Zephaniah 3:1

This chapter contains the glorious climax of Zephaniah's great prophecy in the last paragraph (Zephaniah 3:9-20). The first paragraph details the reason for the judgment of Jerusalem (Zephaniah 3:1-7), with Zephaniah 3:8 forming a bridge between two sections and relating both to the eternal judgment at the last day, the judgment of Jerusalem being a token of it, and the Messianic Age (Zephaniah 3:9-20) being climaxed by it.

No serious commentator on the Bible can ignore the arrogant denials of critical scholars who bluntly declare that, "Only the first few verses of the chapter are a genuine work of Zephaniah."[1] One has a right to expect that such assertions should be supported by some hard evidence; but this is never the case, simply because no evidence of any kind has ever been available. We are thankful for the forthright honesty of Graham who gave the reason allegedly supporting such radical conclusions. "The clearest indication that Zephaniah did not write the passage (Zephaniah 3:14-20) lies in the contrast (with this) and the rest of the book."[2] Thus, the only objection that scholars have to the passage is that it does not fit (in their view) the fierce denunciations found in the rest of Zephaniah. Why doesn't it fit? Answer: the old critical bias invented in the nineteenth century to the effect that the same prophet could not prophecy both doom and salvation! Such a falsehood was never true, either in the eighteenth century or now. The greatest prophet of all, Jesus Christ, prophesied both doom and salvation, sometimes in the same breath. Who has never heard of heaven and hell? Furthermore, no less an authority than the apostles found Christ in all the prophets. Twice in three verses, the apostle Peter declared that "all of the prophets" spoke of Jesus Christ and of his glorious kingdom (Acts 3:18,20). The inspired apostles, schooled in the wisdom of Christ himself, therefore found Messianic import in Zephaniah, as in all the others; and it could be only the arrogance and conceit of evil men that would dare to oppose their subjective imaginations against that which is flatly declared to be a fact in the word of God. As a matter of truth, if men allowed the opponents of Holy Scripture to remove the Messianic portion of Zephaniah from his prophecy, it would vitiate and contradict the very purpose of those prophecies.

It should be noted that the two scholars just quoted are before the first third of this century (Smith, 1896, and Graham, 1929). Most of the current generation of scholars have rejected such radical views; and those still parroting them may be considered as uninformed. Every believer in the Word of God should resist with all of his strength the efforts of Satan (through his spokesman) to eliminate all references to the Messianic kingdom of Jesus Christ from Zephaniah and other prophets of God. We are happy indeed that many of the present generation of scholars are flatly rejecting the radical criticisms of the first half of this century.

Therefore, we receive this chapter of Zephaniah, along with the totality of it, as the true and inspired Word of God.

Zephaniah 3:1-3

"Woe to her that is rebellious and polluted! to the oppressing city! She obeyed not the voice; she received not correction; she trusted not in Jehovah; she drew not near to God. Her princes in the midst of her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves; they leave nothing till the morrow."

"No city is mentioned by name, but it is quite clear that Jerusalem is intended."[3]

The fashionable attitude today has led some to criticize Zephaniah because he did not denounce such sins as oppression and exploitation of the poor with the same emphasis as that found in Amos; but Zephaniah dealt more with the "cause" of such sins than with the particular excesses themselves. "The supreme sin of man's inhumanity to man is the inevitable consequence of false religion dealt with in Zephaniah's first two chapters."[4] In this light, perhaps the supreme sin should be understood as "false religion ? In any case, Zephaniah certainly dealt with the evils of injustice and exploitation in these very verses.

"Polluted ..." "This word is a term usually connected with blood (Isaiah 59:3; Lamentations 4:14)."[5]

Zephaniah 3:2 carries a four-fold indictment of the proud and wicked Jerusalem:

She obeyed not the voice (of God).

She received not correction (by the true prophets).

She trusted not in Jehovah (but in the false gods).

She drew not near to God (but went farther and farther from him).

Zephaniah 3:3 begins the detail of wickedness on the part of the princes, judges, prophets, and priests who led the city in its corruption.

The princes and judges "practiced the violence and predatory oppression of wild beasts."[6] The princes were compared to lions and the judges to "evening wolves," a comparison that has lived throughout history. "That leave nothing till the morrow" is added for the purpose of indicating that the false judges were even worse than wolves. The wolf, after killing the prey, will retain enough of it for him to gnaw on the remains during the next day until nightfall, the time for another kill. The false judges, however, made a clean end of their victims as soon as possible, leaving nothing "till the morrow."