dark stain to do this or that or the other necessary work in my character? “ Do I regard it as the trenchant treatment of the surgeon who is to again make me sound? Humiliation is the way to humility. Learn the lesson which the humiliation contains for us to become the wiser man the more docile while not the less resolute. That is the discipline of God--point by point step by step biting after biting of the tool smiting after smiting of the hammer. So it is moulding after moulding of the Divine hand we are to be brought into shape. Now I say it there is not a day of our life in which it does not make a real vital difference whether we have had this expectation in our will our intelligence our heart so that when the blow little or great comes the disappointment be it never so trivial it may teach us the lesson. The little humiliation may come on its way and speed on as a messenger which has fulfilled its obligation and done its duty. For it has taught us something and we go to bed something wiser men and women than we got up in the morning. There is hardly a department of life in which there are not great and vital changes which are needed. Yes but are we fit to do them? That is the question. Perhaps we have willingness but have we what is a part of meekness--patience? Do we arrive with our enthusiasm our ideal enthusiasm and then shrink altogether from the task of drudgery? Because you know there are only two qualities by which anything finally effective can be done--enthusiasm and drudgery and they are no good apart. Or is it vanity? Yes I offered myself to work on that particular committee I offered myself to do that good job which surely was for the bettering of mankind. But then I thought that I was to be secretary or I was to be put into the chair and somebody else who surely had no better claim than I was put there. Or is it the refusal of pain? There it is the pain the ugliness the dirt and squalor and to do anything effective I must be in contact with the pain and the dirt and the ugliness and the squalor. I must not be hiding myself from my own flesh. But I shrink from it I think I cannot bear it and the task is undone and the Kingdom of God makes not the progress it might make because I am not with the meek and the patient with the sorrowful and the suffering. Or is it prayerlessness? I have my schemes my plans but I do not keep myself in correspondence with God. It is my own pride that guides me my own ideas my own schemes. The question is whether in the larger or less sphere we will mould mould to the Divine hand or whether we will be that obstinate stuff that moral character that will not mould and which becomes the vessel of wrath the vessel which the Divine Potter after patient trying finds unmalleable and at the last must cast aside as of a stuff that will not make under the Divine hand. That is it the Divine Potter would mould you. And is there anything to the spiritual imagination so beautiful anything so lovely to think about as the discipline of the soul conscious of the hand of God upon it and for all its occasional wilfulness and sins and faults ever coming back to be moulded according to the plan and will of the Divine Potter according to the love of our Father Who chastens us into effective meekness that at the last we may share in the glory of His kingdom as things that have realised their end in that fruitfulness which belongs to the meek? That is the consciousness which every Christian soul is sooner or later meant to have. (Bishop Gore.)


Verses 1-3

Zephaniah 2:1-3

Seek ye the Lord all ye meek of the earth.

Sin and repentance the bane and antidote

An exhortation to the men of Judah to repent ere the Chaldean invaders approach and wreak destruction on their land.

I. Sin exposes man to ruin. It was sin in the form of idolatry and gross immorality that exposed the Jewish people to the terrible doom that was now hanging over them.

1. The suffering that follows sin is sometimes very terrible. Sin brings to a people famines pestilences wars hells.

2. The suffering expresses God’s antagonism to sin. “The fierce anger of the Lord ” or as Henderson has it the “burning anger of Jehovah.” The connection between sin and misery is a beneficent arrangement. It is well that misery should pursue wrong.

II. That repentance delivers man from ruin.

1. The preparation for repentance. “Gather yourselves together.” It is well for sinners in the prospect of their doom to meet and confer concerning their relations to Almighty God.

2. The nature of repentance. “Seek ye the Lord all ye meek of the earth”; or as Henderson renders it “Seek ye Jehovah all ye humble of the earth.” There are two seekings here.

3. The urgency of repentance. “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.” (Homilist.)

Seek righteousness seek meekness.

True way of seeking God

The prophet defines what the true and rightful way of seeking God is and that is when righteousness is sought when humility is sought. By righteousness he understands the same thing as by judgment; as though he had said “Advance in a righteous and holy course of life for God will not forget your obedience provided your hearts grow not faint and ye persevere to the end.” We hence see that God complains not only when we obtrude external pomps and devices I know not what as though He might like a child be amused by us; but also when we do not sincerely devote our life to His service. And he adds humility to righteousness; for it is difficult even for the very best of men not to murmur against God when He severely chastises them. We indeed find how much their own delicacy embitters the minds of men when God appears somewhat severe with them. Hence the prophet in order to check all clamours exhorts the faithful here to cultivate humility so that they might bear patiently the rigour by which God would try them and might suffer themselves to be ruled by His hand (1 Peter 5:6). The prophet requires humility in order that they might with composed minds wait for the deliverance which God had promised. They were not in the interval to murmur nor to give vent to their own perverse feelings however severely God might treat them. We may hence gather a profitable instruction. The prophet does not address here men who were depraved and had wholly neglected what was just and right but he directs his discourse to the best the most upright the most holy: and yet he shows that they had no other remedy but humbly and patiently to bear the chastisement of God. It then follows that no perfection can be found among men such as can meet the judgment of God. (John Calvin.)

It may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.--

Prayer and providence

Zephaniah could not promise the people exemption from the trials that should come upon them from the Chaldeans. But neither was it possible for him or any other to say how much in the way of mitigation of those threatened evils might be effected by prayer by effort by an humble seeking unto the Lord their God. “It may be”--a theology from which these words should be excluded would if it met with universal acceptance go far towards turning the world upside down. It would paralyse all the powers of our religious nature. It would take from under us all grounds for trusting in a moral providence. Let certainty in relation to the Divine Being be as fixed a thing as you will I must have some room left for a peradventure--must be permitted to believe that there are possibilities in the future of indeterminate issue. This indeterminateness may be looked at in two different ways.

I. As it bears upon the principles of a Divine administration. Is the use of such language as “ it may be ” compatible with that fixed order of procedure by which it is commonly assumed the Almighty governs the world?

1. These words suppose if they do not directly affirm the doctrine of a moral providence; as opposed to the doctrine of fatalism; or of irresistible necessity. There is a constant continuous moral superintendence over the affairs of men for moral purposes. God never permits secondary agencies to go out of His own hands. This view is not more a disclosure of revelation than it is an essential element of our first conceptions of an Infinite Being. On the Christian showing of what God is we cannot admit His existence without admitting His providence also. Of course nothing more is contended for than the fact of a special providence overruling the affairs of men. Of the methods of our preservation or deliverance in trying circumstances we often know nothing.

2. Take the words “it may be ” as against that unchanging fixity of natural laws which it is the fashion of a modern philosophy to make the grand autocratic power in the universe of God. The form of the objection is that since cause and effect in the natural world are joined together by a nexus of undeviating certainty all prayer for the modification of events occurring in the order of physical law is “absurd.” But this not only limits the agency of the Divine Being in the natural world but strikes at the root of all our conceptions of God as a moral governor. God and nature upon this theory make up the universe and the only relation which God has to nature is to keep the wondrous machine going. A high and impersonal abstraction governs all things. Free moral agents in this apparatus of eternal sequences there are none either in relation to God or man. What is the foundation fallacy of this reasoning? But prayer asks for no violation of any inevitable law of sequence. It is merely an appeal to Infinite Wisdom to devise some method for our relief. This is the fault we charge upon the so-called scientific objection. It assumes that all the events in this world’s history however intimately affecting man’s happiness depend for their accomplishment on physical laws only rather than as they do upon those laws liable to be modified in their operation by the intervention or volition of moral agents. Just here where a fixed thing is intercalated with an unfixed thing room is left for the putting forth of human effort and the offering up of faithful prayer. The assumption is entirely gratuitous that in praying against any form of apprehended danger I expect the laws of the material world to be suspended or altered or put out of course in any miraculous way. My prayer only goes upon the supposition that there are multitudinous agencies in God which may be employed to turn a threatened evil aside or to modify its operation before it reaches me.

II. Consider the subject in relation to human agency. Or what man may and ought to do towards the same object.

1. Seek the Lord by earnest prayer.

2. Take care not to stipulate for any particular form of relief. (D. Moore M. A.)

The saint’s hiding-place

Notice the matter of the exhortation to the godly which is “To seek the Lord to seek righteousness to seek meekness.” The subjects or persons upon whom this exhortation falls. “The meek of the earth.” And the motive pressing thereto. “It may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.” Ye shall surely be hidden from the wrath to come and it may be from the wrath present.

I. God hath His days of anger. Take anger properly for a passion and then there is none in God. Take anger for the effects and fruits thereof and so it is not with God as mercy is. Yet He hath His days of anger. The more excellent a person the sooner he is moved to anger. Now there is most excellency in God and therefore sin being a contempt of Him He cannot but be moved to anger. Anger is the dagger that love wears to save itself and to hurt all that wrongs the thing loved: there is infinite love in God and therefore there must needs be anger too. God has three houses that He puts men into: an house of instruction an house of correction an house of destruction. It is not in itself unlawful to be angry only your anger must be unto reformation as God’s is. If there be wrath m God how infinitely are our souls bound unto Jesus Christ by whom we are delivered from the wrath to come reconciled to God and made friends to Him. And being friends His very wrath and anger are our friends also.

II. In days of angst God is very willing to hide save and defend His people. God knows how to deliver from danger by danger from death by death from misery by misery. Much of the saints’ preservation is put into the hand of angels. Those that hide the saints are sure to be hidden by God. Those that keep the word of God’s patience have a promise to be hidden by God. Those are sure to be hidden by God in evil times that fear not the fears of men. And those that remain green and flourishing in their religion notwithstanding all the scorching heats of opposition that do fall on them. And the “meek of the earth shall be hidden by God.

III. Though God is willing to hide His own people in evil times yet He doth sometimes leave them at great uncertainties. They have more than a “may be” for their eternal salvation. But as for our temporal and outward salvation God doth sometimes leave His people to a “may be.” God loves to have His people trust to the goodness of His nature.

IV. When His people have only a ‘‘may be ” it is their duty to seek unto God. There is no such way to establish our thoughts as to commit our ways unto God. The text points unto three things--

1. Seek the Lord Himself not His goods but His goodness.

2. Seek righteousness.

3. Seek truth.

V. If any man can do any good in the day of God’s anger it is the meek of the earth. Therefore the text calls on them specially to seek the Lord. The meek have the promise of the earth. The meek do most honour Christ the way of Christ and the Gospel. A meek person leaves his cause with God and his revenge to Him. The meek person is most fit for the service of God. Hereby even your meekness ye walk as becometh the Gospel ye inherit the earth are made like unto Jesus Christ have a great power and credit in heaven for yourselves and others and shall be hidden in the evil day. (W. Bridge M. A.)

Divine discipline

(with chap. 3. Zephaniah 3:11-12):--The prophet spoke and in fact it happened that judgment fell; the nations passed Israel was chastised; it went into captivity. And there did come back that meek that poor that afflicted people despised even of the Samaritans--those feeble Jews. They came back trusting in Jehovah; they laid the foundations of that piteous and miserable new temple. Its very foundations cause contempt; those who remember the old temple could but weep. But this new temple was to be clothed with a glory which the old temple had never known. It was the religion of humanity that Was to come out from that regenerated and purged people--that little band of the meek of the earth. Brethren we speak of poetical justice and we mean by that generally when we want to see the lines of ideal actions clear and unblurred. We have to look to our great works of fiction to some great drama or poem or novel and there if they are great of their kind we see the ideal lines of Divine judgment and of human progress standing out clear and vivid in that which the imagination of the artist conceives. And the artist must conceive it for us and teach us through these ideal lines because in the most of our ordinary experience the lines of Divine action of human experience are blurred and confused in the mixture and confusion of this common earthly scene. But it is not always so. There are days of the Lord. The days of the Lord are the moments in history when the ideal issues appear and the Divine hand is plain. Such a moment was the judgment and the restoration of Israel. There have been other such moments in history like the decay of Spain like the French Revolution like the collapse of Napoleon. There are moments in history when God bares His arms and speaks plainly. It might be so again one day upon what is proud and exalting in this English nation of ours. Anyway God does it. Beyond our sight He will do it or m our sight from time to time He does it. That is the Divine method. Always it is through this discipline whereby God must single out for progress those who will consent to be chastened into meekness. But for to-day let us leave again the scene of political and social history and trace this method of God again in the individual soul. There again the method of Divine discipline the method whereby we individual after individual are prepared for effective fruitfulness is this same method of chastening. One after another in our pride and our haughtiness we have to be chastened into that quality which--it is the very paradox of Divine justice--is the one really strong and effective quality in the progress of the human soul and it is meekness. Disciplined into effective meekness--that is the verdict which might be written upon the history of every single human soul which fulfils in any real measure the purpose of God. Englishmen are proud; we know it. In a certain way we are proud of being proud. Look round about in the world. What are the spectacles the strange and overpowering spectacles which we behold of the insolence of human pride? From time to time the record of some millionaire in America or South Africa or England is laid bare to us--some one who confessedly and before the eyes of men bids defiance to all the laws of mercy and simply sets himself to scrape together gold almost professedly making gold his god and trampling under foot the laws of mercy and of justice and of consideration. And there are smaller men who never rise into note or come before the public either in their rise or their catastrophe who are in their humbler sphere doing the same thing. Or look at him that rich young man that Superbus who feels that the land is made for him. Look at him as he goes out into life with his preposterous claim for amusement for luxury for self-satisfaction with the recklessness of his selfish lusts as he does despite to every law that ought to bind men in mercy and consideration and purity because he must gratify his passion at all costs in that claim for amusement in that almost riotous estimation of himself; so that as one looks at him in his arrogance one wonders why God stands it and why a very little thunderbolt is not sent about its business to despatch him there in the impotence of his vanity. God does not strike them with thunderbolts; God has other methods. He is the Father of each one. In slow and patient silence God waits; God provides for them His judgment. It waits upon them; it will come at last in this world so that we can see it; or beyond this world where it is dark to our vision God will judge them. But the question is this--When the judgment falls how will it strike? Surely they will know that God is God they will know at the last it is the fool that saith in his heart “There is no God.” Yes they will know that they were fools. But the question is in what disposition of mind? Will it be to them mere punish-meat mere retribution or will it be to them purging healing disciplining chastisement? That is the question. No question so far as the intention of God is concerned; in God’s intention these judgments are for chastisement for discipline for recovery. But there is a soul that has worked itself into a stubbornness which will not bend and perforce can only be broken. That is the question. Pharaoh is in the old story raised up in the scene of human history to stand as the type of the soul that must be broken because it will not bend. But on the other hand our Bible Old and New Testament is full of the gracious pictures of those whom the chastisement of God has slowly and at last disciplined into that effective meekness which is the one charm the beauty of the children of God. Moses brought up in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and in the splendid opportunities of that court--we read of him how in the pride of strong manhood he went out to be the deliverer of his people. He met with nothing but rebuffs. “Who made thee a leader and deliverer?” and he fled alarmed and baffled and in the back side of the desert through the long discipline of silence away from all political interests Moses learned the lesson of meekness and he goes back that old call of God not withdrawn now effective because meek. Moses was very meek. “O Lord I am not eloquent neither now nor since. Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant.” Pass to the New Testament. Think of those words to Peter “When thou wast young thou girdest thyself; when thou shalt be old others shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” It is the record of experience of every one. Limitations crowd in upon us. There are multitudes of things which in our hateful arrogance we thought we would do. We find we cannot do them. Limitations close in upon us--hindrances disappointments sufferings pain. How are we to bear it all? Are we to become all the more querulous resentful irritating or is each stroke of the Divine discipline to be the learning to us all a lesson so that all the more stroke after stroke the soul learning its limitations is forced into the line of Divine correspondence and made meek is made effective? So it was with the proud and the impulsive Peter so that that late writing of his that epistle of his is full as hardly any other book of the New Testament is full of the rich power of the spirit of meekness. Or Saul the Pharisee yielding at last with one blow to the Divine claim and becoming for all that Jewish pride of his once and for ever the slave of the meek Jesus. These are the meek of the earth; because they are meek therefore in the kingdom of God the effective--the men who do fruitful things the men whose work lasts because they are the followers of Him who was meek and lowly in heart. Jesus had no pride to be overcome. What are you expecting of this human life of yours? It matters so much what we expect. Pleasure success? Ah yes! There is in this human heart of ours an inextinguishable thirst for happiness. And it is there God-given. Do not listen to those altruistic philosophers of our modern time who would tell us that to have care for ourselves is simple and radical selfishness. Nay the Bible throughout is true to what I call the ineradicable instinct of the human heart. God made us and because He made us we are made for happiness we are made to realise ourselves. But the question is How? Look for happiness make it your aim hunt for pleasure and you are baffled. It is by the law of indirectness that we are to realise happiness. He that sayeth his life seeketh his own life he shall lose it; he that loseth it he shall save it. That is the law. Here in this world we are set to gain character. So we are to expect discipline. It is one of the simple laws of human life character develops by discipline develops through pain. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” Therefore this is the point a point of supreme importance when you come to think about your life. Am I I as I am to-day I being the sort of man I am am I yielding myself so that God by disciplining me can make me meek and in meekness effective? That very thing which I have always said is the one thing I could not stand when it comes as it probably does come if I set myself too much to rebel against it--when it comes how do I take it? Have I that measure of spiritual insight and thoughtfulness which enables me to say “This is just that moulding graving tool which is so necessary to rub off that sharp angle to blot out that dark stain to do this or that or the other necessary work in my character? “ Do I regard it as the trenchant treatment of the surgeon who is to again make me sound? Humiliation is the way to humility. Learn the lesson which the humiliation contains for us to become the wiser man the more docile while not the less resolute. That is the discipline of God--point by point step by step biting after biting of the tool smiting after smiting of the hammer. So it is moulding after moulding of the Divine hand we are to be brought into shape. Now I say it there is not a day of our life in which it does not make a real vital difference whether we have had this expectation in our will our intelligence our heart so that when the blow little or great comes the disappointment be it never so trivial it may teach us the lesson. The little humiliation may come on its way and speed on as a messenger which has fulfilled its obligation and done its duty. For it has taught us something and we go to bed something wiser men and women than we got up in the morning. There is hardly a department of life in which there are not great and vital changes which are needed. Yes but are we fit to do them? That is the question. Perhaps we have willingness but have we what is a part of meekness--patience? Do we arrive with our enthusiasm our ideal enthusiasm and then shrink altogether from the task of drudgery? Because you know there are only two qualities by which anything finally effective can be done--enthusiasm and drudgery and they are no good apart. Or is it vanity? Yes I offered myself to work on that particular committee I offered myself to do that good job which surely was for the bettering of mankind. But then I thought that I was to be secretary or I was to be put into the chair and somebody else who surely had no better claim than I was put there. Or is it the refusal of pain? There it is the pain the ugliness the dirt and squalor and to do anything effective I must be in contact with the pain and the dirt and the ugliness and the squalor. I must not be hiding myself from my own flesh. But I shrink from it I think I cannot bear it and the task is undone and the Kingdom of God makes not the progress it might make because I am not with the meek and the patient with the sorrowful and the suffering. Or is it prayerlessness? I have my schemes my plans but I do not keep myself in correspondence with God. It is my own pride that guides me my own ideas my own schemes. The question is whether in the larger or less sphere we will mould mould to the Divine hand or whether we will be that obstinate stuff that moral character that will not mould and which becomes the vessel of wrath the vessel which the Divine Potter after patient trying finds unmalleable and at the last must cast aside as of a stuff that will not make under the Divine hand. That is it the Divine Potter would mould you. And is there anything to the spiritual imagination so beautiful anything so lovely to think about as the discipline of the soul conscious of the hand of God upon it and for all its occasional wilfulness and sins and faults ever coming back to be moulded according to the plan and will of the Divine Potter according to the love of our Father Who chastens us into effective meekness that at the last we may share in the glory of His kingdom as things that have realised their end in that fruitfulness which belongs to the meek? That is the consciousness which every Christian soul is sooner or later meant to have. (Bishop Gore.)


Verses 4-15


Verses 4-7

Zephaniah 2:4-7

For Gaza shall be forsaken.

The sinner’s baleful influence and God’s disposal of all

I. The calamities falling upon one sinner often involve others. The ruin of the Hebrew nation would be most calamitous to the Philistine cities and indeed to the neighbouring States. It is so--

1. With nations.

2. With individuals.

This shows--

II. That the lot of man is at the disposal of almighty god. “And the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds and folds for flocks. And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed thereupon: in the houses of Ashkelon shall they lie down in the evening: for the Lord their God shall visit them and turn away their captivity.” Here the Almighty is represented as arranging the future home and circumstances of the remnant of the house of Judah. Though we are free and are conscious of our freedom we are at the disposal of One above us. He has appointed--

1. Our place in the world. He has set bounds to our habitation “that we cannot pass.”

2. Our period in the world. “My times are in Thy hand.” We are often tempted to imagine that chance rules us. But amidst all this feeling of contingency and over all there is the ruling plan of the Beneficent God. (Homilist.)


Verses 8-10

Zephaniah 2:8-10

I have heard the reproach of Moab.

The persecution of the good

I. That good men are often subject to annoyances from the ungodly world. “I have heard the reproach [abuse] of Moab and the revilings of the children of Ammon whereby they have reproached My people [abused My nation] and magnified themselves against their border.” These people the Moabites and the Ammonites were constantly annoying and abusing the chosen people. In the time of Moses Balak the king of the Moabites sought to destroy the Israelites by means of Balaam’s curses (Numbers 22:1-41.). And in the time of the Judges both peoples endeavoured to oppress Israel ( 3:12; 10:7). The charge here probably refers to the hostile attitude assumed by both tribes at all times towards the people of God. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah charged them with annoying them (Isaiah 16:6; Jeremiah 48:29). The hostile conduct of Moab and Ammon towards Israel is only a specimen and an illustration of the antagonism of wicked men towards the truly pious. They “reproach” them they charge them with superstition fanaticism cant hypocrisy etc. The best men the men of whom the world is not worthy are always persecuted.

II. That these annoyances escape not the notice of God. “I have heard the reproach.”

1. God’s attention to the minute concerns of human life.

2. God’s special interest in His people (Jeremiah 23:23).

III. That God will not fail to chastise the authors of such annoyances. “Therefore as I live saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel surely Moab shall be as Sodom and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah even the breeding of nettles and saltpits and a perpetual desolation.” Mark--

1. The doom of those reproachers. They shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah.

2. The cause of their doom. “This they shall have for their pride.” (Homilist.)


Verse 11

Zephaniah 2:11

And men shall worship Him.

Good things in the future

I. The destruction of idolatry. You may burn up all heathen temples and leave idolatry as rampant as ever.

II. The advancement of true worship. “And men shall worship Him every one from his place even all the isles of the heathen.” Observe--

1. The object of true worship. “Men shall worship Him ”--that is Jehovah. Him not it--not the universe but the Infinite Personality that created it.

2. The scene of true worship. “Every one from his place.” Wherever he is. He need not go to any particular scene--to temple chapel or cathedral.

3. The extent of true worship. “Even all the isles of the heathen.” What a glorious future awaits this world! (Homilist.)


Verses 13-15

Zephaniah 2:13-15

He will stretch out His hand against the north.

National pride and national ruin

Two facts are suggested--

I. That men are often prone to pride themselves on the greatness of their country. The men of the city of Nineveh--the capital of Assyria--were proud of their nation. There was much in the city of Nineveh to account for if not to justify the exultant spirit of its population. It was the metropolis of a vast empire; it was a city 60 miles in compass it had walls 100 feet high and so thick and strong that three chariots could be driven abreast on them; it had 1500 massive towers. Italy Austria Germany America England each says in its spirit “I am and there is none beside me.” This spirit of national boasting is unjustifiable. There is nothing in a nation of which it should be proud except moral excellence. On the contrary how much ignorance sensuality worldliness intolerance impiety that should humble us in the dust. It is moreover a foolish spirit. It is a check to true national progress and its haughty swaggerings tend to irritate other countries.

II. That the greatest country must sooner or later fall to ruin. “He will stretch out His hand against the north and destroy Assyria.” “Flocks shall lie down in the midst of her ” etc. Not only a receptacle for beasts but a derision to travellers. “Every one that passeth by her shall hiss and wag his hand.” This is the fate that awaits all the nations under heaven even the greatest. (Homilist.)

──The Biblical Illustrator