Zephaniahchapter 1
18 verses · Zephaniah · 640 to 622 BC · The Twelve
Key verse
The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly.
It stands in A day of wrath, trouble, trumpet, and alarm, verses 14 to 18.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Zephaniah traces his line back four generations to Hezekiah and prophesies under Josiah, and he opens at the scale of Genesis reversed: 'I will utterly consume all things from off the face of the ground… man and beast… the birds of the heavens, and the fishes of the sea.' Then the sweep narrows to Judah: the remnant of Baal, the idol-priests, rooftop worshipers of the host of heaven, men who swear both by Jehovah and by Malcam. 'The day of Jehovah is at hand: for Jehovah hath prepared a sacrifice': the guests are the invaders. Jerusalem is searched with lamps for the complacent 'settled on their lees.' The great day is near: 'a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress' (1:15).
Context
Prophecy · Zephaniah · Zephaniah overview
The world behind this chapter
Zephaniah 1The history
Zephaniah traces his own family back four generations to a Hezekiah, which is unusual, most prophets name only a father. If that is King Hezekiah, as many hold, the man announcing the fall of Jerusalem was speaking from inside the royal family.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The idolatry described is the residue of Manasseh's fifty-five-year reign, the longest in Judah's history and the worst. The kemarim named here are a particular kind of idolatrous priest, a word used only for the servants of foreign shrines. Worshipping the host of heaven on the rooftops was a Mesopotamian import that came in with Assyrian influence, and flat roofs made the whole city an observatory.
The double-minded are named exactly: those who swear by the LORD and also swear by Milcom, the god of Ammon. This is not apostasy but hedging, keeping both accounts open, which Zephaniah treats as worse than either.
The geography of the alarm is a route through the city. The Fish Gate was in the north wall where the coastal traders came in; the Second Quarter, or Mishneh, was the expanded western district that had filled with refugees after the north fell; and the Maktesh, meaning the mortar, the hollow of a stone bowl, was a dip in the ground where the merchants and silver weighers worked. Zephaniah is tracking an invasion through the streets by name. Then he adds the wine image: men thickening on their lees, like wine left too long on its sediment until it goes heavy and sluggish and can no longer be poured clear.
What it meant to them
The chapter's opening is a reversal of creation, man and beast, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, swept away. Hearers who knew the Genesis order would have heard the list running backwards.
The men in the Maktesh were saying in their hearts that the LORD will not do good, nor will he do harm. That is the real target: not people who denied God but people who had decided he was inert. Zephaniah answers with a day of the LORD described as bitter, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities, and their silver and gold will not be able to deliver them.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
Where the chapter sits
Zephaniah 1 falls in Day of the LORD, judgment on Judah (chapters 1). ‘I will utterly consume all things from off the land.’ The day of wrath announced.
The great day. ‘The great day of the LORD is near.’
After it: Judgment on the nations; call to seek, chapters 2.
The whole shape of Zephaniah→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. I will utterly sweep everything from off the land
1. (v. 1)
Zephaniah 1:1
“The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah - It seems likely that more forefathers of the prophet are named than is the wont of Holy Scripture, because the last so named was some one remarkable.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Zephaniah 1:1
“Zephaniah - He is thought to have been the great-grandson of king Hezekiah. In the days of Josiah - So he was cotemporary with Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and foretells what Jeremiah and Ezekiel did.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
the son of Hizkiah: Zephaniah traces his line back four generations to Hizkiah, whom the bench identifies as good king Hezekiah, which would make the prophet royal blood and gives him standing to indict princes and even the king's own household in the verses that follow. He prophesies in the days of Josiah, before the reforms of 622 BC took full effect, since the Baal worship and astral cults catalogued in verses 4 through 6 still stand as living targets. His father's name, Cushi, means Cushite or Ethiopian, and some read a family tie behind the book's later concern for Ethiopia at 2:12 and 3:10, though the bench does not press the point.
2. (vv. 2-3)
Zephaniah 1:2
“I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. That is, from the land of Judah, by means of the Chaldeans or Babylonians: this is a general denunciation of the judgments of God, the particulars follow: or, "in gathering I will gather"; all good things out of the land; all the necessaries of life, and blessings of Providence; all that is for the sustenance and pleasure of man, as well as all creatures, by death or captivity; and so the land should be entirely stripped, and left naked and bare.”
Zephaniah 1:3
“Enumeration in detail of the "all things" (Zep 1:2; compare Jer 9:10; Ho 4:3). the stumbling-blocks--idols which cause Judah to offend or stumble (Eze 14:3, 4, 7). with the wicked--The idols and their worshippers shall be involved in a common destruction.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
I will utterly consume all things: The command sweeps backward through the creation order itself, man, beast, fowl of the heaven, fish of the sea, undoing Genesis one species by species until only the stumblingblocks with the wicked remain named. The bench reads the language as hyperbole proper to prophetic threat rather than literal annihilation of the animal kingdom, its force falling on Judah's covenant unfaithfulness even as it borrows the vocabulary of universal judgment. Cutting off man from off the land closes the announcement on the same soil the covenant was given for, so the threatened exile reads as land forfeited rather than the world ended.
3. (vv. 4-6)
Zephaniah 1:4
“I will cut off the remnant of Baal - I think he refers here, partly at least, to the reformation which Josiah was to bring about. See the account, 2Ki 23:5 (note). The Chemarims - The black-robed priests of different idols. See the note on 2Ki 23:6. These were put down by Josiah.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Zephaniah 1:5
“House-tops - On the flat roofs of their houses. And that swear - That mixt idol-worship, and the worship of the true God; that devote themselves to God, and Baal, or Malchim, that is, Moloch.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Zephaniah 1:6
“And them that are turned back from the Lord,....”
2 more voices on this verse
Zephaniah 1:6
“Them that are turned back - Who have forsaken the true God, and become idolaters. Nor inquired for him - Have not desired to know his will.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Zephaniah 1:6
“7 Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord G OD : for the day of the L ORD is at hand: for the L ORD hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests. 8 And it shall come to pass in the day of the L ORD 's sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king's children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
the remnant of Baal from this place: Baal, the Chemarims, a name the text keeps for the black robed idol priests, the host of heaven worshipped on housetops, and Malcham, the Ammonite Milcom, name four separate cults Judah had absorbed, and the catalogue reads like an inventory of Manasseh's reign that Josiah's reforms had not yet cleared out. Verse 5's second clause is the sharpest stroke, those who swear by the Lord and by Malcham in the same breath, worship divided rather than abandoned, which the bench calls the harder sin to root out. Verse 6 widens the charge from active idolatry to simple neglect, those turned back from the Lord and those who never sought him at all, judged by the same sentence.
B. Searching Jerusalem with lamps for the men settled on their lees
1. (v. 7)
Zephaniah 1:7
“The day of the Lord will come. Men have their day now, when they take a liberty to do what they please; but God's day is at hand; it is here called his sacrifice, a sacrifice of his preparing, for the punishing of presumptuous sinners is a sacrifice to the justice of God, some reparation to his injured honour.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
Zephaniah 1:7
“The day - A day of vengeance from the Lord. A sacrifice - The wicked Jews, whom he will sacrifice by the sword. His guests - summoned the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, to eat the flesh, and drink the blood.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
the Lord hath prepared a sacrifice: Hold thy peace answers the noise of idolatrous festival with silence before a different ceremony, the day of the Lord pictured as a sacrificial feast where the Lord himself is the host, Judah the victim, and the invading army the guests he has bidden to the table. The image reverses the temple's own sacrificial system, in which Judah brought the offering, and the bench reads the reversal as deliberate, the covenant people become the meal rather than the worshippers. Habakkuk 2:20's own command to keep silence before the Lord's presence stands near it as the shared prophetic formula it is.
2. (vv. 8-9)
Zephaniah 1:8
“I will punish the princes, and the king’s children - After the death of Josiah the kingdom of Judah saw no prosperity, and every reign terminated miserably; until at last King Zedekiah and the king’s children were cruelly massacred at Riblah, when Nebuchadnezzar had taken Jerusalem. Strange apparel - I really think this refers more to their embracing idolatrous customs and heathen usages, than to their changing their dress. They acquired new habits, as we would say; customs, that they used as they did their clothing - at all times, and in every thing.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Zephaniah 1:8
“The princes - The great ones, who dreamed of shifting better than others, but fell with the first, 2 Kings xxv, 19-21. Children - Sons and grand-children, Josiah: Jehoahaz died a captive in Egypt, 2 Kings xxiii, 34, Jehoakim died in Babylon, and was buried with the burial of an ass, Jer. xxii, 18, 19, Jeconiah died a captive: and Zedekiah and his children, fared still worse.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Zephaniah 1:8
“GROTIUS refers the "strange apparel" to garments forbidden by the law, for example, men's garments worn by women, and vice versa, a heathen usage in the worship of Mars and Venus (De 22:5).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Zephaniah 1:9
“Compare Isa 2:6, "thy people . . . are soothsayers like the Philistines." CALVIN'S view agrees best with the latter clause of the verse. fill . . . masters' houses with violence, &c.--that is, with goods obtained with violence, &c.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Zephaniah 1:9
“I will punish all those that leap on the threshold - Neither language nor history nor context allow this to be understood of the idolatrous custom of Ashdod, not to tread on the threshold of the temple of Dagon. It had indeed been a strange infatuation of idolatry, that God’s people should adopt an act of superstitious reverence for an idol in the very instance in which its nothingness and the power of the true God had been shown. Nothing is indeed too brutish for one who chooses an idol for the true God, preferring Satan to the good God.”
clothed with strange apparel: The princes and king's children punished for strange apparel points to a court that had adopted foreign fashion as it had adopted foreign gods, dressing itself in the manner of the nations Judah was meant to be distinct from. Leaping on the threshold in verse 9 is read by the bench against the account at 1 Samuel 5:5, where Dagon's priests would not tread on his temple's threshold after the idol fell there, a superstition Zephaniah accuses Jerusalem's own household servants of having picked up. Filling their masters' houses with violence and deceit turns a foreign superstition into a charge of plain theft, the borrowed custom and the corruption named in the same verse.
3. (vv. 10-11)
Zephaniah 1:10
“A cry from the fish-gate - This gate, which is mentioned Neh 3:3, was opposite to Joppa; and perhaps the way in which the news came of the irruption of the Chaldean army, the great crashing from the hills. The second - Or second city, may here mean a part of Jerusalem, mentioned 2Ki 22:14; 2Ch 34:22.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Zephaniah 1:10
“The noise - The great out-cry and lamentation. The fish gate - At which gate the Babylonians first entered into the city. The second - This gate was in the second wall of Jerusalem, which on that side was fortified with three walls.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Zephaniah 1:10
“It belonged to the city of David ( 2 Chron. xxxiii. 3 ); perhaps the same with that which is called the first gate ( Zech. xiv. 10 ), and, if so, it will explain what follows here, And a howling from the second, that is, the second gate, which was next to that fish-gate.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Zephaniah 1:11
“Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh - Literally, “Mortar” , “in which,” Jerome says, “corn is pounded; a hollow vessel, and fit for the use of medical men, in which properly ptisans are wont to be beaten (or made). Striking is it, that Scripture saith not, ‘who dwell in the valley or in the alley,’ but who “dwell in the mortar,” because as corn, when the pestle striketh, is bruised, so the army of the enemy shall rush down upon you” (Jerome).”
1 more voice on this verse
Zephaniah 1:11
“Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh,.... The name of a street in Jerusalem, as Aben Ezra; perhaps it lay low in the hollow of the city, and in the form of a mortar, from whence it might have its name, as the word (q) signifies; which is used both for a hollow place and for a mortar, Jdg 15:19 unless it might be so called from such persons dwelling in it, that used mortars for spice, and other things.”
a cry from the fish gate: The noise moves geographically through Jerusalem's own map, the fish gate on the north side, the second quarter inside it, and the hills where the city's wealthier districts stood, so the invasion is heard advancing street by street rather than described from a distance. Maktesh, meaning a mortar or hollow, names the merchants' quarter in the lower market, and the pun the bench notes is exact, the city built like a mortar for grinding is about to be ground itself. All they that bear silver are cut off ties the coming judgment to the very trade the district was built for, wealth offering no shelter from the day.
4. (vv. 12-13)
Zephaniah 1:12
“I will search Jerusalem with candles - I will make a universal and thorough search. That are settled on their lees - Those who are careless, satisfied with the goods of this life; who trust in their riches, and are completely irreligious; who, while they acknowledge that there is a God, think, like the Aristotelians, that he is so supremely happy in the contemplation of his own excellences, that he feels it beneath his dignity to concern himself with the affairs of mortals.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Zephaniah 1:12
“This intimates that they conceal themselves, as being either ashamed of the sin or afraid of the punishment of it; when the judgments of God are abroad they hope to escape by absconding and getting out of the way, but God will search Jerusalem, as search is made for a malefactor in disguise, that is harboured by his accomplices.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Zephaniah 1:13
“Therefore their goods shall become a booty, &c.--Fulfilling the prophecy in De 28:30, 39 (compare Am 5:11).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 more voices on this verse
Zephaniah 1:13
“That is enough to make the sinners in Zion tremble--that it is the day of the Lord, the day in which he will manifest himself by taking vengeance on them. It is the great day of the Lord, a specimen of the day of judgment, a kind of doom's-day, as the last destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans is represented to be in our Saviour's prediction concerning it, Matt. xxiv.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Zephaniah 1:13
“Therefore their goods - Literally, “And their strength.” It is the simple sequel in God’s Providence. It is a continued narrative. God will visit those who say, that God does not interfere in man’s affairs, and, it shall be seen Jer 44:28 whose words shall stand, God’s or their’s. All which God had threatened in the law shall be fulfilled. God, in the fulfillment of the punishment, which He had foretold in the law Lev 26:32-33; Deut. 28, would vindicate not only His present Providence, but His continual government of His own world.”
search Jerusalem with candles: Searching Jerusalem with candles pictures the Lord's judgment as a house to house search rather than a blow from a distance, no dark corner of the city's complacency left unlit. The men settled on their lees are wine left too long undisturbed, thickened and stale, a figure the bench reads as spiritual apathy dressed as security, men who have concluded the Lord will do neither good nor evil and so need not be reckoned with. Verse 13's futility curse, houses built but not inhabited, vineyards planted but not drunk from, repeats the covenant sanctions of Deuteronomy 28 and the same judgment Amos pronounces at 5:11, the promised land's blessings turned to labor without reward.
C. A day of wrath, trouble, trumpet, and alarm
1. (vv. 14-16)
Zephaniah 1:14
“The great day of the Lord is near - It commenced with the death of the good king Josiah, who was slain by Pharaoh-necho at Megiddo, and continued to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Zephaniah 1:15
“A day of wrath - In which all the wrath of Almighty God, which evil angels and evil men have treasured to them for that day, shall be poured out: “the” day of wrath, because then they shall be brought face to face before the presence of God, but thenceforth they shall be cast out of it forever. A day of trouble and distress - Both words express, how anguish shall narrow and hem them in; so that there shall be no escape; above them, God displeased; below, the flames of Hell; around, devils to drag them away, and Angels casting them forth “in bundles to burn them;” without, “the books” which shall be opened;” and within, conscience leaving them no escape.”
1 more voice on this verse
Zephaniah 1:15
“It will be a day of trouble and distress to the sinners; they shall be in pain, and shall see no ways of easing or helping themselves. The miseries of the damned are summed up (perhaps with reference to this) in the indignation and wrath of God, which are the cause, and the tribulation and anguish of the sinner's soul, which are the effect, Rom. ii.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
and hasteth greatly: The great day of the Lord is near doubles its own word for emphasis, near, it is near, and the mighty man, the professional soldier who should fear nothing, is the one heard crying bitterly, since no strength turns this day aside. Verse 15's sevenfold list, wrath, trouble, distress, wasteness, desolation, darkness, gloominess, piles synonym on synonym rather than adding new information, the repetition itself built to overwhelm, and this list supplied much of the Latin vocabulary of the medieval Dies Irae hymn, a reception the bench notes without claiming the hymn as commentary on the verse. The trumpet and alarm against fenced cities and high towers in verse 16 name the very defenses Judah trusted in as the day's specific targets.
2. (vv. 17-18)
Zephaniah 1:17
“I will bring distress upon men - I will hem them in, in anguish on all sides. God Himself shall meet them with His terrors, wherever they turn. “I will hem them in, that they may find it so” . That they shall walk like blind men - Utterly bereft of counsel, seeing no more than the blind which way to turn, grasping blindly and franticly at anything, and going on headlong to their own destruction.”
Zephaniah 1:18
“Note, Sometimes the judgments of God make riddance, even utter riddance, with sinful nations, a speedy riddance; their destruction is effected, is completed, in a little time. Let not sinners be laid asleep by the patience of God, for when the measure of their iniquity is full his justice will both overtake and overcome, will make quick work and thorough work.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
shall walk like blind men: Walking like blind men pictures an army stumbling in panic rather than a plague of physical blindness, disoriented because they have sinned against the Lord rather than because any weapon has touched them yet. Blood poured out as dust and flesh as the dung is read by the bench as corpses left unburied and uncounted, the ordinary honor of burial denied by the scale of the slaughter. Neither silver nor gold shall be able to deliver closes the chapter on the same wealth named at the fish gate and Maktesh, the whole land devoured by the fire of his jealousy, and a speedy riddance that Babylon would soon carry out.
This page carries no textual note on Zephaniah 1. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
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