We reach more certainty when we come to the second section of the chapter, vv. 14–20. Since Kuenen it has been recognised by the majority of critics that we have here a prophecy from the end of the Exile or after the Return. The temper has changed. Instead of the austere and sombre outlook of chap. i.—ii. 3 and chap. iii. 1–13, in which the sinful Israel is to be saved indeed, but only as by fire, we have a triumphant prophecy of her recovery from all affliction (nothing is said of her sin) and of her glory among the nations of the world. To put it otherwise, while the genuine prophecies of Zephaniah almost grudgingly allow a door of escape to a few righteous and humble Israelites from a judgment which is to fall alike on Israel and the Gentiles, chap. iii. 14–20 predicts Israel’s deliverance from her Gentile oppressors, her return from captivity and the establishment of her renown over the earth. The language, too, has many resemblances to that of Second Isaiah.[99] Obviously therefore we have here, added to the severe prophecies of Zephaniah, such a more hopeful, peaceful epilogue as we saw was added, during the Exile or immediately after it, to the despairing prophecies of Amos.
CHAPTER III
THE PROPHET AND THE REFORMERS
ZEPHANIAH i.—ii. 3
Towards the year 625, when King Josiah had passed out of his minority,[100] and was making his first efforts at religious reform, prophecy, long slumbering, awoke again in Israel.
Like the king himself, its first heralds were men in their early youth. In 627 Jeremiah calls himself but a boy, and Zephaniah can hardly have been out of his teens.[101] For the sudden outbreak of these young lives there must have been a large reservoir of patience and hope gathered in the generation behind them. So Scripture itself testifies. To Jeremiah it was said: Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I consecrated thee.[102] In an age when names were bestowed only because of their significance,[103] both prophets bore that of Jehovah in their own. So did Jeremiah’s father, who was of the priests of Anathoth. Zephaniah’s “forbears” are given for four generations, and with one exception they also are called after Jehovah: The Word of Jehovah which came to Ṣephanyah, son of Kushi, son of Gedhalyah, son of Amaryah, son of Hizḳiyah, in the days of Joshiyahu,[104] Amon’s son, king of Judah. Zephaniah’s great-great-grandfather Hezekiah was in all probability the king.[105] His father’s name Kushi, or Ethiop, is curious. If we are right, that Zephaniah was a young man towards 625, then Kushi must have been born towards 663, about the time of the conflicts between Assyria and Egypt, and it is possible that, as Manasseh and the predominant party in Judah so closely hung upon and imitated Assyria, the adherents of Jehovah put their hope in Egypt, whereof, it may be, this name Kushi is a token.[106] The name Zephaniah itself, meaning Jehovah hath hidden, suggests the prophet’s birth in the “killing-time” of Manasseh. There was at least one other contemporary of the same name—a priest executed by Nebuchadrezzar.[107]
Of the adherents of Jehovah, then, and probably of royal descent, Zephaniah lived in Jerusalem. We descry him against her, almost as clearly as we descry Isaiah. In the glare and smoke of the conflagration which his vision sweeps across the world, only her features stand out definite and particular: the flat roofs with men and women bowing in the twilight to the host of heaven, the crowds of priests, the nobles and their foreign fashions; the Fishgate, the New or Second Town, where the rich lived, the Heights to which building had at last spread, and between them the hollow Mortar, with its markets, Phœnician merchants and money-dealers. In the first few verses of Zephaniah we see almost as much of Jerusalem as in the whole book either of Isaiah or Jeremiah.