Zephaniah 1:2-3

The world judgment, Zephaniah 1:2-3.

In these verses Jehovah himself is introduced as speaker.

All things All living things, man and beast, are to be swept from the face of the earth.

From off the land R.V., more accurately, “from off the face of the ground.” Meant is not only the land of Judah, but the whole earth. Micah also introduces his message of judgment upon Israel and Judah with a description of Jehovah’s coming for the purpose of executing a universal judgment (Micah 1:2-4).

“All” is expanded in Zephaniah 1:3.

Man and beast Man alone is guilty, but beasts, fowls, and fishes will share his doom. “The sphere of man’s life, the realm of his rule, is involved with him in a common destruction” (compare Hosea 4:3; Ezekiel 38:20; Romans 8:20-22). The prophet may have in mind the story of the flood (Genesis 6:7). The rest of Zephaniah 1:3 introduces a thought which seems foreign to the immediate context, hence most recent commentators consider it a later addition for the purpose of limiting the judgment to the wicked.

The stumbling-blocks with the wicked The meaning of the first noun is uncertain. It occurs again in Isaiah 3:6, in the sense of ruin; a similar word is used in the sense of idol in Ezekiel 14:3-4; Ezekiel 14:7, and from the latter passage is derived the translation “stumbling-blocks” = idols (compare σκανδαλα in the New Testament). LXX. reads, “and the wicked shall be made to stumble”; that is, instead of the noun it reads a verb form. The passive construction may be due to an attempt on the part of the translator to remove God as the cause of the destruction, but some form of the verb is to be preferred, perhaps, “I will cause to stumble the wicked.”

Cut off man LXX., “wicked men”; and since the destruction of man in general is announced in the beginning of the verse and LXX. gives better parallelism, the latter is undoubtedly to be preferred.