Zephaniah 1:7

"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 consecrated his guests."

"Hold thy peace ..." Jamieson rendered this, "Let the earth be silent at God's approach,"[23] similar to the words in Habakkuk 2:20. He also gave Calvin's comment on this place, thus:

"Thou, whosoever who has been wont to speak against God, as if he had no care about earthly affairs, cease thy murmurs and self-justifications; submit thyself to God, and repent in time."

"The day of the Lord is at hand ..." All of the judgments of God are "at hand," whether partial and specific, as in the case of the approaching destruction of Judah, or that eventual day, that Day when Jesus Christ shall appear as the Judge of all men. In the case of the destruction of Judah, it was "at hand" in the most immediate sense. "Zephaniah's prophecy of the doom of Israel was fulfilled less than forty years later in the fall of Jerusalem and the great exile."[24] The final Judgment is "at hand" in that it will be the terminal of the Adamic race upon the earth, and toward which the human family is madly rushing in full and reckless speed. In the dispensational sense, this is still the day in which Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. All of the prophets spoke of the final judgment as "at hand."

"Jehovah hath prepared a sacrifice ..."

"This sacrifice is the Jewish nation; those who are invited to the sacrificial meal are not beasts and birds of prey, as in Ezekiel 39:17, but the nations which God has consecrated to war that they may consume Jacob (Jeremiah 10:25)."[25]

God's ownership and employment of the destroying nations called to punish Judah is the same here as in Matthew 22:7 where Jesus indicated the same thing regarding the Roman armies that would destroy Jerusalem, saying, "The king was wroth, and sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned their city."

It is annoying that so many commentators go out of their way in these verses to tell how Zephaniah believed that the destruction of Jerusalem was about to take place by the Scythians, paying lip service to the allegation that Zephaniah was no prophet at all, but merely an astute political prognosticator. As a matter of truth, Herodotus' vague story does not mention Judah at all, nor is there the slightest proof that Zephaniah ever heard of the Scythians. If Zephaniah, in reality foretold the destruction of Jerusalem by the Scythians, who could believe that the Jews gathered up the words of his prophecy and preserved them in the sacred Canon for over 25 centuries? Dean's comment is:

"The vague account of Herodotus (i. 105) gives no support to the assertion that the Scythians. invaded Palestine in Josiah's reign; nor is there a trace of knowledge of such irruption in either Zephaniah or Jeremiah."[26]

As Ironside said, this "sacrificial feast" with Judah as the victim strongly reminds us of the "Supper of the great God (Revelation 19:17,18)";[27] thus indicating that the immediate judgment about to fall on Jerusalem and the ultimate Final Judgment are one, the first being a token of the ultimate.