Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Zephaniah 2:8

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 8. I have heard the reproach of Moab — God punished them for the cruel part they had taken in the persecutions of the Jews; for when they lay under the displeasure of God, these nations insulted them in the most provoking manner. See on Amos 1:13, and the parallel texts in the margin. (Amos 1:13, and Genesis 19:25; Deuteronomy 29:23; Isaiah 13:19; Isaiah 34:13; Jeremiah 49:18; Jeremiah 50:40)

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

The certainty of judgment (2:1-15)

In spite of the certainty of judgment, there is still hope for those who will turn to God in humility and faith. The only ones to escape the divine wrath will be those who renounce their former wrongdoing and determine to live in obedience to God (2:1-3).
To impress upon the Jerusalemites that no sinners will escape God’s wrath, Zechariah gives them examples of coming judgment on neighbouring nations. The first judgment concerns regions to the west of Judah. The greedy Jerusalem merchants are told that the rich commercial cities of Philistia will be destroyed and their inhabitants killed. The ruined cities will become sheep pastures, and the new inhabitants will be those Jerusalemites who have responded to the prophet’s appeal of verse 3 and repented (4-7).
Moab and Ammon, to the east of Judah, will suffer a worse fate than the Philistines. Their lands will be so devastated that they will not be useful even for feeding sheep. The reason for this severe judgment is that in their pride they mocked God’s people and therefore mocked God (8-11).
To the south the nation of Ethiopia (GNB: Sudan; NIV: Cush) will fall under God’s judgment (12), and to the north mighty Assyria will be destroyed. Assyria had confidently boasted that it ruled the world, but now it will be left a wilderness. It will be fit only to be a dwelling place for birds and wild beasts (13-15).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

“I have heard the reproach of Moab, and the revilings of the children of Ammon, wherewith they have reproached my people, and magnified themselves against their border.”

Moab and Ammon were east of Jerusalem. These peoples were akin to Israel through their ancestor Lot, but they were traditionally enemies of God’s people. Therefore, Ironside referred to the Moabites and Ammonites as “Strange children” of Abraham, similar to certain ’relatives’ of the Lord in our own times, “Christless professors who look with contempt and pity on any who seek to be guided only by the Word of God.”H. A. Ironside, op. cit., p. 313.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

I - Dionysius: “God, Who know all things, “I heard” that is, have known within Me, in My mind, not anew but from eternity, and now I shew in effect that I know it; wherefore I say that I hear, because I act after the manner of one who perceiveth something anew.” I, the just Judge, heard (see Isaiah 16:6; Jeremiah 48:39; Ezekiel 35:12-13). He was present and “heard,” even when, because He avenged not, He seemed not to hear, but laid it up in store with Him to avenge in the due time Deuteronomy 32:34-35.

The reproach of Moab and the reviling of the children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached My people - Both words, “reproached, reviled,” mean, primarily, cutting speeches; both are intensive, and are used of blaspheming God as unable to help His people, or reviling His people as forsaken by Him. If directed against man, they are directed against God through man. So David interpreted the taunt of Goliah, “reviled the armies of the living God” (1 Samuel 17:26, 1Sa 17:36, 1 Samuel 17:45, coll. 10. 25), and the Philistine cursed David “by his gods” 1 Samuel 17:43. In a Psalm David complains, “the reproaches of them that reproached Thee are fallen upon me” (Psalms 69:10 (9)); and a Psalm which cannot be later than David, since it declares the national innocency from idolatry, connects with their defeats, the voice of him “that reproacheth and blasphemeth” (Psalms 44:16 (17), joining the two words used here). The sons of Corah say, “with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me, while they say daily unto me, where is thy God?” Psalms 42:10. So Asaph, “The enemy hath reproached, the foolish people hath blasphemed Thy Name” Psalms 74:10, Psalms 74:18; and, “we are become a reproach to our neighbors. Wherefore should the pagan say, where is their God? render unto our neighbors - the reproach wherewith they have reproached Thee, O Lord” Psalms 79:4, Psalms 79:10, Psalms 79:12. And Ethan, “Remember, Lord, the reproach of Thy servants - wherewith Thine enemies have reproached, O Lord, wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of Thine Anointed” Psalms 89:50-51.

In history the repeated blasphemies of Sennacherib and his messengers are expressed by the same words. In earlier times the remarkable concession of Jephthah, “Wilt not thou possess what Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? so whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out before us, them will we possess” Judges 11:24, implies that the Ammonites claimed their land as the gift of their god Chemosh, and that that war was, as that later by Sennacherib, waged in the name of the false god against the True.

The relations of Israel to Moab and Ammon have been so habitually misrepresented, that a review of those relations throughout their whole history may correct some wrong impressions. The first relations of Israel toward them were even tender. God reminded His people of their common relationship and forbade him even to take the straight road to his own future possessions, across their hand against their will. “Distress them not, nor contend with them,” it is said of each, “for I will not give thee of their land for a possession, for I have given it unto the children of Lot for a possession” Deuteronomy 2:9, Deuteronomy 2:19. Idolaters and hostile as they were, yet, for their father’s sake, their title to their land had the same sacred sanction, as Israel’s to his. “I,” God says, “have given it to them as a possession.” Israel, to their own manifest inconvenience, “went along through the wilderness, and compassed the land of Edom, and the land of Moab, but came not within the border of Moab” Judges 11:18. By destroying Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan, Israel removed formidable enemies, who had driven Moab and Ammon out of a portion of the land which they had conquered from the Zamzummim and Anakim Deuteronomy 2:10, Deuteronomy 2:20-21, and who threatened the remainder, “Israel dwelt in all the cities of the Amorites” Numbers 21:25, Numbers 21:31.

Heshbon, Dibon, Jahaz, Medeba, Nophah “were cities in the land of the Amorites, in” which “Israel dwelt.” The exclusion of Moab and Ammon from the congregation of the Lord to the tenth generation Deuteronomy 23:3 was not, of course, from any national antipathy, but intended to prevent a debasing intercourse; a necessary precaution against the sensuousness of their idolatries. Moab was the first in adopting the satanic policy of Balaam, to seduce Israel by sensuality to their idolatries; but the punishment was appointed to the partners of their guilt, the Midianites Numbers 25:17; Numbers 31:0, not to Moab. Yet Moab was the second nation, whose ambition God overruled to chasten His people’s idolatries. Eglon, king of Moab, united with himself Ammon and Amalek against Israel. The object of the invasion was, not the recovery of the country which Moab had lost to the Amorites but, Palestine proper.

The strength of Moab was apparently not sufficient to occupy the territory of Reuben. They took possession only of “the city of palm trees” Judges 3:13; either the ruins of Jericho or a spot close by it; with the view apparently of receiving reinforcements or of securing their own retreat by the ford. This garrison enabled them to carry their forays over Israel, and to hold it enslaved for 18 years. The oppressiveness of this slavery is implied by the cry and conversion of Israel to the Lord, which was always in great distress. The memory of Eglon, as one of the oppressors of Israel, lived in the minds of the people in the days of Samuel 1 Samuel 12:9. In the end, this precaution of Moab turned to its own destruction, for, after Eglon was slain, Ephraim, under Ehud, took the fords, and the whole garrison, 10,000 of Moab’s warriors, “every strong man and every man of might” Judges 3:29, were intercepted in their retreat and perished. For a long time after this, we hear of no fresh invasion by Moab. The trans-Jordanic tribes remained in unquestioned possession of their land for 300 years Judg. 40:26, when Ammon, not Moab, raised the claim, “Israel took away my land” Judges 11:13, although claiming the land down to the Arnon, and already being in possession of the southernmost portion of that land, Aroer, since Israel smote him “from Aroer unto Minnith” Judges 11:33. The land then, according to a law recognized by nations, belonged by a twofold right to Israel;

(1) that it had been won, not from Moab, but from the conquerors of Moab, the right of Moab having passed to its conquerors ;

(2) that undisputed and unbroken possession “for time immemorial” as we say, 300 years, ought not to be disputed .

The defeat by Jephthah stilled them for near 50 years until the beginning of Saul’s reign, when they refused the offer of the “men of Jubesh-Gilead” to serve them, and, with a mixture of insolence and savagery, annexed as a condition of accepting that entire submission, “that I may thrust out all your right eyes, to lay it as a reproach to Israel” 1 Samuel 11:1-2. The signal victory of Saul 1 Samuel 11:11 still did not prevent Ammon, as well as Moab, from being among the enemies whom Saul “worsted” . The term “enemies” implies that “they” were the assailants. The history of Naomi shows their prosperous condition, that the famine, which desolated Judah Ruth 1:1, did not reach them, and that they were a prosperous land, at peace, at that time, with Israel. If all the links of the genealogy are preserved Ruth 4:21-22, Jesse, David’s father, was grandson of a Moabitess, Ruth, and perhaps on this ground David entrusted his parents to the care of the king of Moab 1 Samuel 22:3-4.

Sacred history gives no hint, what was the cause of his terrible execution upon Moab. But a Psalm of David speaks to God of some blow, under which Israel had reeled. “O God, Thou hast abhorred us, and broken us in pieces; Thou hast been wroth: Thou hast made the land to tremble and cloven it asunder; heal its breaches, for it shaketh; Thou hast showed Thy people a hard thing, Thou hast made it drink wine of reeling” Psalms 60:3-5; and thereon David expresses his confidence that God would humble Moab, Edom, Philistia. While David then was engaged in the war with the Syrians of Mesopotamia and Zobah (Psalms 60:1-12 title), Moab must have combined with Edom in an aggressive war against Israel. “The valley of salt” , where Joab returned and defeated them, was probably within Judah, since “the city of salt” Joshua 15:62 was one of the six cities of the wilderness. Since they had defeated Judah, they must have been overtaken there on their return .

Yet this too was a religious war. “‘Thou,’” David says “hast given a ‘banner to them that fear Thee,’ to be raised aloft because of the truth” Psalms 60:4.

There is no tradition, that the kindred Psalm of the sons of Corah, Psalms 44:0 belongs to the same time. Yet the protestations to God of the entire absence of idolatry could not have been made at any time later than the early years of Solomon. Even were there Maccabee Psalms, the Maccabees were but a handful among apostates. They could not have pleaded the national freedom from unfaithfulness to God, nor, except in two subordinate and self-willed expeditions (1 Macc. 5:56-60, 67), were they defeated. Under the Persian rule, there were no armies nor wars; no immunity from idolatry in the later history of Judah. Judah did not in Hezekiah’s time go out against Assyria; the one battle, in which Josiah was slain, ended the resistance to Egypt. Defeat was, at the date of this Psalm, new and surprising, in contrast with God’s deliverances of old Psalms 44:1-3; yet the inroad, by which they had suffered, was one of spoiling Psalms 44:10, Psalms 44:12, not of subdual. Yet this too was a religious war, from their neighbors. They were slain for the sake of God Psalms 44:22, they were covered with shame on account of the reproaches and blasphemies Psalms 44:13-14 of those who triumphed over God, as powerless to help; they were a scorn and derision to the petty nations around them. It is a Psalm of unshaken faith amid great prostration: it describes in detail what the lxth Psalm sums up in single heavy words of imagery; but both alike complain to God of what His people had to suffer for His sake.

The insolence of Ammon in answer to David’s message of kindness to their new king, like that to the men of Jabesh Gilead, seems like a deliberate purpose to create hostilities. The relations of the previous king of Ammon to David, had been kind 2 Samuel 10:2-3, perhaps, because David being a fugitive from Israel, they supposed him to be Saul’s enemy. The enmity originated, not with the new king, but with “the princes of the children of Ammon” 2 Samuel 10:3. David’s treatment of these nations 2 Samuel 8:2; 2 Samuel 12:31 is so unlike his treatment of any others whom he defeated, that it implies an internecine warfare, in which the safety of Israel could only be secured by the destruction of its assailants.

Mesha king of Moab records one war, and alludes to others, not mentioned in Holy Scripture. He says, that before his own time, “Omri, king of Israel, afflicted Moab many days;” that “his son (Ahab) succeeded him, and he too said, ‘I will afflict Moab.’” This affliction he explains to be that “Omri possessed himself of the land of Medeba” (expelling, it is implied, its former occupiers) “and that” (apparently, Israel) , “dwelt therein,” “(in his days and in) the days of his son forty years.” He was also in possession of Nebo, and “the king of Israel” (apparently Omri,) “buil(t) Jahaz and dwelt in it, when he made war with me” . Jahaz was near Dibon. In the time of Eusebius, it was still “pointed out between Dibon and Medeba” .

Mesha says, “And I took it to annex it to Dibon.” It could not, according to Mesha also, have been south of the Arnon, since Aroer lay between Dibon and the Arnon, and Mesha would not have annexed to Dibon a town beyond the deep and difficult ravine of the Arnon, with Aroer lying between them. It was certainly north of the Arnon, since Israel was not permitted to come within the border of Moab, but it was at Jahaz that Sihon met them and fought the battle in which Israel defeated him and gained possession of his land, “from the Arnon to the Jabbok” Numbers 21:23-25. It is said also that “Israel dwelt in the land of the Amorites from Aroer which is on the edge of the river Arnon” , and the city which is in the river unto Gilead Joshua 13:16, Joshua 13:18. Aroer on the edge of the river Arnon, and the city which is in the river” Arnon, again occur in describing the southern border of Reuben, among whose towns Jahaz is mentioned, with Beth-Baal-Meon and Kiriathaim, which have been identified.

The afflicting then of Moab by Omri, according to Mesha, consisted in this, that he recovered to Israel a portion of the allotment of Reuben, between 9 and 10 hours in length from north to south, of which, in the time of Israel’s weakness through the civil wars which followed on Jeroboam’s revolt, Moab must have dispossessed Reuben. Reuben had remained in undisturbed possession of it, from the first expulsion of the Amorites to the time at least of Rehoboam, about five hundred years. : “The men of Gad” still “dwelt in Ataroth,” Mesha says, “from time immemorial.”

The picture, which Mesha gives, is of a desolation of the southern portion of Reuben. For, “I rebuilt,” he says, “Baal-Meon, Kiriathaim, Aroer, Beth-bamoth, Bezer, Beth-Diblathaim, Beth-baal-Meon.” Of Beth-Bamoth, and probably of Bezer, Mesha says, that they had previously been destroyed . But Reuben would not, of course, destroy his own cities. They must then have been destroyed either by Mesha’s father, who reigned before him, when invading Reuben, or by Omri, when driving back Moab into his own land, and expelling him from these cities. “Possibly” they were dismantled only, since Mesha speaks only of Omri’s occupying Medeba, Ataroth, and Jahaz. He held these three cities only, leaving the rest dismantled, or dismantling them, unable to place defenders in them, and unwilling to leave them as places of aggression for Moab. But whether they ever were fortified towns at all, or how they were desolated, is mere conjecture. Only they were desolated in these wars.

But it appears from Mesha’s own statement, that neither Omri nor Ahab invaded Moab proper. For in speaking of his successful war and its results, he mentions no town south of the Arnon. He must have been a tributary king, but not a foot of his land was taken. The subsequent war was not a mere revolt, nor was it a mere refusal to pay tribute, of which Mesha makes no complaint. Nor could the tribute have been oppressive to him, since the spoils, left in the encampment of Moab and his allies shortly after his revolt, is evidence of such great wealth. The refusal to pay tribute would have involved nothing further, unless Ahaziah had attempted to enforce it, as Hezekiah refused the tribute to Assyria, but remained in his own borders. But Ahaziah, unlike his brother Jehoram who succeeded him, seems to have undertaken nothing, except the building of some ships for trade 2 Chronicles 20:35-36. Mesha’s war was a renewal of the aggression on Reuben.

Heshbon is not mentioned, and therefore must, even after the war, have remained with Reuben.

Mesha’s own war was an exterminating war, as far as he records it. “I fought against the city,” (Ataroth), he says, “and took it, and killed all the mighty of the city for the well-pleasing of Chemosh and of Moab;” “I fought against it (Nebo) from break of day until norm and took it, and slew all of it, 7,000 men; the ladies and maidens I devoted to Ashtar Chemosh;” to be desecrated to the degradations of that sensual idolatry. The words too “Israel perished with an everlasting destruction” stand clear, whether they express Mesha’s conviction of the past or his hope of the future.

The war also, on the part of Moab, was a war of his idol Chemosh against God. Chemosh, from first to last, is the agent. “Chemosh was angry with his land;” “Chemosh (was pleased) with it in my days;” “I killed the mighty for the well-pleasing of Chemosh;” “I took captive thence all ( ...)and dragged it along before Chemosh at Kiriath;” “Chemosh said to me, Go and take Nebo against Israel;” “I devoted the ladies and maidens to Ashtar-Chemosh;” “I took thence the vessels of ihvh and dragged them before Chemosh;” “Chemosh drove him (the king of Israel) out before (my face);” “Chemosh said to me, Go down against Horonaim.” “Chemosh ( ...)it in my days.”

Contemporary with this aggressive war against Israel must have been the invasion by “the children of Moab and the children of Ammon, the great multitude from beyond the sea, from Syria” 2 Chronicles 20:1-2, in the reign of Jehoshaphat, which brought such terror upon Judah. It preceded the invasion of Moab by Jehoshaphat in union with Jehoram and the king of Edom. For the invasion of Judah by Moab and Ammon took place, while Ahab’s son, Ahaziah, was still living. For it was after this, that Jehoshaphat joined with Ahaziah in making ships to go to Tarshish . But the expedition against Moab was in union with Jehoram who succeeded Ahaziah. The abundance of wealth which the invaders of Judah brought with them, and the precious jewels with which they had adorned themselves, show that this was no mere marauding expedition, to spoil; but that its object was, to take possession of the land or at least of some portion of it.

They came by entire surprise on Jehoshaphat, who heard of them first when they were at Hazazon-Tamar or Engedi, some 36 12 miles from Jerusalem . He felt himself entirely unequal to meet them, and cast himself upon God. There was a day of public humiliation of Judah at Jerusalem. “Out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord” 2 Chronicles 20:4. Jehoshaphat, in his public prayer, owned, “we have no might against this great company which cometh against us; neither know we what to do; but our eyes are upon Thee” 2 Chronicles 20:13. He appeals to God, that He had forbidden Israel to invade Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, so that they turned away from them and destroyed them not; and now these rewarded them by “coming to cast us out of Thy possession which Thou hast given us to inherit” 2 Chronicles 20:10. One of the sons of Asaph foretold to the congregation, that they might go out fearlessly, for they should not have occasion to fight.

A Psalm, ascribed to Asaph, records a great invasion, the object of which was the extermination of Israel. “They have said; Come and let us cut them off from” being “a nation, that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance” Psalms 83:4. It had been a secret confederacy. “They have taken crafty counsel against Thy people” Psalms 83:3. It was directed against God Himself, that is, His worship and worshipers. “For they have taken counsel in heart together; against Thee do they make a covenant” Psalms 83:5. It was a combination of the surrounding petty nations; Tyre on the north, the Philistines on the west; on the south the Amalekites, Ishmaelites, Hagarenes; eastward, Edom, Gebal, Moab, Ammon. But its most characteristic feature was, that Assur (this corresponds with no period after Jehoshaphat) occupies a subordinate place to Edom and Moab, putting them forward and helping “them.” “Assur also,” Asaph says, “is joined with them; they have become an arm to the children of Lot” Psalms 83:8. This agrees with the description, “there is come against thee a great multitude from beyond the sea, from Syria.”

Scripture does not record, on what ground the invasion of Moab by Jehoram and Jehoshaphat, with the tributary king of Edom, was directed against Moab proper; but it was the result doubtless of the double war of Moab against Reuben and against Judah. It was a war, in which the strength of Israel and Moab was put forth to the utmost. Jehoram had mustered all Israel 2 Kings 3:6; Moab had gathered all who had reached the age of manhood and upward, “everyone who girded on a girdle and upward” 2 Kings 3:21. The three armies, which had made a seven days’ circuit in the wilderness, were on the point of perishing by thirst and falling into the hands of Moab, when Elisha in God’s name promised them the supply of their want, and complete victory over Moab. The eager cupidity of Moab, as of many other armies, became the occasion of his complete overthrow. The counsel with which Elisha accompanied his prediction, “ye shall smite every fenced city and every choice city, and every good tree ye shall fell, and all springs of water ye shall stop up, and every good piece of land ye shall waste with stones” 2 Kings 3:19, was directed, apparently, to dislodge an enemy so inveterate. For water was essential to the fertility of their land and their dwelling there. We hear of no special infliction of death, like what Mesha records of himself. The war was ended by the king of Moab’s sacrificing the heir-apparent of the king of Edom , which naturally created great displeasure against Israel, in whose cause Edom thus suffered, so that they departed to their own land and finally revolted.

Their departure apparently broke up the siege of Ar and the expedition. Israel apparently was not strong enough to carry on the war without Edom, or feared to remain with their armies away from their own land, as in the time of David, of which Edom might take the advantage. We know only the result.

Moab probably even extended her border to the south by the conquest of Horonaim .

After this, Moab is mentioned only on occasion of the miracle of the dead man, to whom God gave life, when cast into Elisha’s sepulchre, as he came in contact with his bones. Like the Bedouin now, or the Amalekites of old, “the bands of Moab came into the land, as the year came” 2 Kings 13:20. Plunder, year by year, was the lot of Israel at the hands of Moab.

On the east of Jordan, Israel must have remained in part (as Mesha says of the Gadites of Arocr) in their old border. For after this, Hazael, in Jehu’s reign, smote Israel “from Aroer which is by the river Arnon” 2 Kings 10:33; and at that time probably Amman joined with him in the exterminating war in Gilead, destroying life before it had come into the world, “that they might enlarge their border” . Jeroboam ii, 825 b.c.; restored Israel “to the sea of the plain” 2 Kings 16:25, that is, the dead sea, and, (as seems probable from the limitation of that term in Deuteronomy, ‘under Ashdoth-Pisgah eastward,’ Deuteronomy 3:17) to its northern extremity, lower in latitude than Heshbon, yet above Nebo and Medeba, lcaving accordingly to Moab all which it had gained by Mesha. Uzziah, a few years later, made the Ammonites tributaries 2 Chronicles 26:8 810 b.c. But 40 years later 771 b.c., Pul, and, after yet another 30 years, 740, Tiglath-pileser having carried away the trans-Jordanic tribes 1 Chronicles 5:26, Moab again possessed itself of the whole territory of Reuben. Probably before.

For 726 b.c., when Isaiah foretold that “the glory of Moab should be contemned with all that great multitude” Isaiah 16:14, he hears the wailing of Moab throughout all his towns, and names all those which had once been Reuben’s and of whose conquest or possession Moab had boasted Isaiah 15:1-2, Isaiah 15:4, Nebo, Medeba, Dibon, Jahaz, Baiith; as also those not conquered then Isaiah 15:4-5, Isaiah 15:1, Heshbon, Elealeh; and those of Moab proper, Luhith, Horonaim, and its capitals, Ar-Moab and Kir-Moab. He hears their sorrow, sees their desolation and bewails with their weeping Isaiah 16:9. He had prophesied this before , and now, three years Isaiah 16:13-14 before its fulfillment by Tiglath-Pileser, he renews it. This tender sorrow for Moab has more the character of an elegy than of a denunciation; so that he could scarcely lament more tenderly the ruin of his own people.

He mentions also distinctly no sin there except pride. The pride of Moab seems something of common notoriety and speech. “We have heard” Isaiah 16:6. Isaiah accumulates words, to express the haughtiness of Moab; “the pride of Moab; exceeding proud; his pride and his haughtiness and his wrath,” pride overpassing bounds, upon others. His words seem to be formed so as to keep this one bared thought before us, as if we were to say “pride, prideful, proudness, pridefulness;” and withal the unsubstantialness of it all, “the unsubstantiality of his lies.” Pride is the source of all ambition; so Moab is pictured as retiring within her old bounds, “the fords of Arnon,” and thence asking for aid; her petition is met by the counter-petition, that, if she would be protected in the day of trouble, the out-casts of Israel might lodge with her now: “be thou a covert to her from the face of the spoiler” Isaiah 16:4-5. The prophecy seems to mark itself out as belonging to a time, after the two and a half tribes had been desolated, as stragglers sought refuge in Moab, and when a severe infliction was to come on Moab: “the Isaiah 16:14 remnant” shall be “small, small not great.”

Yet Moab recovered this too. It was a weakening of the nation, not its destruction. Some 126 years after the prophecy of Isaiah, 30 years after the prophecy of Zephaniah, Moab, in the time of Jeremiah, was in entire prosperity, as if no visitation had ever come upon her. What Zephaniah says of the luxuriousness of his people, Jeremiah says of Moab; “Moab is one at ease from his youth; he is resting on his lees; and he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity” Jeremiah 48:11. They “say, We are mighty and strong men for the war” Jeremiah 48:14. Moab was a “strong staff, a beautiful rod” Jeremiah 48:17; “he magnified himself against the Lord” Jeremiah 48:26; “Israel was a derision to him” Jeremiah 48:27; “he skipped for joy” at his distress. Jeremiah repeats and even strengthens Isaiah’s description of his pride; “his pride, proud” Jeremiah 48:29, he repeats, “exceedingly; his loftiness,” again “his pride, his arrogancy, and the haughtiness of his heart.”

Its “strongholds” Jeremiah 48:18 were unharmed; all its cities, “far and near,” are counted one by one, in their prosperity Jeremiah 48:1, Jeremiah 48:3, Jeremiah 48:5, Jeremiah 48:21-24; its summer-fruits and vintage were plenteous; its vines, luxuriant; all was joy and shouting. Whence should this evil come? Yet so it was with Sodom and Gomorrah just before its overthrow. It was, for beauty, “a paradise of God; well-watered everywhere; as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt” Genesis 13:10. In the morning “the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of the furnace” Genesis 19:28. The destruction foretold by Jeremiah is far other than the affliction spoken of by Isaiah. Isaiah prophesies only a visitation, which should reduce her people: Jeremiah foretells, as did Zephaniah, captivity and the utter destruction of her cities. The destruction foretold is complete. Not of individual cities only, but of the whole he saith, “Moab is destroyed” Jeremiah 48:4. “The spoiler shall come upon every city, and no city shall escape, and the valley shall perish and the high places shall be destroyed, as the Lord hath spoken” Jeremiah 48:8.

Moab himself was to leave his land. “Flee, save your lives, and ye shall be like the heath in the wilderness. Chemosh shall go forth into captivity; his priests and his princes together. Give pinions unto Moab, that it may flee and get away, and her cities shall be a desolation, for there is none to dwell therein” Jeremiah 17:6. It was not only to go into captivity, but its home was to be destroyed. “I will send to her those who shall upheave her, and they shall upheave her, and her vessels they shall empty, all her flagons” (all that aforetime contained her) “they shall break in pieces” Jeremiah 48:12. Moab is destroyed and her cities” Jeremiah 48:15; “the spoiler of Moab is come upon her; he hath destroyed the strongholds” Jeremiah 48:18. The subsequent history of the Moabites is in the words, “Leave the cities and dwell in the rock, dwellers of Moab, and be like a dove which nesteth in the sides of the mouth of the pit” Jeremiah 48:28. The purpose of Moab and Ammon against Israel which Asaph complains of, and which Mesha probably speaks of, is retorted upon her. “In Heshbon they have devised evil against it; come and let us cut it off from being a nation. Moab shall be destroyed from being a people, because he hath magnified himself against the Lord” Jeremiah 48:2, Jeremiah 48:42.

Whence should this evil come? They had, with the Ammonites, been faithful servants of Nebuchadnezzar against Judah 2 Kings 24:2. Their concerted conspiracy with Edom, Tyre, Zidon, to which they invited Zedekiah (Jeremiah 27:2 following), was dissolved. Nebuchadnezzars march against Judaea did not touch them, for they “skipped with joy” Jeremiah 48:27 at Israel’s distresses. The connection of Baalis, king of the Ammonites, with Ishmael Jeremiah 40:14; Jeremiah 41:10 the assassin of Gedaliah, whom the king of Babylon made governor over the land 2 Kings 25:22-26; Jeremiah 40:6; Jeremiah 41:1 out of their own people, probably brought down the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar. For Chaldaeans too were included in the slaughter Jeremiah 41:3. The blow seems to have been aimed at the existence of the people, for the murder of Gedaliah followed upon the rallying of the Jews “out of all the places whither they had been driven” Jeremiah 40:12. It returned on Ammon itself; and on Moab who probably on this, as on former occasions, was associated with it. The two nations, who had escaped at the destruction of Jerusalem, were warred upon and subdued by Nebuchadnezzar in the 23d year of his reign , the 5th after the destruction of Jerusalem.

And then probably followed that complete destruction and disgraced end, in which Isaiah, in a distinct prophecy, sees Moab trodden down by God as “the heap of straw is trodden down in the waters (the kethib) of the dunghill, and he (Moab) stretcheth forth his hands in the midst thereof, as the swimmer stretcheth forth his hands to swim, and He, God, shall bring down his pride with the treacheries of his hands” Isaiah 25:10-12. It speaks much of the continued hostility of Moab, that, in prophesying the complete deliverance for which Israel waited, the one enemy whose destruction is foretold, is Moab and those pictured by Moab. “We have waited for Him and He will save us - For in this mountain (Zion) shall the hand of the Lord rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under Him” Isaiah 25:9-10.

After this, Moab, as a nation, disappears from history. Israel, on its return from the captivity, was again enticed into idolatry by Moabite and Anmonite wives, as well as by those of Ashdod and others Nehemiah 13:23-26, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Egyptians, Amorites Ezra 9:1. Sanballat also, who headed the opposition to the rebuilding of Jerusalem, was a Moabite Nehemiah 2:10; Nehemiah 4:1-8; Tobiah, an Ammonite Nehemiah 4:2, Nehemiah 4:9. Yet it went no further than intrigue and the threat of war. They were but individuals, who cherished the old hostility. In the time of the Maccabees, the Ammonites, not Moab, “with a mighty power and much people” were in possession of the Reubenite cities to Jazar (1 Macc. 5:6, 8). It was again an exterminating war, in which the Jews were to be destroyed (1 Macc. 5:9, 10, 27). After repeated defeats by Judas Maccabaeus, the Ammonites “hired the Arabians” (1 Macc. 5:39) (not the Moabites) to help them, and Judas, although victorious, was obliged to remove the whole Israelite population, “all that were in the land of Gilead, from the least unto the greatest, even their wives, and their children, and their stuff, a very great host, to the end they might come into the land of Judaea” (1 Macc. 5:45). The whole population was removed, obviously lest, on the withdrawal of Judas’ army, they should be again imperiled. As it was a defensive war against Ammon, there is no mention of any city, south of the Arnon, in Moab’s own territory. It was probably with the view to magnify descendants of Lot, that Josephus speaks of the Moabites as being “even yet a very great nation” . Justin’s account, that there is “even now a great multitude of Ammonites,” does not seem to me to imply a national existence. A later writer says , “not only the Edomites but the Ammonites and Moabites too are included in the one name of Arabians.”

Some chief towns of Moab became Roman towns, connected by the Roman road from Damascus to Elath. Ar and Kir-Moab in Moab proper became Areopolis and Charac-Moab, and, as well as Medeba and Heshbon in the country which had been Reuben’s, preserve traces of Roman occupancy. As such, they became Christian Sees. The towns, which were not thus revived as Roman, probably perished at once, since they bear no traces of any later building.

The present condition of Moab and Ammon is remarkable in two ways;

(1) for the testimony which it gives of its former extensive population;

(2) for the extent of its present desolation.

“How fearfully,” says an accurate and minute observer , “is this residence of old kings and their land wasted!” It gives a vivid idea of the desolation, that distances are marked, not by villages which he passes but by ruins . : “From these ruined places, which lay on our way, one sees how thickly inhabited the district formerly was.” Yet the ground remained fruitful.

It was partly abandoned to wild plants, the wormwood and other shrubs ; partly, the artificial irrigation, essential to cultivation in this land, was destroyed ; here and there a patch was cultivated; the rest remained barren, because the crops might become the prey of the spoiler , or the thin population had had no heart to cultivate it.

A list of 33 destroyed places which still retained their names, was given to Seetzen , “of which many were cities in times of old, and beside these, a great number of other wasted villages. One sees from this, that, in the days of old, this land was extremely populated and flourishing, and that destructive wars alone could produce the present desolation.” And thereon he adds the names of 40 more ruined places. Others say : “The whole of the fine plains in this quarter” (the south of Moab) “are covered with sites of towns, on every eminence or spot convenient for the construction of one; and as all the land is capable of rich cultivation, there can be no doubt that this country, now so deserted, once presented a continued picture of plenty and fertility.” : “Every knoll” (in the highlands of Moab) “is covered with shapeless ruins. - The ruins consist merely of heaps of squared and well-fitting stones, which apparently were erected without mortar.” : “One description might serve for all these Moabite ruins. The town seems to have been a system of concentric circles, built round a central fort, and outside the buildings the rings continue as terrace-walks, the gardens of the old city. The terraces are continuous between the twin hillocks and intersect each other at the foot” . Ruined villages and towns, broken walls that once enclosed gardens and vineyards, remains of ancient roads; everything in Moab tells of the immense wealth and population, which that country must have once enjoyed.”

The like is observed of Ammon . His was direct hatred of the true religion. It was not mere exultation at the desolation of an envied people. It was hatred of the worship of God. “Thus saith the Lord God; “Because thou saidst, Aha, against My sanctuary, because it was profaned” Ezekiel 25:3; and against the land of Israel, because it was desolated; and against the house of Judah, because they went into captivity.” The like temper is shown in the boast, “Because that Moab and Seir do say; Behold the house of Judah is like unto the pagan” Ezekiel 25:8, that is, on a level with them.

Forbearing and long-suffering as Almighty God is, in His infinite mercy, He does not, for that mercy’s sake, bear the direct defiance of Himself. He allows His creatures to forget Him, not to despise or defy Him. And on this ground, perhaps, He gives to His prophecies a fulfillment beyond what the letter requires, that they may be a continued witness to Him. The Ammonites, some 1600 years ago, ceased to “be remembered among the nations.” But as Nineveh and Babylon, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, by being what they are, are witnesses to His dealings, so the way in which Moab and Ammon are still kept desolate is a continued picture of that first desolation. Both remain rich, fertile; but the very abundance of their fertility is the cause of their desolation. God said to Ammon, as the retribution on his contumely: “therefore, behold, I give thee to the children of the East for a possession, and they shall set their encampments in thee, and place their dwellings in thee; “they” shall eat thy fruit and “they” shall drink thy milk; and I will make Rabbah a dwelling-place of camels, and the children of Ammon a couchingplace for flocks” Ezekiel 25:4-5.

Of Moab He says also, “I will open the side of Moab from the cities, which are on his frontiers, the glory of the country, unto the men of the East with the Ammonites” Ezekiel 25:8, Ezekiel 25:10. And this is an exact description of the condition of the land at this day. All travelers describe the richness of the soil. We have seen this as to Moab. But the history is one and the same. One of the most fertile regions of the world, full of ruined towns, destitute of villages or fixed habitations, or security of property, its inhabitants ground down by those, who have succeeded the Midianites and the Amalekites, “the children of the East.” “Thou canst not find a country like the Belka,” says the Arabic proverb , but “the inhabitants cultivate patches only of the best soil in that territory when they have a prospect of being able to secure the harvest against the invasion of enemies.” “We passed many ruined cities,” said Lord Lindsay , “and the country has once been very populous, but, in 35 miles at least, we did not see a single village; the whole country is one vast pasturage, overspread by the flocks and herds of the Anezee and Beni Hassan Bedouins.”

The site of Rabbath Amman was well chosen for strength. Lying “in a long valley” through which a stream passed, “the city of waters” could not easily be taken, flor its inhabitants compelled to surrender from hunger or thirst. Its site, as the eastern bound of Peraea , “the last place where water could be obtained and a frontier fortress against the wild tribes beyond” , marked it for preservation. In Greek times, the disputes for its possession attest the sense of its importance. In Roman, it was one of the chief cities of the Decapolis, though its population was said to be a mixture of Egyptians, Arabians, Phoenicians . The coins of Roman Emperors to the end of the second century contain symbols of plenty, where now reigns utter desolation .

In the 4th century, it and two other now ruined places, Bostra and Gerasa, are named as “most carefully and strongly walled.” It was on a line of rich commerce filled with strong places, in sites well selected for repelling the invasions of the neighboring nations . Centuries advanced. It was greatly beautified by its Roman masters. The extent and wealth of the Roman city are attested both by the remains of noble edifices on both sides of the stream, and by pieces of pottery, which are the traces of ancient civilized dwelling, strewed on the earth two miles from the city. : “At this place, Amman, as well as Gerasa and Gamala, three colonial settlements within the compass of a day’s journey from one another, there were five magnificent theaters and one ampitheater, besides temples, baths, aqueducts, naumachia, triumphal arches.” : “Its theater was the largest in Syria; its colonnade had at least 50 columns.” The difference of the architecture shows that its aggrandizement must have been the work of different centuries: its “castle walls are thick, and denote a remote antiquity; large blocks of stone are piled up without cement and still hold together as well as if recently placed.” It is very probably the same which Joab called David to take, after the city of waters had been taken; within it are traces of a temple with Corinthian columns, the largest seen there, yet “not of the best Roman times.”

Yet Amman, the growth of centuries, at the end of our 6th century was destroyed. For “it was desolate before Islam, a great ruin.” : “No where else had we seen the vestiges of public magnificence and wealth in such marked contrast with the relapse into savage desolation.” But the site of the old city, so well adapted either for a secure refuge for its inhabitants or for a secure depository for their plunder, was, on that very ground, when desolated of its inhabitants, suited for what God, by Ezekiel, said it would become, a place, where the men of the East should stable their flocks and herds, secure from straying. What a change, that its temples, the center of the worship of its successive idols, or its theaters, its places of luxury or of pomp, should be stables for that drudge of man, the camel, and the stream which gave it the proud title of “city of waters” their drinking trough! And yet of the cities whose destruction is prophesied, this is foretold of Rabbah alone, as in it alone is it fulfilled! “Ammon,” says Lord Lindsay , “was situated on both sides of the stream; the dreariness of its present aspect is quite indescribable. It looks like the abode of death; the valley stinks with dead camels; one of them was rotting in the stream; and though we saw none among the ruins, they were absolutely “covered” in every direction with their dung.” “Bones and skulls of camels were mouldering there (in the area of the ruined theater) and in the vaulted galleries of this immense structure.” “It is now quite deserted, except by the Bedouins, who water their flocks at its little river, descending to it by a “wady,” nearly opposite to a theater (in which Dr. Mac Lennan saw great herds and flocks) and by the “akiba.”

Re-ascending it, we met sheep and goats by thousands, and camels by hundreds.” Another says , “The space intervening between the river and the western hills is entirely covered with the remains of buildings, now only used for shelter for camels and sheep.” Buckingham mentions incidentally, that he was prevented from sleeping at night “by the bleating of flocks and the neighing of horses, barking of dogs etc.” Another speaks of “a small stone building in the Acropolis now used as a shelter for flocks.” While he was “traversing the ruins of the city, the number of goats and sheep, which were driven in among them, was exceedingly annoying, however remarkable, as fulfilling the prophecies” . “Before six tents fed sheep and camels” . “Ezekiel points just to these Ezekiel 20:5, which passage Seetzen cites. And in fact the ruins are still used for such stalls.”

The prophecy is the very opposite to that upon Babylon, though both alike are prophecies of desolation. Of Babylon Isaiah prophesies, “It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it bedwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make fold there, but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and the ostriches shall dwell there, and the jackals shall cry in their desolate houses, and howling creatures in their pleasant palaces” Isaiah 13:20. And the ruins are full of wild beasts . Of Rabbah, Ezekiel prophesied that it should be “a possession for the men of the East, and I” Ezekiel 25:4-5, God says, “will make Rabbah a stable for camels, and the Ammonites a couching-place for flocks;” and man’s lawlessness fulfills the will and word of God.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

The Prophet confirms what I have just said of God’s vengeance against foreign enemies. Though all the neighboring nations had been eager in their hostility to the Jews, yet we know that more hatred, yea and more fury, had been exhibited by these two nations than by any other, that is, by the Moabites and the Ammonites, notwithstanding their connection with them by blood, for they derived their origin from Lot, who was Abraham’s nephew. Though, then, that connection ought to have turned the Moabites and the Ammonites to mercy, we yet know they always infested the Jews with greater fury than others, and as it were with savage cruelty. This is the reason why the Prophet speaks now especially of them. Some indeed take this sentence as spoken by the faithful; but the context requires it to be ascribed to God, and no doubt he reminds them that he looked down from on high on the proud vauntings of Moab which he scattered in the air, as though he had declared that it was not hidden or unknown to him how cruelly the Moabites and Ammonites raged against the Jews, how proud and inhuman they had been. And this was a very seasonable consolation. For the Jews might have been swallowed up with despair, had not this promise been made to them. They saw the Moabites and the Ammonites burning with fury, when yet they had not been injured or provoked. They also saw that they made gain and derived advantage from the calamities of a miserable people. What could the faithful think? These wicked men not only harassed them with impunity, but their cruelty and perfidy towards them was gainful. Where was God now? If he regarded his own Church, would he not have interposed? Lest then a temptation of this kind should upset the faithful, the Prophet introduces God here as the speaker,—

I have heard, he says,the reproach of Moab; I have heard the revilings of Amman: “Nothing escapes me; though I do not immediately show that these things are regarded by me, yet I know and observe how shamefully the Moabites and the Ammonites have persecuted you: they at length shall find that I am the guardian of your safety, and that you are under my protection.” We now apprehend the Prophet’s design. Nearly the same words are used by Isaiah, Isaiah 16:1, and also by Jeremiah Jeremiah 48:1, they both pursue the subject much farther, while our Prophet only touches on it briefly, for we see that what he says is comprised in very few words. But by saying that the reproach of Moab and the revilings of the children of Amman had come into remembrance before God, what he had in view was—that the Jews might be assured and fully persuaded that they were not rejected and forsaken, though for a time they were reproachfully treated by the wicked. The Prophet indeed takes the words reproach and revilings, in an active sense. ⁽⁹⁷⁾

He then adds, By which they have upbraided many people. God intimates here that he does not depart from his elect when the wicked spit, as it were, in their faces. There is indeed nothing which so much wounds the feelings of ingenuous minds as reproach; there is not so much bitterness in a hundred deaths as in one reproach, especially when the wicked licentiously triumph, and do this with the applauding consent of the whole world; for then all difference between good and evil is confounded, and good conscience is as it were buried. But the Prophet shows here, that the people of God suffer no loss when they are thus unworthily harassed by the wicked and exposed to their reproach.

He at last subjoins that they had enlarged over their border. Some consider mouth to be understood—they have enlarged the mouth against their border; and the word, it is true, without any addition, is often taken in this sense; but in this place the construction is fuller, for the words על-גבולם, ol-gebulam, over their border, follow the verb. The Prophet means that God’s wrath had been provoked by the petulance of both nations, for they wished to break up, as it were, the borders, which had been fixed by God. The land of Canaan, we know, had been given to the Jews by an hereditary right;—When the Most High, says Moses, divided the nations, he set a line for Jacob. Deuteronomy 32:8. It is indeed true that the possessions of the nations were allotted to them by the hidden counsel of God; but there was a special reason as to his chosen people; for the Lord had made Abraham the true possessor of that land, even for ever. Genesis 17:8. Now the Moabites were confined, as it were, to a certain place; the Lord had assigned to them their own inheritance. When, therefore, they sought to go beyond and to invade the land of the Jews, God’s wrath must have been kindled against them; for they thus fought, not against mortals, but against God himself; for by removing the borders fixed by him, they attempted to subvert his eternal decree. We now then understand why the Prophet says that the children of Moab and of Ammon had enlarged over the border of those who had been placed in the land of Canaan by God’s hand; for they not only sought to eject their neighbors, but wished and tried to take away from God’s hand that inheritance which the Lord had given to Abraham, and given, as I have said, in perpetuity. ⁽⁹⁸⁾

(97) That is, the reproach cast by Moab, and the revilings uttered by Ammon.—Ed.

(98) There is a difference as to the meaning of the last line. Newcome adopts our common version,—

And magnified themselves against their border

Henderson’s rendering is essentially the same—

And carried themselves haughtily against their border.

The verb [נדל ] is transitive and intransitive in Kal—to make great and to be great; it seems to partake of a similar character in Hiphil, as it is found here, to magnify, and to grow great or proud, and hence to exult or to triumph; and when followed by [על ], as here, to exult over a person or a country,—see Job 19:5; Psalms 35:26; Ezekiel 35:13. In these verses “to exult over” would be the best rendering; as also in the 10^th verse of this chapter. The idea of enlarging or extending over, as adopted by Jerome and Dathius, as well as by Calvin, is not countenanced by any other passage. The best rendering here is—

And exulted over their border.

This line corresponds with the revilings of Ammon, as the preceding does with the reproach of Moab. That it was the triumphant and exulting language of Ammon is evident, because it was what was heard —“I have heard,” etc. The particle [אשר ], rendered here “quibus —by which,” and “wherewith” by Newcome, is rendered “who” by Marckius and Henderson —“who have reproached on my people;” and this is the most natural construction. Some have rendered it “because.”—Ed.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 2

Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired ( Zephaniah 2:1 );

Now that "not desired" in the Hebrew literally means "a nation that knows no shame." They were doing shameful things, but they refused to be ashamed.

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 has come upon you. 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 ( Zephaniah 2:2-3 ).

So the Lord's promise to hide those from the day of His anger.

When the Great Tribulation comes upon the earth, just before it comes, and what will actually be the final straw, so to speak, will be the desecration of the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem.

Now, prophetically the temple is to be rebuilt. When the temple is rebuilt, this man, who in the scripture is known as the son of perdition or the man of sin, the beast, often called the antichrist, he is going to come to the temple; he's going to stand in the holy place and declare that he is god and is going to demand to be worshiped as God. Jesus speaking to Israel, to the Jews at this time, who see this manifestation, said to them, "And when you see the abomination of desolation that Daniel the prophet spoke about, standing in the holy place, then flee to the wilderness" ( Matthew 24:15-16 ).

Now in the book of Revelation, chapter 12, ( Rev Zephaniah 2:12 ) as John sees, first of all, the woman, Israel, clothed with the sun and the moon and the twelve stars. And then he sees the second wonder in heaven, the great dragon, Satan, who is cast out of heaven. And he goes to make war against the woman's seed, or the remnant of the nation of Israel, or the people of Israel. But in the book of Revelation it says that the woman's seed are given wings of an eagle, to bear them to the wilderness place where they will be nourished for three and a half years. So that they will not come under the dominion and the control of the antichrist, but will flee to this wildernesses place that God has prepared for them. Which according to Isaiah, chapter 16 ( Isaiah 16:0 ), will be the rock city of Petra, where many of the Jews will flee for survival. And God will watch over them and take care of them there. This also is made mention of in the twenty-sixth chapter of Isaiah ( Isaiah 26:0 ), the last few verses, where God bears them safely to a place of refuge until His indignation be overpassed, or the wrath of God, the judgments of God are over.

So here again is the promise of the Lord for those people in that day to seek 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." It is possible that they can be those that will be preserved miraculously by God in this wilderness place where they will be taken care of by the Lord for three and a half years. So that's a yet future experience for the Jews. It is not the church. The church, of course, will be caught up in the rapture before these things take place.

For [he said] Gaza shall be forsaken [or Gaza], and Ashkelon a desolation: and they shall drive out Ashdod at the noonday, and Ekron shall be rooted up ( Zephaniah 2:4 ).

These are the cities, the major cities of the Philistines. The Gaza, and of course, you're reading an awful lot in the last couple weeks of the Gaza Strip and the problems that are going on there right now. Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron.

Woe to the inhabitants of the seacoast, the nation of the Cherethites! for 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. And the seacoast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks. And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah ( Zephaniah 2:5-7 );

Now this is a fascinating prophecy, because during the time of the Old Testament, the Philistines were one of the strong and perennial enemies of the Jews. The cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath were the major Philistine cities. They were in the coastal plains. They were a constant thorn in the flesh to Israel. The tribe of Dan tried to settle in that area, but they found that the Philistines were too strong for them. So the tribe of Dan went way up in the north part of the land in the upper Galilee region, and there the tribe of Dan settled north of Lachish, clear on up near the base of Mount Hermon.

But the Lord is here predicting that the Philistines are going to be destroyed and that these cities will be desolate. They will just be places where the Nomadic Bedouins keep their flocks. But then the prophecy goes on to declare, "The coast shall be for a remnant of the house of Judah,"

and they shall feed thereon ( Zephaniah 2:7 ):

Now it's extremely interesting that in these days in which we live, these Philistine cities Ashdod, Ashkelon have been rebuilt into Jewish communities. In Ashdod the Israelis have built their major seaport. Most of the shipping is no longer done out of Haifa, but it's done out of Ashdod. And as God has declared, this area for years, for over a thousand years, was just grazing land for the Bedouins. But when Israel became a nation again, they began the rebuilding projects. One of the major projects was the rebuilding of this area of Ashdod and the making of this modern seaport. Also, Ashkelon, and so they have settled now in the area that was once a part of the Philistine territory. So this fascinating prophecy of Zephaniah has been fulfilled during some of our lifetime. Some of you kids are still too young; it happened before you were born, but I do remember it. "And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah, they shall feed there upon."

and in the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down in the evening: for the LORD their God shall visit them, and turn away their captivity ( Zephaniah 2:7 ).

So this, of course, is a prophecy of the rebirth of the nation Israel.

I've heard the reproach of Moab, the revilings of the children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached my people, and magnified themselves against their border ( Zephaniah 2:8 ).

Moab and Ammon, of course, had magnified themselves; they took the West Bank from Israel when Israel became a nation in 1948. King Jordan moved in with his troops and took the West Bank. The Lord here speaks about it, "I know the reproach how they've magnified themselves against their border."

Therefore, as I live, saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Surely Moab will become as Sodom [that's present day Jordan], and the children of Ammon [the capital of Jordan] 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 ( Zephaniah 2:9 ).

So it looks like Jordan is in for trouble with Israel from this prophecy of Zephaniah. Of course, it is interesting that at the present time the strategy of General Sharon, the defense minister of Israel, is to drive the PLO out of Lebanon into Jordan and make Jordan the Palestinian state. Helping the PLO to depose King Hussein. That is the present strategy planned by General Sharon, and it is interesting that Zephaniah speaks much of that taking place 2,100 years ago. No, more than that, 2,600 years ago.

This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the LORD of hosts ( Zephaniah 2:10 ).

The Lord said, "Touch not My anointed, do My prophets no harm." The Lord said He would bless those that blessed Abraham; He would curse those that cursed them. So Moab, or Jordan, is to fall because of their treatment of God's people, the people of the Lord of hosts. Now, it isn't that the people of the Lord of hosts are so righteous. It's just that God has chosen them. And because God has chosen them, we should respect them.

The LORD will be awesome 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 [or the coasts of the heathen]. Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by my sword. And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and he will make Nineveh a desolation ( Zephaniah 2:11-13 ),

So at this time that Zephaniah was prophesying, Nineveh was still existing. It had not yet been destroyed by the Medes and the Babylonians.

The flock shall lie down in the midst of her, all of 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. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: [that great city of Nineveh] and how has she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand ( Zephaniah 2:14-15 ).

Nineveh, one of the greatest cities of the ancient world. It took three days to walk through the city of Nineveh from one end to the other. Yet here's the prophet making this amazing prophecy: it's gonna be desolate. Sheep are gonna graze there. In the houses that once existed there, the owl and the bittern will lodge in the thresholds. It will be a place for the dwelling of wild animals. As improbable as that prophecy of Zephaniah did seem at that time, yet it came to pass. "

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

C. judgment on Israel’s neighbors 2:4-15

Since all people need to seek the Lord (Zephaniah 2:3), Zephaniah revealed that judgment was headed for the nations around Judah as well as for Judah. He selected nations that lived in four directions from Judah to represent all the nations. Philistia lay west of Judah, Moab and Ammon east, Ethiopia south, and Assyria north.

"He [God] would also judge nations that were near as well as nations that were far away. Those near would be plundered and possessed by Judah. Those far away would simply be destroyed by the Lord." [Note: Dyer, pp. 810-11.]

Zephaniah prophesied to the people of Judah about these nations rather than to these nations themselves, though they might have heard about Zephaniah’s prophecies. His prophecies about the nations reminded the Judeans that Yahweh was sovereign over all the earth and that He was not just singling out Judah for punishment.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Probably Zephaniah linked Moab and Ammon because both nations descended from Lot (Genesis 19:30-38) as well as because both lay to Judah’s east. Both nations had taunted and reviled the Israelites from their earliest history. They had repeatedly lifted themselves up as enemies of God’s chosen people (cf. Numbers 22; Numbers 24:17; Judges 3:12-14; Judges 10:7-9; Judges 11:4-6; 1 Samuel 11:1-11; 2 Samuel 10:1-14; 2 Kings 3).

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

2. Judgment coming on Moab and Ammon 2:8-11

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

Zephaniah 2:8 The Moabites and Ammonites were Israel’s traditional foes. The Israelites fought with them frequently (see 2 Kings 3:1-27; 2 Chronicles 20:1-30) and they remained Israel’s enemies to the end (2 Kings 25:25; Jeremiah 40:11-14).

• mocking … invading: The Israelites not only suffered repeated attacks by the Moabites and Ammonites (see Amos 1:13) but also endured their insults over their successes.

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

I have heard the reproach of Moab, and the revilings of the children of Ammon,.... Two people that descended from Lot, through incest with his daughters; and are therefore mentioned together, as being of the same cast and complexion, and bitter enemies to the people of the Jews; whom they reproached and reviled, for the sake of their religion, because they adhered to the word and worship of God: this they did when the Jews were most firmly attached to the service of the true God; and the Lord heard it, and took notice of it; and put it down in the book of his remembrance, to punish them for it in due time; even he who hears, and sees, and knows all things:

whereby they have reproached my people; whom he had chosen, and avouched to be his people; and who were called by his name, and called on his name, and worshipped him, and professed to be his people, and to serve and obey him; and as such, and because they were the people of God, they were reproached by them; and hence it was so resented by the Lord; and there being such a near relation between God and them, he looked upon the reproaches of them as reproaches of himself:

and magnified [themselves] against their border; either they spoke reproachfully of the land of Israel, and the borders of it, and especially of the inhabitants of the land, and particularly those that bordered upon them; or they invaded the borders of their land, and endeavoured to add it to theirs; or as the Jews were carried captive by the Chaldeans, as they passed by the borders of Moab and Ammon, they insulted them, and jeered them, and expressed great pleasure and joy in seeing them in such circumstances; see Ezekiel 25:3. Jarchi represents the case thus; when the children of Israel went into captivity to the land of the Chaldeans, as they passed by the way of Ammon and Moab, they wept, and sighed, and cried; and they distressed them, and said, what do you afflict yourselves for? why do ye weep? are not you going to the house of your father, beyond the river where your fathers dwelt of old? thus jeering them on account of Abraham's being of Ur of the Chaldees.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      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.   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 salt-pits, and a perpetual desolation: the residue of my people shall spoil them, and the remnant of my people shall possess them.   10 This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the LORD of hosts.   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.

      The Moabites and Ammonites were both of the posterity of Lot; their countries joined, and, both adjoining to Israel, they are here put together in the prophecy against them.

      I. They are both charged with the same crime, and that was reproaching and reviling the people of God and triumphing in their calamities (Zephaniah 2:8; Zephaniah 2:8): They have reproached my people; while God's people kept close to their duty it is probable that they reproached them for the singularities of their religion; and now that they had revolted from God, and fallen under his displeasure, they reproached them for that too. It has been the common lot of God's people in all ages to be reproached and reviled upon one account or other. Thus the old serpent spits his venom; and pride is at the bottom of it; it is in their pride that they have magnified themselves against the people of the Lord of hosts, thinking themselves as good as they, as great, and every way as happy. It is the comtempt of the proud that God's people are filled with, Psalms 123:4. They have spoken big (so some read it, magna locuti sunt--they have spoken great things) against their border (Zephaniah 2:8; Zephaniah 2:8), against those of them that bordered upon their country, whom upon all occasions they insulted, or against the property they claimed, which they disputed, or the protection they boasted of, which they ridiculed; they spoke big against the people of the Lord of hosts as a deserted abandoned people. Great swelling words of vanity are the genuine language of the church's enemies. "But I have heard them" (says God), "and will let you know that I have heard them. I have heard, and I will reckon for them," Jude 1:15. And, if God hears the reproaches and revilings we are under, it is a good reason why we should be as a deaf man that hears not,Psalms 38:14; Psalms 38:15. Nay, God not only takes notice of, but interests himself in the reproaches cast on his people, because they are his; and it is certain that those who look with disdain upon the people of the Lord of hosts thereby dishonour the Lord of hosts himself. See this very thing charged on Moab and Ammon, Ezekiel 25:3; Ezekiel 25:8.

      II. They are both laid under the same doom. Associates in iniquity may expect to be such in desolation. See with what solemnity sentence is pronounced upon them, Zephaniah 2:9; Zephaniah 2:9. It is the Lord of hosts, the sovereign Lord of all, who has authority to pass this sentence and ability to execute it; it is the God of Israel, who is jealous for their honour; it is he that has said it, nay, he has sworn it, As I live, saith the Lord. The sentence is, 1. That the Moabites and Ammonites shall be quite destroyed; they shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, the marks of whose ruins in the Dead Sea lay near adjoining to the countries of Moab and Ammon; they shall, though not by the same means (even fire from heaven), Yet almost in the same manner, be laid waste; not again to be inhabited, or not of a long time. The country shall produce nothing but nettles, instead of corn; and there shall be brine-pits, instead of the pleasant fountains of water with which the country had abounded. 2. That Israel shall be too hard for them, shall spoil them of their goods and possess their country by lawful war. Note, Proud men sometimes, by the just judgment of God, fall under the mortification of being trampled upon themselves by those whom once they haughtily trampled upon. And this shall they have for their pride.

      III. Other nations shall in like manner be humbled, that the Lord alone may be exalted (Zephaniah 2:11; Zephaniah 2:11): The Lord will be terrible unto the Moabites and Ammonites in particular, who have made themselves a terror to his Israel. For, 1. Heathen gods must be abolished. They have long had possession, and their worshippers have both glorified them and gloried in them. But the Lord will famish all the gods of the earth, will starve them out of their strong-holds. The Pagans had a fond conceit that their idols were regaled by their offerings, and did eat the fat of their sacrifices,Deuteronomy 32:38. Omnia comesta à Belo--Bel has eaten all. But it is here promised that when the Christian religion is set up in the world men shall be turned from the service of these dumb idols, shall forsake their altars, and bring no more sacrifices to them, and thus they shall be famished, or made lean (as the word is), their priests shall. This intimates the vanity of those idols; it lies in the power of their worshippers to famish them; whereas the true God says, If I were hungry, I would not tell thee. It intimates also the victory of the God of Israel over them. Now know we that he is greater than all gods. 2. Heathen nations must be converted; when the gospel gets ground, by it men shall be brought to worship him who lives for ever (for that is the command of the everlasting gospel, Revelation 14:7), every one from his place; they shall not need to go up to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel, but wherever they are, they may have access to him. I will that men pray every where. God shall be worshipped, not only by all the tribes of Israel and the strangers who join themselves to them, but by all the isles of the heathen. This is a promise which looks favourably upon our native country, for it is one of the most considerable of the isles of the Gentiles, by which God will be glorified.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

Lectures on the Minor Prophets.

W. Kelly.

Zephaniah like Habakkuk will be found to have some points of resemblance with the prophet Jeremiah; and this not merely in the fact that the Chaldean is the enemy of which both treat, but also in their both setting forth the blessedness reserved for Israel and Jerusalem when the judgments of Jehovah shall have been executed on the nations. Nevertheless there is this wide difference between the two lesser prophets; that Zephaniah in treating of the glory of God is much more external, while Habakkuk dwells far more on the needed exercises of heart with God's answer to the Jew both now and hereafter. Thus the two minor prophets take up each a separate item of the prophet of Anathoth. Jeremiah's prophecy abounds in internal exercises of heart, and here Habakkuk resembled him: we see his grief and hear his complaints and laments to Jehovah when evil was allowed to prevail. On the other hand he shows us the execution of divine judgment which will set aside the proud Gentiles, and reduce the people of God to their true place, in order that, being abased in heart, they may be exalted outwardly. Zephaniah presents rather the latter, as Habakkuk the former. Jerusalem is in the foreground, but in connection with the general judgment of the nations from whose evils the Jews had in no way kept themselves apart. Thus there is no precise mention of the apostate powers of the latter day. As Antichrist therefore is not named or specially described, so neither is the Messiah, save generally as the Jehovah God of Israel.

"The word of Jehovah which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah." Thus we have a full and clear account of Zephaniah, as also of the time in which he wrote. It was of no small importance that there should be prophets raised up during the time of Josiah and subsequently. Jeremiah was rather the latest of the three already named. The importance morally of their prophecies then was, that no one either at the time of Josiah or afterwards should be deceived as to the facts of the partial reformation accomplished during the reign of that pious prince. There is nothing that is more apt to deceive and to disappoint than a wave of blessing which passes over a nation so far gone from righteousness as the Jews of that day. Josiah's eminent piety, his remarkable zeal in dealing sternly with what profaned the name of Jehovah, above all the subjection of heart to the word of God which peculiarly characterized himself, in no way set the nation right. Undoubtedly there must have been then, as always, sanguine hopes indulged by the excellent of the earth. It was of great moment therefore that God's mind about the matter should be made known in order that none, if deceived for the moment, should be too bitterly disappointed at last. We ought to appreciate heartily whatever of blessing God gives, and seek to be kept from a passive or insensible spirit.

On the other hand to look for more than a partial and passing accomplishment of good to individuals through the grace of God is not wise. The blessing that is given, while a matter of immense thankfulness towards souls and of praise to His own mercy, really leaves the moral state of those who reject it worse than before. It does not fail in the end to accelerate the downward course of the mass, and thus brings in a time of deeper ruin. So we see that there was but a short space indeed that separated Josiah's bright burst of pious effort for God's glory from the awful evils which succeeded and brought an insupportable judgment from God on the guilty people. Zephaniah was one of those who spoke in Jehovah's name during these promising times; and thus he begins his message: "I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith Jehovah."

I do not doubt that such times as those of Josiah answer more or less to revivals of religion, or awakenings in our own or other days under the gospel. And assuredly it is solemn to feel that, besides the blessing to souls here and there, the general result is that they only increase much the responsibility of those who do not profit by the testimony God thus renders. We may and ought to be thankful for fruit to His grace, but should not forget that they evidently seem on the background to be a visitation not without grave consequences to the despisers.

At the same time, I think that the resemblance is stronger to such a dealing of God as the Reformation. For a revival is more a work of awakening sinners; whereas this was a recall of the people of God also to their place from idols and profanity. No doubt sinners were awakened, but there was a loud call to the people of God generally to hear the word of God instead of acquiescing in their own declension and dishonour. Now this is not always the case. We hear of some such effects locally; for instance in the revival which God wrought by Jonathan Edwards and others of his day in their districts of America. The Whitfield-Wesleyan movement was widespread in arousing sinners, but extremely partial as to any dealings with the state of Christian people. They were both, however zealous, too ignorant of the word and ways of God to help the church of God to any appreciable extent. I need not speak much of the comparatively recent revival chiefly in the North of Ireland, which spread over various parts of the world about the same time; but it seems plain that whatever may be God's goodness in a revival, it is in general a rebuke to the wickedness of man in its day a strong reclamation on God's part against the routine in which the mass consent to go on, as well as a display of grace exceptionally. But the effect of slighting such a summons of His, not only in others, but even in those who have shared the revival and thus enjoyed blessing from God, leaves them as the rule in a worse state than before. This seems to have always been the history of such movements.

Some I know believe that there has been a change in a large part of Christendom outwardly since the revival in the North of Ireland and in America, from 1857 to 1860, especially in its operation, so as to call forth a great many preachers of all sorts outside the clergy or the various official guides of the denominations. But I am disposed to attribute the impulse given to lay preaching to a very different testimony, though it is possible that the distress among the souls awakened at that time may have impressed on it a more practical shape. And this continues. The force of free preaching does not appear to be spent as yet, so far as outward appearances go. Whether, and how far this may be an important event towards the close has been a question sometimes. The worst sign is that in a large part even of that evangelizing which continues, it takes the shape of considerable bitterness against such truth as condemns themselves. Those who do so cannot but help on the Laodiceanism of Christendom in these days. Latitudinarianism will be increasingly a snare; and the most systematic and guilty part comes from those who should know better, but are really so much the worse because of the mercy God had shown them and of their deliverance in measure from mere traditionalism. What an ungrateful return from the heart for such goodness of God! the using grace to slight what is due to Christ and the truth and holiness of God, who calls us to a thorough renunciation of self and of the world for His name. This certainly cannot be said to have been the effect of the movement hitherto; is it so still less as time goes on? If not, a free spread of truth which does not separate to Christ from worldliness, and forms which ignore the Holy Spirit, must in the long run contribute to help on the apostacy more or less decidedly. In fact, as far as we can see, everything moves in that direction.

It would be hard to say what does not in one way or another tend to lessen the authority of divine truth in men's minds. Take, for instance, the Ecumenical Council. The promulgation of absurd decrees about the infallibility of the Pope will no doubt largely increase the superstitious party and their pride of heart and blindness. On the other hand there is the reaction of those that despise and laugh it to scorn, knowing who and what are those who put forth such exorbitant pretensions, that the claim of God's truth is the merest imposture, covering over a group of ambitious priests working out their own glory by the most glaring perversion of the word of God, and this in a way highly calculated to deceive many, because they say a great deal that is unquestionably true and right. They talk about the church just as if there was reality in the Romish system; they also decry the amazing pride and profanity of modern science in setting itself against the word of God; so that in this way there is an immense deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish. Thus on every side is seen that which leads both directly and indirectly to the abandonment of divine revelation and more particularly of Christianity, which is called the apostacy.

The Lord then pronounces through Zephaniah the clean destruction that is coming, not only in a general sentence, but by a minute enumeration of particulars. "I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling-blocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith Jehovah." The completeness of the ruin would prove the hand of Jehovah; for why else beast as well as man? why birds of heaven and fishes of the sea? But the root lay in the stumbling-blocks (or idols) of the wicked, who should all perish together. Hence the cutting off man from the face of the land (or earth) closes this emphatic sentence of Jehovah. The judgment should be universal.

But there is more than that: "I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, the name of the Chemarim [that is, idolatrous priests only named besides in 2 Kings 23:5, Hosea 10:5, and supposed by Gesenius to be so designated from their black ecclesiastical dress] with the priests." What made this idolatry so offensive was the joining of the idols of the nations with Jehovah. To be what we might call a plain right-down idolater was not nearly so evil as to show that you know the true God and yet put false gods on a level with Him. Such an outrage against God as this is specially described here. "And them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship and that swear to Jehovah, and that swear by Malcham." And certainly, to apply the principle to the present day, as we have just now been speaking of revivals such as Josiah's and their bearing on the future crisis of Christendom, as then on the crisis of Judah, this confusion is remarkably characteristic of both times. "And them that are turned back from Jehovah; and those that have not sought Jehovah, nor enquired for him." There might be both two rather different classes those on the one hand who owned Jehovah in a measure, and then had abandoned Him with slight and insult; and those on the other hand who never had been even outwardly awakened to care for Him or even enquire after Him. Then comes the warning. "Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord Jehovah: for the day of Jehovah is at hand: for Jehovah hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests. And it shall come to pass in the day of Jehovah's sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king's children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel." He would begin with those who had the chief responsibility.

"In the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith Jehovah, that there shall be the noise of a cry from the fish gate, and an howling from the second, land a great crashing from the hills." It will be universal consternation and chastening from God. "Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh, for all the merchant people* are cut down; all they that bear silver are cut off. And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles." Not merely those that were openly violent no one should escape, no class or condition. They "say in their heart, Jehovah will not do good, neither will he do evil." It is Sadduceanism before the Sadducees. "Therefore their goods shall become a booty, and their houses a desolation: they shall also build houses, but not inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof;" that is, they shall be struck in the very point of their unbelief. "The great day of Jehovah is near, it is near,, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of Jehovah." They denied this altogether; they said Jehovah would do neither good nor harm: He was a God that took His ease as they did. "Even the voice of the day of Jehovah: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness."

* It is literally "all the people of Canaan," which may be as has been thought, a cutting designation of the men of Jerusalem generally, rather than of the trading classes. It appears to me, however, that the clause which follows is favourable to the more common version.

It is of great importance that we should hold and testify "that day," not merely the coming of the Lord but His day. Although it indicates undoubtedly much more for the state that the coming of the Lord is dear to us as our heavenly hope, nevertheless there may be an unwillingness to face the solemn truth of the day of Jehovah. Where there is high truth and low practice, the day of Jehovah can never be honestly testified; it does not then receive that place in our practical service which it has in the word of God. It will not satisfy the heart to substitute for our proper hope that which bears on the world in the judicial excision of evil here below; it will never do to live in or on it, because it is not the suited food for the soul; still it is a solemn and necessary truth to hold up before our own eyes and those of all others. Were there truthfulness with a graciously exercised heart, not only would there be a free and joyful waiting for Christ, but nothing could be allowed knowingly inconsistent with His mind to call forth His judgment. For instance we constantly find this kind of self-deceit where a Christian lives in worldliness, which leads him to say that at all events his heart is not in it.

Now it is quite possible there may be cases where one can quite understand meek trust to be the genuine feeling, as where a wife or a child may be held responsible to obey. Thus suppose such an one in the worldly mansion belonging to a worldly Christian of rank: clearly one under authority is not at liberty to enter on a crusade against splendours of furniture, equipage, or the general style of living that belongs to a great house. Nevertheless the Christian child should undoubtedly seek, while personally a Nazarite, to abstain from offensive demonstrations to its parents. This would not hinder a decided taking part with what was despised and rejected whenever an opportunity was allowed. Faith now as ever shares the afflictions of the people of God, and more particularly identifies itself with what is scorned and hated in separation from the world. But it is most happy where, along with fidelity to the Lord, one sees a meek and lowly mind giving conspicuous honour to father and mother, from which I need not say Christ in no way absolves. At the same time there should be the constant manifestation that the heart is with Him who is the treasure in the heavens. If possession came, such an one would know how to turn all to a testimony, not of sanctified worldliness, as if this could be, but to Him who suffered on the cross, whereby he is crucified to the world and the world to him. Love for Christ's appearing strengthens the pilgrim in his path, though only Christ's love makes one a pilgrim. But it is evil where one perseveres in going on with what grieves the Lord on the plea that He will set all to rights in His day.

Nor is it to be doubted that in the day of the Lord there will be something like a reflection of what the path has been here, loss in case of unfaithfulness and reward for the service of His name. But it would appear from the New Testament, I think, that this to us is rather called the day of Christ, thus distinguishing between it and the day of Jehovah. Assuredly Christ is Jehovah; but still it is a very different thought where He is so styled, as in the Revelation. And it is remarkable that in Zephaniah so external is its usage comparatively we never see Him brought in as Christ at all. We find simply Jehovah here. It is therefore more judicial. If "the day of Christ" may be received as judicial too, it has certainly more application, even in that character, to what was based on and flowed from Christ. "The day of Christ" is that aspect of the day of the Lord in which those who have lived and walked and suffered in grace will have their portion assigned to them by the Master. Hence the apostle Paul says a good deal about "the day of Christ" in the Epistle to the Philippians. There we have the results of service and of suffering, of thorough identification with Christ now.

In the common version of the second Epistle to the Thessalonians (2 Thessalonians 2:2), it is a twofold mistake to present the error then at work among the saints, as "the day of Christ is at hand."* Had the false teachers said this, they had not gone far astray. But they pretended the authority of the apostle and indeed of the Spirit for the assertion that the day of the Lord was actually arrived, or then present not "at hand;" just as in another epistle we hear of such as affirmed the resurrection to have taken place already. Thus "present" was what they meant. They had, no doubt, some idea of a figurative day of the Lord, pretty much like what obtains at the present time in Christendom generally. For, strange to say, not a few theologians hold that the baptized are in the first resurrection, and that we are all throughout the Christian period reigning with Christ! The thousand years are thus of course taken as an indefinite period in a similarly vague sense. The chief difference is that the saints at Thessalonica had better knowledge than those who indulge in such thoughts now. They saw that the day of the Lord was a day of darkness and trouble; and in danger of feeling overmuch the troubles then come on themselves (cf. 1 Thessalonians 3:3-5), they too readily believed them to be at any rate the beginning of that day. Encountering persecution, they thought that the day of the Lord had come at last. But the very error shows they were so full of the coming of the Lord as to be open through lack of intelligence to a delusion on that side. Only observe it was not through excited hope but terror; because, when their troubles came, they thought that the day of the Lord was actually on them. They needed to be recalled to their hope and the gathering of the saints to the Lord so as to come with Him in that day. Such is the apostolic correction; not putting off the hope (as most do now), but distinguishing it from the day of the Lord which few seem to see; for that day cannot be till the evil is ripe which is to be then only put down.

* The true reading is the day of the Lord, not "Christ," and the proper rendering would be is present, not "at hand."

Thus "that day," "the day of Christ," is to have an aspect toward those who are now Christians, who will be with Him in the glory in the heavens. But it is "the day of Christ" more particularly which affects a Christian. "The day of Jehovah" in scripture is invariably that which deals with the world, with living men and their works on the earth, and finally with the frame and elements of the universe itself, but this rather at the close of His day than at its beginning, as we gather from the comparison of several scriptures. "The great day of Jehovah is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of Jehovah: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers. And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against Jehovah: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of Jehovah's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land." Nothing can be plainer. It is distinctly judicial, and this as regards the habitable world. "The day of Christ" has also a discriminative bearing, and this with a view to rewarding the saints who shall have laboured for the Lord or suffered meanwhile. All will be made up to them then. It is possible that this has been overlooked: what has not been? Excellent men, in their desire to give grace its scope in redemption and our justification by faith, have failed now and then to leave room for another principle equally plain. The apostle Paul, if weighed, would keep us by the Spirit both large in heart, and free from the confusion of things that differ. It is he who insists that we "are saved by grace," and that "every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour." Not only will God be justified by our account of all as it is to Christ, but the ways and work and suffering with Christ of those who are His will have their due place and display in the glory of the kingdom by and by.

The apostle had this certainty before him as a measure and test of the present. See it in 1 Corinthians 4:1-21; 1 Corinthians 5:1-13; 1 Corinthians 6:1-20; 1 Corinthians 7:1-40; 1 Corinthians 11:1-34; 1 Corinthians 15:1-58, to take but one epistle; and this not the most abundant in such interweaving of the future with all the present life. "That day" becomes even more before his spirit as he approaches the end of his own labours, though we know that from the first he had not failed to preach the kingdom. I admire the exceeding breadth of Paul, as indeed well one may in every one who, steering clear of laxity, its counterfeit, proves spiritual capacity for it. It becomes not the Christian to be narrow. Nevertheless who can avoid seeing the tendency to be so on this or that? Be assured that it is not only weakness but a danger wherever it may be. I grant, however, that even narrowness in and for God's truth is far better than that lax uncertainty and spurious liberalism in divine things which is growingly a snare in this evil day.

Take the contrary of this in the apostle and his preaching. The very man to whom all are most indebted for the gospel of the grace of God, set forth as none else did that particular phase of it which is called the gospel of the glory of Christ. At the same time he preached the kingdom of God as decidedly as possible. He never was afraid of the ignorant outcry that this is low ground. The fact is that hasty and little minds say so, unable to take in more than one idea, and apt to be intoxicated with that one; but the apostle exhibits that excellent largeness and elasticity which gives its place to every message which God has revealed, which pretends not to choose in scripture, but thankfully takes and uses the testimony of God as it is given. It seems to me that we really lower the revival of truth grace has wrought by allowing the idea that this truth or that is the only truth for the day. The speciality of our blessing is that we have got into a large place, contemptible as it looks to unbelief that no truth comes amiss, and that all truth is for this day. I hold this to be an important point for us, avoiding the pettiness of fancying or seeking a factitious value for whatever happens to be dawning with especial force on our own minds.

It is a snare the more to be dreaded because it has ever led to the making of sects through an active mind laying hold of (or rather taken captive by) some favourite notion or even truth. I consider it then an essentially sectarian bias; and that the true and distinctive blessing of what God has given us now in these days is not so much laying hold of this or that truth higher than others accept, though this be true, but the heart open to the truth in all its extent, and this bound up with Christ personally, as the only possible means of deliverance, if by grace we walk there in the power of the Spirit, from every kind of pettiness. It will be found too, that it is immensely important practically for holiness, because we are so weak that we are likely to take just what we like and what at the time suits our own character, habits, position, circumstances, and capacity; whereas what we want is to detect, judge, and thus be saved from self; not that which ever spares flesh, but what gives us to mortify our members on the earth, as well as what in divine love suits the varying wants of souls around us, and above all His glory, who has given us not only a particular part of His mind, but the whole of it. Thus, as it has been well said, the peculiarity really of the right position is its universality. That is, it is not merely a special portion or phase of truth, no matter how blessed, but the truth in all its fulness as the divinely given safeguard from particular views, and the communication of the exceeding largeness of God's grace and truth and ways for us in the world. "All things are yours." Anything that tends by distinctive marks to make a party by bringing forward one's self or one's own views as practically a centre is self-condemned.

For this reason it is, I think, that, while holding fast, for instance, the precious hope of Christ's heavenly glory, and that which is so connected with its revelation, namely, the church in its heavenly relationship and privileges, to see every other aspect is in its own place of great importance. Again, the individual is important just as much as the body, and in a certain sense more so. Above all to hold up Christ is to my mind of incomparably greater moment than either the Christian or the body. Indeed the way most of all to profit both the body and the individual saint is by the constant maintenance of Christ's glory, and this too not more as the exalted man in heaven than as a divine person in the fulness of His grace on earth, yet withal the dependent and obedient man, who never sought His own will or aught save the glory of His Father who sent Him.

And as we touch on the subject, let me just make the passing remark, which may be helpful to those who desire an entrance into God's revealed mind, that a phrase too often misunderstood spite of its plain force in1 John 1:1; 1 John 1:1 "That which was from the beginning" does not refer to Christ in eternity or in heaven, but to Him on earth: so utterly mistaken is the principle of merely directing attention to that which seems the nearest object or the highest point of view. The truth is, that the snare lies in this, because the mighty work of redemption, and the position which Christ has taken, may be too much regarded in its resulting consequences for us. What brings ourselves into such special blessedness is thus in danger of being made more important than what has even glorified God the Father morally. For this last we must look not to our heavenly place and privileges but to Christ's person and work in all its extent. Here the manifestation of Christ on earth is of capital moment. It is the beginning of His presence and path here. In the beginning (John 1:1-51) He was before all things were created. The only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father declared Him. The work lays the ground for an association with Him; but His manifestation here is the beginning from which God revealed Himself in grace. In due time redemption and union with Him in heavenly places and all else follow. We must thus leave room for all the truth; if one is merely occupied with a particular point of truth, very great harm may result to one's own soul and to others.

A few words on a subject often referred to, the difference between the gospel of grace and the gospel of glory, may be seasonable here. The gospel of the grace of God is the larger expression; the gospel of the glory of Christ is a part of it. It is therefore an error to set the two in contrast, though we may distinguish and use in due season, as we find each used in the word of God. But that the one is an advance on the other is a blunder. The gospel of the grace of God includes the gospel of the glory of Christ, while it embraces a great deal more. It takes in the unfolding of redemption such as we have it for instance in Romans, "propitiation through his blood;" it takes in His death and resurrection with its immense consequences. On the other hand, in looking only at the gospel of the glory, all this may be left out; souls carried away by what is new to them are even in danger of slighting what is deepest without intending it. Let us then beware of making a system, instead of being subject to the truth. Of course it would be done unconsciously by every godly person; but in itself it is always a serious feature.

If the first chapter set forth the coming ruin of Judea because of the corruption of people and princes, and the. horrors of the day of Jehovah falling on their selfish security and vainly trusted appliances, we have a call to repentance in the second. "Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired; before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of Jehovah come upon you, before the day of Jehovah's anger come upon you." It is an appeal to humble themselves before the Lord. "Seek ye Jehovah, all ye meek of the earth." We see there are these two calls. To the nation there is a suited warning; but an earnest appeal is made to the remnant of righteous Jews. These were "the meek of the earth." "Seek ye Jehovah, 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 Jehovah's anger."

Throughout scripture we see this to be the portion of the godly Jew. They do not look to be caught up to heaven as we do, but they hope to be hidden on earth. They are not removed from the scene and then the wicked judged, neither are they displayed with the Lord returning from heaven for that day; but they are hidden in the day of His anger. It is the precise opposite of the Christian's portion, though both are to be blessed. When the day comes, we shall come along with Him who brings it. In that day of judgment on the world they will be hidden in His mercy and faithfulness. Instead of their going to the Father's house, they will have their chambers to hide them on the earth. This is what Isaiah (Isaiah 26:1-21) shows clearly in his ample account of that day. "Come, my people, enter thou" not into My mansions, but "into thy chambers." Before the dawning of that day we enter into the heavenly chambers, or the Father's house. We are taken and seen there before the judgments begin. Compare Revelation 4:1-11; Revelation 5:1-14. When the day comes, instead of being hidden, we are displayed, whereas the Jews (the godly alone, of course) will not be seen, or at least they will enter into their chambers till the indignation is overpass. That hiding place is prepared for them by the pity of God. We see something analogous inRevelation 12:1-17; Revelation 12:1-17 where the woman had a place prepared of God for her in the wilderness. It is the same substantial truth whether before the day comes, or when it does come. "Hide thyself as it were for a little moment until the indignation be overpass." By the "indignation" is meant God's wrath, which will be poured out on the nations, and more particularly on the apostate Jews. The indignation of God takes in both; but it is very evident that the Christian has nothing to do with either. He is called out from the earth and man's portion here, and is entitled to wait for heavenly hopes with Christ.

Not so even the faithful Jews at the end of this age. Their hope can only be enjoyed when their enemies are destroyed by divine judgments, during which they are preserved of God. For "behold Jehovah cometh out of his place to punish." But our hope is to be taken into the Lord's place before He comes out of it in vengeance. Thus in every respect the position and hopes of the Christian are contrasted even with those of the righteous remnant who follow us on earth.

We go out in spirit to meet the Bridegroom, and will have our hope at His coming for us in peace. It is no question of a special tribulation, or of being hidden, as far as the heavenly saints are concerned. To the godly remnant of Jews it will be so when the Lord deals retributively with their guilty brethren after the flesh and the nations. With the remnant common views hastily confound the hopes of the Christian; whereas a closer knowledge of the scriptures proves them to be distinct.

The essential difference arises from this, that all through a Christian is one not of the world, even as Christ is not, and hence is looking to be taken out of the earth. Accordingly it is not only true morally from the time when he is brought to God, but it runs through his calling up to the end: I do not say from conversion simply as such. For important as this may be, the work of conversion is more what takes place always in every renewed soul, Jew or not. But certainly in the believer's separation to Christ by the power of the Holy Ghost he is called out of everything here to God as manifesting Himself in Christ; and the issue will be that he, as thus called out, will be taken up to be with the Lord without disturbing things or people outside. The world goes on. The Christian hears what the world does not hear; the Christian sees a glory that is invisible to man as such. Truly if the rulers of this world had seen it, "they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." We do see it. Accordingly our portion is to be thus called out from first to last; and so it will be when' Christ comes for us. Then we shall be taken, as we have remarked, into His chambers not merely enter chambers of our own on the earth, as the Jew at a later day, and be hidden there till the indignation is passed away. We are called out for heaven in the day of grace: they will be hidden in their chambers in the time of Jehovah's indignation. At that time will they be severed to Jehovah; and then will He come out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth; whereas during the whole dealing with the church of God the earth and its inhabitants are left to pursue their own way. The only testimony which goes on is one of grace towards them, if peradventure they might hear and believe.

Then we have the warning of what will take place in the day of Jehovah's anger, which no doubt has, been partially accomplished, and will be yet more. "For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up." These were cities of Philistine power. "Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the Cherethites! the word of Jehovah is against you; O Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant. 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;" which has clearly not been accomplished yet to the full. "In the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down in the evening: for Jehovah their God shall visit them, and turn away their captivity." In fact the Jews have. been carried off into a longer dispersion since then. The captivity in the days of Nebuchadnezzar was nothing at all so extreme as their scattering to the ends of the earth, consequent on the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

"I have heard the reproach of Moab." It is not merely the Philistines on the west, but Moab, etc., on the east who must come into judgment for their proud enmity. "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. Therefore as I live, saith Jehovah 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. This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of Jehovah of hosts. Jehovah 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."

It is not here the rejected Son of God turning away from the jealous religionists of tradition, and opening out the grace of the Father and the power of the Spirit, which characterize the hour that now is, during which neither Jerusalem nor Samaria is more than Japan or Sierra Leone for sanctity, but Christ received by faith displaces the old man, and flesh and forms vanish before the gift of the Holy Ghost consequent on redemption. In the period which Zephaniah contemplates there is no such absolute blotting out of special place and outward show as according toJohn 4:21-24; John 4:21-24 we now know or ought to know in Christianity. Hence we see no sentence of death as it were on the ancient city of solemnities, but only, as inMalachi 1:11; Malachi 1:11, the opening for worship elsewhere "each from his place," even all the isles of the nations.

That the great change for the earth the full putting down of idolatry awaits the execution of divine judgment is plain everywhere. We can clearly see that idolatry goes on, with the worst forms in Christendom itself; for there is nothing so bad as idolatry where Christ is named, and there is nothing that more characterizes Christendom than the prevalence of Romanism which is essentially idolatrous, besides the monstrous assumption of the Papacy more than ever towering up in its vanity against God. For what is idolatry, if not the worship of images, in whatever measure they may mete it, the worship too of saints, angels, and the Virgin Mary? Whatever may be judged of the Greek and Oriental bodies, I should say that idolatry is not characteristic of Protestantism at all, but rather headiness, and, among the worst, high-minded self-will, which sets up to judge the word of God. This is much more the public vice of corrupt Protestantism, which therefore tends to rationalism. But the ritualistic system is another root of evil, which does not tend to idolatry only, but is in fact idolatrous. (Galatians 4:9-10) I should not however call it Protestant. We all know that a certain portion among the Reformed in these and other lands is falling into Ritualism and ripe for Rome whenever it suits both.

Having seen the divine dealing with their neighbours, we find a judgment that takes place on some of those who, though farther off, came into contact with the chosen people the Ethiopians on the extreme south, and again, on the north-east, Assyria: "Ye Ethiopians also shall be slain by my sword. And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness."

It is evident, save to those who regard the prophets as impostors, that this utterance of Zephaniah must have preceded the destruction of Nineveh. He lived, there can be little doubt, in Josiah's reign. "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. 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." Thus we find it is a judgment which selects two classes, nations near and others afar off, to show the character of an universal judgment upon the world. It is the day of Jehovah on the earth.

But there follows a closer threat for the Jew. "Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!" This is not Nineveh, but Jerusalem. The most solemn word of God is always reserved for His own people, city, and sanctuary. Judgment must begin at His house: the denunciation may end with it, but judgment begins there. Hence, therefore, we find this woe to complete all. "She obeyed not the voice; she received not correction; she trusted not in Jehovah; she drew not near to her God. Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow." We find here therefore failure first towards Jehovah, then towards every one else oppressive cruelty, and this persisted in too. Shamelessness in evil, once it is yielded to, always characterizes the fall of those that enjoyed better light but gave it up. There is nothing more blessed than light from God: where the heart basks in it, the conscience is quickened by it; but there is nothing so tremendous as where it is despised and becomes a name, a profane and common thing. "Her prophets are light and treacherous persons." They ought to have had most of all the mind of God. "Her priests have polluted the sanctuary." This would have been bad enough in the dwellings of Israel; what was it for the priests in the temple of Jehovah? "They have done violence to the law. The just Jehovah is in the midst thereof; he will not do iniquity: every morning doth he bring his judgment to light, he faileth not; but the unjust knoweth no shame." He abides faithful; so much the worse that "the unjust" should be not a heathen but an Israelite.

Consequently we have what Jehovah must do not merely to the heathen but to Jerusalem. "I have cut off the nations: their towers are desolate; I made their streets waste, that none passeth by: their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant. I said, Surely thou wilt fear me, thou wilt receive instruction; so their dwelling should not be cut off, howsoever I punished them: but they rose early, and corrupted all their doings." As Jehovah rose early to send them messages and warnings, they rose early to indulge in their wickedness. Hence comes the sentence, "Therefore wait ye upon me, saith Jehovah, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy."

But the day of judgment on the quick ushers in the predicted era of earth's blessedness: as it is said by an earlier prophet, "the acceptable year of Jehovah and the day of vengeance of our God." How strange that good men should overlook what God's word makes so plain, if one knew not the blinding power of tradition! "For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of Jehovah, to serve him with one consent." This does not mean the people of Israel, but the peoples in relationship with Jehovah among the nations. But it does not hence follow that the spread of Christianity and any check thereby given to idolatry throughout the world are here specifically predicted. When it is fulfilled, it will be no dislodgment of idolatry here or there in parts of the globe, still less will it admit of the rising up of the pollutions of anti-christian systems, while vast regions still remain the theatre of varied and most degrading idolatry. Scripture reveals an age to come, distinct from the present and before the judgment of the great white throne (Revelation 20:1-15), during which divine mercy will bless the nations far and wide. This, and not Christianity properly so called, is here set forth.

Then again we read, "From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed shall bring mine offering." These suppliant worshippers are the Jews who return from beyond the rivers of Cush (the Nile and the Euphrates) which ordinarily girded them round.* In that day shame for the past will be taken from the Jews: not of course that they shall not deeply mourn and truly repent, but the reproach shall be removed from them. Their vain self-exaltation shall disappear, and they shall be the meek of the earth. The reference is not to gospel but to Messianic times, after the execution of the judgments just spoken of. It is impossible therefore justly to bring in here the spread of Christianity, which has not overthrown idolatry, but after subverting it within the Roman Empire has apostatized to it largely far and wide. Hence even the advocates of such a loose interpretation are obliged to own that it has hitherto been only partially fulfilled. There is anything but the "one shoulder" in Christendom for the service of the Lord. Do they not understand that it is only when divine judgment has been poured out on all the assembled nations that then Jehovah will work this mighty and beneficent change to His own glory? It is the blessedness of the earthly kingdom of our Lord.

*The meaning is not, as Dr. Henderson seems to incline to, a people in the west of Abyssinia, called Falashas. Isaiah (Isaiah 18:1) tells as that a nation beyond the rivers of Cush (for there was an Asiatic as well as African Cush) should interfere for Israel; but this would come to nothing. Here Jehovah promises that the Jews shall bring His offering from beyond the seats of their old enemies of chief power.

For along with God's judgment of the nations will be a new heart to Israel, and upon Jerusalem shall be the glory for a defence. There shall be then the returning tide of divine mercy, when the promises shall be fulfilled to the full and established for ever. "In that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings wherein thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of the midst of thee them that rejoice in thy pride, and thou shalt no more be haughty because of my holy mountain." It is the fruit of grace undoubtedly; but it is want of intelligence to see in this the picture of the gospel state. We must leave room for the varied dealings of God according to His word. It is the new age, not the present evil age. "I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people." There must be moral integrity as well as true lowliness before they can be entrusted with the throne. They are destined to have the first dominion: ere that they will know a humiliation not by circumstances only but by grace in spirit which will fit them for their future greatness.

And the afflicted and poor people "shall trust in the name of Jehovah. The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies" the very faults they have been so notorious for during their sorrowful and often persecuted sojourn among the Gentiles. Deceit has peculiarly marked the Jew in his exiled state: it is apt to be the character of a down-trodden people. Those who have things their own way can afford to have a kind of honesty after the flesh; but in the case of people for ages hunted and destroyed, and the object of unprecedented rapine and cruelty as the poor Jews were, it was not to be wondered at. Where grace is not known in Christ, persecution generates this kind of deceit in language as well as iniquity in many an other way. But the change is at hand and here announced: "The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid." There will be the removal of all the old occasion for fear externally; and even before this a moral change will have been produced by the grace of God within them. It is not in outward things really to form the heart in any case. But where mind and conscience are depraved, circumstances furnish incentives to the inroad and practice of evil, and thus aggravate, no doubt. On the other hand Jehovah in His mercy will work His own mighty work within, as He also will mow down their adversaries. Thus circumstances will be turned in their favour at the very time when Jehovah has wrought His great work. It will be what the Lord Jesus calls "the regeneration" (Matthew 19:1-30), when the twelve tribes of Israel shall judge and be blessed in more than royal glory under the Son of man. For we must remember that "regeneration" does not mean as is commonly supposed a subjective change or a new nature given as in the new birth, but a blessed position into which we are brought now by divine power in Christ, or by and by established publicly when He comes in glory. It is now known to faith of course, yet is not so much the inward work of the Spirit, but rather the new place that we enter by resurrection in virtue of His death.

Hence we read of being saved by the washing of regeneration. (Titus 3:1-15; compare 1 Peter 3:1-22) It is not merely that we are born again, but we have left the old behind and are now a new creation. Of course it supposes the new birth, or it is only a hollow form. The two things are identified in ecclesiastical writings, and frequently too in baptismal services we see the same mistake perpetrated which the Fathers first introduced. They always confound new birth and regeneration. Few Protestants have emancipated themselves from the error. But post-apostolic ecclesiastics were those that brought in the error. Regeneration goes beyond new birth, and supposes a passage into the new order of Christ, of which baptism therefore is the sign. Accordingly I should say that all saints were born again from the beginning, but that none (in this the only true sense of the word) were regenerate till after Christ's death and resurrection, when Christian baptism was instituted to set forth this truth. It is thus in my judgment not less but more full and significant. And though many may be baptized who are not born again, every one regenerate (save only in form) must à fortiori be born again. The theologians, like the Fathers, hold that every baptized person is born again, using the phrases as interchangeable. If baptized, a man was regenerate or born again according to their system. It appears to be true, however, that the washing of regeneration in Titus iii. refers to baptism; but then, as it seems to me, the language of the passage proves that the introduction into the quite new order of things in Christ is accompanied by a new nature or life; that in short the new creation supposes new life and much more, all being bound up together. "But after that the kindness and love of God appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us." It is not man merely dead in sins or owning it, but "he saved us by the washing of regeneration." We must not neutralise nor attenuate salvation. It would be dangerous to take "he saved us" as here spoken of the Christian in any sense barely external.

Indeed I think a great vice at the present moment is making "salvation" too cheap and too common a word. You will find many evangelicals constantly saying when a man is converted that he is saved; whereas it is probably quite premature to say so. If truly converted he will be saved; but it is unwarrantable to say that every converted person is saved, because he may still be under doubts and fears that is, under law more or less in conscience. "Saved" brings one out from all sense of condemnation brings one to God consciously free in Christ, not merely before God with earnestness of desire after godliness. A soul is not converted unless brought to God in conscience; but then one might be the more miserable and all but despairing in this state. Does scripture allow us to call such an one "saved"? Certainly not. He who is saved as here in Titus is one who being justified by faith has peace with God. It seems therefore that the distinction between what some call being safe and being saved is quite true and even helpful. Not that those safe could be lost, but that they are not yet brought out of all difficulties into rest of soul by faith. Then they are not safe only but saved. But it clearly is not possible that a converted person can be lost, for the life is eternal. One might be enlightened, and even be a partaker of the Holy Ghost, and yet be lost. Such a statement may surprise some; but such is the unequivocal intimation ofHebrews 6:1-20; Hebrews 6:1-20; and no believer need be in the least afraid of standing to the word of God. To state it so is but repeating what scripture says: it is another matter whether we can help people to understand it. Let the truth be ever so clear and sure, with some you may not always succeed. It is easy enough to give scripture for it, which ought to be sufficient.

Hence it is a mistake to regard as saved any person who is not brought into happy relationship with God through our Lord Jesus. Thus, to take a scripture example, Cornelius was obviously converted, and not a mere self-righteous man, before Peter went to him; but he certainly was not saved until Peter preached the word which he and his house received as the glad tidings of God. Thereon they were not born again, but they received the Holy Ghost; and who could forbid water? They were saved. Such is the whole matter to my mind. It is not the difference between quickening and conversion, which is only one of different aspects of the same substantial truth. Quickening regards man, and conversion is a turning to God; but the quickened soul is converted, and the converted soul is quickened. Such distinctions may be true enough, but require more delicate handling than they too often receive; for those who could treat them properly would hardly think it worth their while. As they have no practical value for the soul or the Lord, and no particular bearing on the word of God, they should be avoided. It seems to me trifling with souls to dwell on them. One ought almost to apologize for saying so much about the matter, which I do chiefly to warn all, and especially those who are young in the enjoyment of truth, from occupying their minds with shades of distinction which have no solidity whatever in them. Wherever the word is received, there is conversion, or turning to God, and there must be life in order that this should be real, not the mere effort of nature. If there be life, assuredly they must turn to God. It must be that the life is in a feeble state if the turning to God is not manifest. We cannot affirm that there is life unless there be a manifest turning to God. We may hope that life and conversion are there; but it must be felt to be serious when anything is equivocal about the soul in such a question. It is dangerous to be over-sanguine or to foster ungrounded hopes, though nothing excuses our encouraging souls to doubt. Uncertainty here is a wretched condition; but the feeblest desire Godward is not a thing to be crushed. It is right to foster the soul spite of that state, to entreat and warn, if they may thus get through their obstacles.

The only remark I would further make about "conversion" is, that scripture uses it not merely for the first turning to God, but for a turning again to Him if one has slipped away. This is really the main distinction between conversion and quickening. For quickening can be only once, but "conversion" may be repeated. Though this is not at all its usage in our tongue, it is the fact that scripture uses the word for both turning to God, and turning back if He have been departed from. That is, it includes what we call restoration of soul; as Peter after his first conversion was "converted." (Luke 22:1-71) Here restoring may be a fair paraphrase; but the literal meaning of the word is "converted." Conversion, however, in modern phraseology is restricted, especially by Calvinists, to the first effectual work. This, however, is not well. Those who identify quickening with salvation naturally slip into a disuse of scriptural language if not really bad doctrine. Such is the effect always of an error it puts you in collision with scripture. Do not think it so slight a matter after all. Although we should never force the thought on any one, at the same time there need not be the slightest doubt of the distinctness of quickening from salvation, and of its importance. Identify quickening with salvation, and you are driven to think that Cornelius was a mere formalist at the time that he is said to be such a pious and prayerful man, abounding in almsgiving, which was not forgotten by God. Undoubtedly he was no common Gentile: there was, I doubt not, a wise choice of him to whom the gospel was sent first. To me there is not the slightest difficulty, because the same principle applies to every Old Testament saint. The peculiarity here is, that he, a pious Gentile, was brought into the proper New Testament or Christian state, (and this is what is called "salvation,") not when quickened or converted, which he may long have been, but only on hearing the gospel.

The two things then coalesced. This is sometimes important to remember; for supposing a soul heard the truth preached, and received it, there might be not conversion and quickening only, but also "salvation," practically all at once, though not, I think, ever at the same instant in any case. I doubt that it ever has been since the world began that a soul has known precisely together both conversion and salvation. So far from this, I admire God's wisdom that it is not so; if it were, it would be no small injury to a soul, because this supposes it passing in a moment out of its sense of guilt, and consequently of sin and sins of every sort, into perfect peace with God, without time left for the most needed moral exercise. To my mind such an instantaneous transition would be a real loss, not gain. That life is imparted by receiving the Lord Jesus at once is most true; as forgiveness is when the soul bows to the gospel. But we must leave room for all, without hurrying ourselves into a system which agrees neither with scripture nor experience.

In most of the epistles salvation is spoken of as a future thing. But I have spoken here of salvation as an accomplished fact, as in the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles. But the twelve men who formed the first nucleus of the church at Ephesus were clearly converted, and in a transition state before they received the gift of the Holy Ghost in the name of the Lord Jesus. They were meeting as disciples, not knowing anything beyond the testimony and baptism of John. Were not they converted? They were as truly converted as the Baptist was, and this was a very real thing no doubt: nevertheless they had not yet received the Holy Ghost in the way that they afterwards experienced. In this we have the case clearly; and it was many years after Pentecost.

There is another sense of the word "save," etc. in Timothy, where it has a providential bearing. "The Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe." To Timothy and Titus it is the truth of salvation already effected, and the subject is looked at from the same point of view. Put the way people reason on the point is quite a mistake. They assume, because it is said, "He hath saved us," that we were brought into the whole blessing from the first moment of our faith. I am not aware that this is ever said in scripture. If it be without scripture, they have no right to lay down so absolutely, "He hath saved us;" for this is said, not when we were first attracted and broken down in soul and truly converted, but when we have submitted to the righteousness of God and received the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation.

"The Lord added to the church [or together] daily such as should be saved." This is doubtless a peculiar expression, meaning those destined to salvation out of the Jews, who as a people were on the way to judgment, and to the prison in which they still lie. Such as should be saved are the righteous remnant, really who are now added to the church instead of being left in their old place as Jews. We must remember there were a great many brethren not only the hundred and twenty, but other names in Jerusalem. We hear of six hundred who saw the Lord at one time, and must have come to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. There may have been more. No doubt all these composed the assembly on whom the Holy Ghost first came. Then there were three thousand souls converted, who were added to those before, and all formed the assembly on the day of Pentecost. But the point here is that salvation precedes and is by the washing of regeneration. "He hath saved us by the washing of regeneration." This is not an expression of man, but of God; and of this change of place or standing baptism is the sign.

But besides "the washing of regeneration" there is "the renewing of the Holy Ghost," the washing of regeneration being, as I suppose, our introduction into the new place given us in Christ risen, as the renewing of the Holy Ghost is His mighty action internally, but operating in us conformably to it. That accompanies union; but I do not see that such is the point here. Regeneration is thus the new order of things seen in Christ risen, who makes all things new. As Christians we have this new place in Christ. So it is said inRomans 8:1; Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." That is the position, but of course there is also an internal reality which those have who are there. Its being a position, and so objective, does not set aside a real subjective change: still it is a position. The Christian is no longer in Adam: he is (not merely going to be) in Christ Jesus. Along with that there is a real life given. Of this verse 2 treats, which may perhaps answer to the renewing of the Holy Ghost here. "For the law of the spiritual life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."

It is thus the work of the Spirit, and not merely so because the work of the Spirit is true in a new nature, but the new internal work of the Spirit is suitable to our new place. Of the renewing of the Holy Ghost it is therefore said, "which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." It is the full place and life of the Christian by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Thus there are three things in this text. First, there is salvation distinctly stated, secondly, there is position by the washing of regeneration; and thirdly there is full nature and power of the Christian by the Holy Ghost. The salvation is made ours by the grace of God; then follows what puts us into our new place and attests it outwardly; and lastly the new power of the Spirit in the new nature which accompanies the Christian position. There is the general result, and then the means by which that result is attained, as I think. The great fact is that He saved us, and this is the way in which it is effectuated and enjoyed; and this abundantly.

In John 10:1-42 it is rather "life more abundantly," life in resurrection power and fulness. Here it is said that the Holy Ghost is shed abundantly. Life in Christ is the main doctrine of John. Here the fulness of the Spirit's power is brought before us in connection with the work of regeneration. I think that there is an allusion to baptism in "the washing" of regeneration (and I agree with the Auth. Version that the sense is "washing," not laver as some critics have hastily assumed), because I believe that this is what baptism does show. Baptism sets forth not merely Christ's death, and that I am dead with Him, but, as we find here, it goes onward to the new position. It is not only death but more; and not at all death in sins, but death to sin with Christ. To suppose that it is but death is another instance of merely taking a particular part and making it the whole.

What might confirm this to some is Peter's way of looking at the matter. He says, "the like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us." Here again it is not merely what Christianity assumes of all mankind, but the sign of Christ's work in grace that is complete as far as the soul is concerned salvation of soul. We have not yet salvation of body, but we have what is more important after all than the body could be if the soul were not saved. Hence it is not the mere outward act of washing away the filth of the flesh. As we are told, it is the request of a good conscience by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The expression used, complicated by our habit of reading it as given in the Authorized Version, may make this a little difficult; but as we are on the point, it had better be said that it is the thing requested rather than the answer. It is what a good conscience wants. When the conscience is dealt with savingly by God, a man will not be satisfied with anything less than acceptance in Christ. This is really "the request of a good conscience toward God." He wants to be as Christ is; to be free from self, free from sin as well as from condemnation. This is the true meaning: "the request of a good conscience by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." I take the resurrection as connected both with saving and with this request. Here we must close the long discussion into which the notice of "the regeneration" has led us. We know it in Christ; Israel will enjoy it manifestly when the prophets are fulfilled.

The close of the prophecy is a call to rejoice and exult. The daughter of Zion is summoned to shout for joy. "Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem." This confirms what has been said already, that it is the general place of future blessing, and not a special one. When we hear of the peculiar position of Judah, as brought back from captivity and subjected to a fresh test to which Israel was not, then the rejected Messiah is brought in. Such is not the case with Zephaniah. We should not know from Zephaniah but that Messiah would come and bring in His glory as Jehovah all at once. In fact we do not hear Him called Messiah as such, but rather the king Jehovah. Verses 15-17 explain why they should thus rejoice. "Jehovah hath taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine enemy: the king of Israel, even Jehovah, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not: and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack. Jehovah thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing." What indeed is lacking? There is no finer description in the Bible of His complacent satisfaction when mercy has done all for the people that He loved. But the dark and cold night of oppression is supposed in verse 18. God does not disguise that up to the time of deliverance their position will be desolate, as in other respects, so especially in relation to the solemn assemblies. "I will gather them that are sorrowful for the solemn assembly, who are of thee, to whom the reproach of it was a burden." Now He appears for their exaltation from the dust as well as putting down their oppressors. "At that time I will undo all that afflict thee: and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out: and I will get them praise and fame in every land where they have been put to shame. At that time will I bring you again, even in the time that I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all the peoples of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith Jehovah." Most gracious promise! Jehovah will remember all the sorrows and bring the Jews in for a name and a praise among all lands and tongues of the earth, when He reverses their captivity in their own sight as also before the eyes of all men.