_SO AS BY FIRE_
Zephaniah iii.
The third chapter of the Book of Zephaniah consists[168] of two
sections, of which only the first, vv. 1-13, is a genuine work of the
prophet; while the second, vv. 14-20, is a later epilogue such as we
found added to the genuine prophecies of Amos. It is written in the
large hope and brilliant temper of the Second Isaiah, saying no word of
Judah’s sin or judgment, but predicting her triumphant deliverance out
of all her afflictions.
In a second address to his City (vv. 1-13) Zephaniah strikes the same
notes as he did in his first. He spares the king, but denounces the
ruling and teaching classes. Jerusalem’s princes are lions, her judges
wolves, her prophets braggarts, her priests pervert the law, her wicked
have no shame. He repeats the proclamation of a universal doom. But
the time is perhaps later. Judah has disregarded the many threats. She
will not accept the Lord’s discipline; and while in chap. i.—ii. 3
Zephaniah had said that the meek and righteous might escape the doom,
he now emphatically affirms that all proud and impenitent men shall be
removed from Jerusalem, and a humble people be left to her, righteous
and secure. There is the same moral earnestness as before, the same
absence of all other elements of prophecy than the ethical. Before we
ask the reason and emphasise the beauty of this austere gospel, let us
see the exact words of the address. There are the usual marks of poetic
diction in it—elliptic phrases, the frequent absence of the definite
article, archaic forms and an order of the syntax different from that
which obtains in prose. But the measure is difficult to determine, and
must be printed as prose. The echo of the elegiac rhythm in the opening
is more apparent than real: it is not sustained beyond the first verse.
Verses 9 and 10 are relegated to a footnote, as very probably an
intrusion, and disturbance of the argument.
_Woe, rebel and unclean, city of oppression![169] She listens to no
voice, she accepts no discipline, in Jehovah she trusts not, nor has
drawn near to her God._
_Her princes in her midst are roaring lions; her judges evening
wolves,[170] they ...[171] not till morning; her prophets are braggarts
and traitors; her priests have profaned what is holy and done violence
to the Law.[172] Jehovah is righteous in the midst of her, He does no
wrong. Morning by morning He brings His judgment to light: He does not
let Himself fail[173]—but the wicked man knows no shame. I have cut
off nations, their turrets are ruined; I have laid waste their broad
streets, till no one passes upon them; destroyed are their cities,
without a man, without a dweller.[174] I said, Surely she will fear
Me, she will accept punishment,[175] and all that I have visited upon
her[176] shall never vanish from her eyes.[177] But only the more
zealously have they corrupted all their doings.[178]_
_Wherefore wait ye for Me—oracle of Jehovah—_wait_ for the day of My
rising to testify, for ’tis My fixed purpose[179] to sweep nations
together, to collect kingdoms, to pour upon them ...[180] all the heat
of My wrath—yea, with the fire of My jealousy shall the whole earth
be consumed.[181]_
_In that day thou shalt not be ashamed[182] of all thy deeds, by which
thou hast rebelled against Me: for then will I turn out of the midst of
thee all who exult with that arrogance of thine,[183] and thou wilt not
again vaunt thyself upon the Mount of My Holiness. But I will leave in
thy midst a people humble and poor, and they shall trust in the name of
Jehovah. The Remnant of Israel shall do no evil, and shall not speak
falsehood, and no fraud shall be found in their mouth, but they shall
pasture and they shall couch, with none to make them afraid._
Such is the simple and austere gospel of Zephaniah. It is not to be
overlooked amid the lavish and gorgeous promises which other prophets
have poured around it, and by ourselves, too, it is needed in our often
unscrupulous enjoyment of the riches of grace that are in Christ Jesus.
A thorough purgation, the removal of the wicked, the sparing of the
honest and the meek; insistence only upon the rudiments of morality and
religion; faith in its simplest form of trust in a righteous God, and
character in its basal elements of meekness and truth,—these and these
alone survive the judgment. Why does Zephaniah never talk of the Love
of God, of the Divine Patience, of the Grace that has spared and will
spare wicked hearts if only it can touch them to penitence? Why has he
no call to repent, no appeal to the wicked to turn from the evil of
their ways? We have already seen part of the answer. Zephaniah stands
too near to judgment and the last things. Character is fixed, the time
for pleading is past; there remains only the separation of bad men
from good. It is the same standpoint (at least ethically) as that of
Christ’s visions of the Judgment. Perhaps also an austere gospel was
required by the fashionable temper of the day. The generation was loud
and arrogant; it gilded the future to excess, and knew no shame.[184]
The true prophet was forced to reticence; he must make his age feel the
desperate earnestness of life, and that salvation is by fire. For the
gorgeous future of its unsanctified hopes he must give it this severe,
almost mean, picture of a poor and humble folk, hardly saved but at
last at peace.
The permanent value of such a message is proved by the thirst which
we feel even to-day for the clear, cold water of its simple promises.
Where a glaring optimism prevails, and the future is preached with a
loud assurance, where many find their only religious enthusiasm in the
resurrection of mediæval ritual or the singing of stirring and gorgeous
hymns of second-hand imagery, how needful to be recalled to the
earnestness and severity of life, to the simplicity of the conditions
of salvation, and to their ethical, not emotional, character! Where
sensationalism has so invaded religion, how good to hear the sober
insistence upon God’s daily commonplaces—_morning by morning He
bringeth forth His judgment to light_—and to know that the acceptance
of discipline is what prevails with Him. Where national reform is
vaunted and the progress of education, how well to go back to a prophet
who ignored all the great reforms of his day that he might impress
his people with the indispensableness of humility and faith. Where
Churches have such large ambitions for themselves, how necessary to
hear that the future is destined for _a poor folk_, the meek and the
honest. Where men boast that their religion—Bible, Creed or Church—has
undertaken to save them, _vaunting themselves on the Mount of My
Holiness_, how needful to hear salvation placed upon character and a
very simple trust in God.
But, on the other hand, is any one in despair at the darkness and
cruelty of this life, let him hear how Zephaniah proclaims that, though
all else be fraud, _the Lord is righteous in the midst_ of us, _He doth
not let Himself fail_, that the resigned heart and the humble, the just
and the pure heart, is imperishable, and in the end there is at least
peace.
EPILOGUE.
VERSES 14-20.
Zephaniah’s prophecy was fulfilled. The Day of the Lord came, and
the people met their judgment. The Remnant survived—_a folk poor and
humble_. To them, in the new estate and temper of their life, came a
new song from God—perhaps it was nearly a hundred years after Zephaniah
had spoken—and they added it to his prophecies. It came in with
wonderful fitness, for it was the song of the redeemed, whom he had
foreseen, and it tuned his book, severe and simple, to the full harmony
of prophecy, so that his book might take a place in the great choir of
Israel—the diapason of that full salvation which no one man, but only
the experience of centuries, could achieve.
_Sing out, O daughter of Zion! shout aloud, O Israel! Rejoice and be
jubilant with all thy[185] heart, daughter of Jerusalem! Jehovah hath
set aside thy judgments,[186] He hath turned thy foes. King of Israel,
Jehovah is in thy midst; thou shalt not see[187] evil any more._
_In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear not. O Zion, let not
thy hands droop! Jehovah, thy God, in the midst of thee is mighty;[188]
He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy, He will make new[189]
His love, He will exult over thee with singing._
_The scattered of thy congregation[190] have I gathered—thine[191] are
they, ...[192] reproach upon her. Behold, I am about to do all for thy
sake at that time,[193] and I will rescue the lame and the outcast will
I bring in,[194] and I will make them for renown and fame whose shame
is in the whole earth.[195] In that time I will bring you in,[196]
even in the time that I gather you.[197] For I will set you for fame
and renown among all the peoples of the earth, when I turn again your
captivity before your eyes, saith Jehovah.[198]_
FOOTNOTES:
[168] See above, pp. 43-45.
[169] Heb. _the city the oppressor_. The two participles in the first
clause are not predicates to the noun and adjective of the second
(Schwally), but vocatives, though without the article, after הוֹי.
[170] LXX. _wolves of Arabia_.
[171] The verb left untranslated, גרמו, is quite uncertain in meaning.
גרם is a root common to the Semitic languages and seems to mean
originally _to cut off_, while the noun גרם is _a bone_. In Num. xxiv.
8 the Piel of the verb used with another word for bone means _to gnaw_,
_munch_. (The only other passage where it is used, Ezek. xxiii. 34, is
corrupt.) So some take it here: _they do not gnaw bones till morning_,
_i.e._ devour all at once; but this is awkward, and Schwally (198)
has proposed to omit the negative, _they do gnaw bones till morning_,
yet in that case surely the impf. and not the perf. tense would have
been used. The LXX. render _they do not leave over_, and it has been
attempted, though inconclusively, to derive this meaning from that of
_cutting off_, i.e. _laying aside_ (the Arabic Form II. means, however,
_to leave behind_). Another line of meaning perhaps promises more. In
Aram. the verb means _to be the cause of anything, to bring about_,
and perhaps contains the idea of _deciding_ (Levy _sub voce_ compares
κρίνω, _cerno_); in Arab. it means, among other things, _to commit
a crime, be guilty_, but in mod. Arabic _to fine_. Now it is to be
noticed that here the expression is used of _judges_, and it may be
there is an intentional play upon the double possibility of meaning in
the root.
[172] Ezek. xxii. 26: _Her priests have done violence to My Law and
have profaned My holy things; they have put no difference between the
holy and profane, between the clean and the unclean._ Cf. Jer. ii. 8.
[173] Schwally by altering the accents: _morning by morning He giveth
forth His judgment: no day does He fail_.
[174] On this ver. 6 see above, p. 44. It is doubtful.
[175] Or _discipline_.
[176] Wellhausen: _that which I have commanded her_. Cf. Job xxxvi. 23;
2 Chron. xxxvi. 23; Ezra i. 2.
[177] So LXX., reading מֵעֵינֶיהָ for the Heb. מְעוֹנָהּ, _her
dwelling_.
[178] A frequent phrase of Jeremiah’s.
[179] משפטי, decree, ordinance, decision.
[180] Heb. _My anger._ LXX. omits.
[181] That is to say, the prophet returns to that general judgment
of the whole earth, with which in his first discourse he had already
threatened Judah. He threatens her with it again in this eighth verse,
because, as he has said in the preceding ones, all other warnings have
failed. The eighth verse therefore follows naturally upon the seventh,
just as naturally as in Amos iv. ver. 12, introduced by the same לֵָכן
as here, follows its predecessors. The next two verses of the text,
however, describe an opposite result: instead of the destruction of the
heathen, they picture their conversion, and it is only in the eleventh
verse that we return to the main subject of the passage, Judah herself,
who is represented (in harmony with the close of Zephaniah’s first
discourse) as reduced to a righteous and pious remnant. Vv. 9 and 10
are therefore obviously a later insertion, and we pass to the eleventh
verse. Vv. 9 and 10: _For then_ (this has no meaning after ver. 8)
_will I give to the peoples a pure lip_ (elliptic phrase: _turn to the
peoples a pure lip_—i.e. _turn their_ evil lip into _a pure lip_: pure
= _picked out_, _select_, _excellent_, cf. Isa. xlix. 2), _that they
may all of them call upon the name of the Lord, that they may serve
Him with one consent_ (Heb. _shoulder_, LXX. _yoke_). _From beyond
the rivers of Ethiopia_—there follows a very obscure phrase, עֲתָרַי
בַּת־פּוּצַי, _suppliants (?) of the daughter of My dispersed_, but
Ewald _of the daughter of Phut—they shall bring Mine offering_.
[182] Wellhausen _despair_.
[183] Heb. _the jubilant ones of thine arrogance_.
[184] See vv. 4, 5, 11.
[185] Heb. _the_.
[186] מִשְׁפָּטַיִךְ. But Wellhausen reads מְשׁוֹפְטַיִךְ, thine
adversaries: cf. Job ix. 15.
[187] Reading תִּרְאִי (with LXX., Wellhausen and Schwally) for
תִּירָאִי of the Hebrew text, _fear_.
[188] Lit. _hero_, _mighty man_.
[189] Heb. _will be silent in_, יַחֲרִישׁ, but not in harmony with the
next clause. LXX. and Syr. render _will make new_, which translates
יַחֲדִישׁ, a form that does not elsewhere occur, though that is no
objection to finding it in Zephaniah, or יְחַדֵּשׁ. Hitzig: _He makes
new things in His love_. Buhl: _He renews His love_. Schwally suggests
יחדה, _He rejoices in His love_.
[190] LXX. _In the days of thy festival_, which it takes with the
previous verse. The Heb. construction is ungrammatical, though not
unprecedented—the construct state before a preposition. Besides נוגי is
obscure in meaning. It is a Ni. pt. for נוגה from יגה, _to be sad_: cf.
the Pi. in Lam. iii. 33. But the Hiphil הוגה in 2 Sam. xx. 13, followed
(as here) by מן, means _to thrust away from_, and that is probably the
sense here.
[191] LXX. _thine oppressed_ in acc. governed by the preceding verb,
which in LXX. begins the verse.
[192] The Heb., מַשְׂאֵת, _burden of_, is unintelligible. Wellhausen
proposes מִשְׂאֵת עֲלֵיהֶ.
[193] This rendering is only a venture in the almost impossible task of
restoring the text of the clause. As it stands the Heb. runs, _Behold,
I am about to do_, or _deal, with thine oppressors_ (which Hitzig and
Ewald accept). Schwally points מְעַנַּיִךְ (active) as a passive, מְעֻנַּיִךְ,
_thine oppressed_. LXX. has ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ποιῶ ἐν σοὶ ἕνεκεν
σοῦ, _i.e._ it read אִתֵּךְ לְמַעֲנֵךְ. Following its suggestion we
might read אֶת־כֹּל לְמַעֲנֵךְ, and so get the above translation.
[194] Micah iv. 6.
[195] This rendering (Ewald’s) is doubtful. The verse concludes with
_in the whole earth their shame_. But בָּשְׁתָּם may be a gloss. LXX.
take it as a verb with the next verse.
[196] LXX. _do good to you_; perhaps אטיב for אביא.
[197] So Heb. literally, but the construction is very awkward. Perhaps
we should read _in that time I will gather you_.
[198] _Before your eyes_, _i.e._ in your lifetime. It is doubtful
whether ver. 20 is original to the passage. For it is simply a
variation on ver. 19, and it has more than one impossible reading: see
previous note, and for שבותיכם read שבותכם.
_NAHUM_
_Woe to the City of Blood,
All of her guile, robbery-full, ceaseless rapine!_
_Hark the whip,
And the rumbling of wheels!
Horses at the gallop,
And the rattling dance of the chariot!
Cavalry at the charge,
Flash of sabres, and lightning of lances!_