IX. ZEPHANIAH.
17. Zephaniah prophesied in the reign of Josiah (1:1), apparently while his work of reformation was in progress and not yet completed (1:4-6, 8, 9); that is, somewhere between his twelfth and his eighteenth year (2 Chron. 34:3-13).
In the first chapter he predicts the utter desolation of Judah, and with it the destruction of all the patrons of idolatry and the rich and presumptuous sinners in Jerusalem. In the second chapter he exhorts the covenant people to repentance in view of the judgments that are coming upon them (verses 1-3), threatens the surrounding nations—Philistia, Moab, and Ammon—with desolation (verses 4-11), and denounces the judgments of God upon the Ethiopians and Assyrians (verses 12-15). In the third chapter, after a severe rebuke of Jerusalem for her incorrigible rebellion against God (verses 1-7), he foretells in glowing language the future purification and enlargement of Zion, and the destruction of all her enemies (verses 8-20). The style of Zephaniah is clear and flowing, having a general resemblance to that of Jeremiah. He has frequent allusions to the earlier prophets. Chap. 1:7 compared with Isa. 34:6; chap. 2:13-15 compared with Isa. 13:21, 22; 34:13-15; chap. 1:14, 15 with Joel 2:1, 2; chap. 1:13 with Amos 5:11, etc.
The genealogy of Zephaniah is given through Cushi, Gedaliah, and Amariah to Hezekiah; for in the original Hebrew the words Hizkiah and Hezekiah are the same. As it is not usual that the descent of prophets should be given with such particularity, it has been assumed, with some probability, that this Hezekiah was the king of that name; though in this case we should have expected the addition "king of Judah." The "chemarim," verse 4, are the idol-priests; that is, priests devoted to idol worship. In 2 Kings 33:5, where the writer is speaking of the reformation under Josiah, the word is translated "idolatrous priests;" in Hosea 10:5 simply "priests," which is its meaning in the Syriac language. Some have maintained that the invasion of Judah to which Zephaniah refers was that of the Scythians described by Herodotus, 1. 105; but this is very improbable. From the fact that "the king's children" are included in the threatened visitation—in the Hebrew, "I will visit upon the princes and the king's children" (1:8)—some have inferred that they must have been already grown and addicted to idolatrous practices; consequently that Zephaniah wrote later than the eighteenth year of Josiah. But, as Keil and others have remarked, the mention of the king's children may have been added simply to indicate the universality of the approaching visitation; not to say that the prophetic vision of Zephaniah may have anticipated the sin and punishment of these king's children—Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim.