Ver. 1. The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah] Which is (by interpretation) God’s secretary, or, hidden one, Psalms 27:5 83:3. Or, as Jerome and some others will have it, God’s watchman, Ezekiel 33:7. A fit name for a prophet. The son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, &c.] These were, if not prophets (as the Jewish doctors make them), yet men famous in the Church (Hebraei Prophetarum patres, quotquot nominatim recensentur, ipsos quoque prophetas fuisse dicunt); as were Alexander and Rufus, though they be but mentioned and no more, Mark 15:21. In the days of Josiah] Who reigned thirty-one years, but, being in his minority, began not to reform religion, much corrupted in the days of his idolatrous father, Amon, till the eighteenth year of his reign, 2 Kings 22:1 23:23, whether before or after the reformation, “the word of the Lord came unto Zephaniah,” interpreters agree not. Jeremiah (his contemporary) began not to prophesy till the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign, Jeremiah 1:1,2, at what time (viz. in his twelfth year) he had begun to reform with a great deal of zeal, 2 Chronicles 34:3, but also he met with a great deal of opposition from the princes and people who had been woefully hardened and abituated in their idolatry under Manasseh and Amon, and therefore with much difficulty drawn off. Zephaniah and Jeremiah were singular helps, no doubt, to that peerless king in his zealous undertakings for God. But why he should send to Huldah, the prophetess, rather than to either of them, 2 Kings 22:13, what other reason can be given but that she dwelt in the college at Jerusalem, and so was next at hand? And why he went up against Pharaoh Necho, and sent not first to any prophet to ask their advice, what can we say but this, that sometimes both grace and wit are asleep in the holiest and wariest breasts? and that the best of God’s saints may be sometimes miscarried by their passion, to their cost?
Ver. 2. I will utterly consume all things from off the land] Exordium plane tragicum. A tragic beginning of a terrible sermon. Hard knots must have hard wedges; hard hearts, heavy menaces; yea, handfulls of hell fire must be cast into the faces of such, that they may awake out of the snare of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his pleasure, 2 Timothy 2:26. It is in the Hebrew, gathering I will gather all things, &c. q. d. g. I will pack up, I will take mine own, and be gone. Converram et convasabo omnia, I will sweep away all by the besom of my wrath, and leave a clean hand behind me, for the sins of those that dwell therein. The doubling of this denunciation, colligendo colligam, importeth the certainty, verity, and vehemence thereof. Saith the Lord] Dictum Iehovae. You may believe it, therefore; for every word of his is sure, and cannot be broken, John 10:35, may not be slighted or shifted off, Hebrews 12:25.
Ver. 3. I will consume man and beast] Heb. I will gather [as Zephaniah 1:2] them, and cast them away as they do the sweepings of the house. See the word used in this sense, Psalms 26:9, “Gather not my soul with sinners,” &c. God gathered his people for a better purpose; both while they are alive, Psalms 27:10, and when they die, Isaiah 57:1. The righteous is taken away (Heb. gathered) from the evil to come: as a shepherd gathereth his sheep when a storm is coming; or as a master of a family doth his jewels, when his house is on fire. But as for the wicked, they are gathered too, but it is for slaughter, as beasts in a pound, malefactors in a prison; and at the last day the tares shall be gathered and bundled up together for hell’s furnace, Matthew 13:41,42. I will consume the fowls of the heaven] Made for man’s use, to be to him for food, Genesis 9:2, for health and for delight, as companions of his life; hence it is threatened as a judgment to him to lose them, Jeremiah 4:25, and here. And the fishes of the sea] Made likewise for man’s use to feed him, Numbers 11:5,22 Lu 24:42; hence the Latin piscis of pasco, to feed, and the Hebrew Berechah for a fishpool; the word signifieth a blessing, Genesis 12:2 cf. Ne 2:20. Now the Lord here threateneth destruction to beasts, birds, and fishes, not by the way of hyperbole, as the Rabbis dream; but because in common calamities, in warlike tumults, and when God will destroy a people indeed, the beasts also are killed, the fowls hunted away, the fishpools wasted, &c. Let those that will not believe this look into Illyricum, Thracia, Macedonia, Greece, and various parts of Turkey, laid utterly desolate and empty both of men and other creatures. Jerome upon this text, and likewise upon Hosea 4:3, affirmeth the same of his native country, wasted so with war, ut praeter coelum et coenum, et crescentes vipres et condensa silvarum, cuncta perierint, that besides air and earth, and briers and forests, all was destroyed. And that we may not wonder at this severity of God, hear what the same Father saith elsewhere of his ungracious countrymen (Epist. ad Chremat.): In men patria deus Venter est, et in diem vivitur, et sanctior est ille qui ditior: In my country their belly is their god, their glory is in their shame, they mind earthly things: and so their end hath been destruction, and utter desolation, as Philippians 3:19. Gualther’s note here is very good; herein we may observe, saith he, the judgment of God and his wonderful providence; that whereas we see in populous places rivers and pools to abound with fish, woods and fields with birds and beasts, though they be continually caught and carried away; yet where there lack men to make use of them, there are few or none to be found. For as they were all made for man, so when men are consumed they also are consumed, as is here threatened. Non ita temere fieri putemus. Let us not think this to happend rashly. Let God’s hand herein be acknowledged, and his anger appeased by faith in Christ Jesus and repentance from dead works, that our land may be sowed with the seed of men and of beasts. And the stumblingblocks of the wicked] Those Balaam’s blocks, those moments and monuments of idolatry, that so much offend God, and cause offence and ruin to those that worship them (as Eucherius interpreteth it), who are here called wicked, with an accent, and by a speciality. And I will cut off man from off the land] Even the better sort of men too, who shall be wrapped up together with the wicked in the common calamity. The good figs as well as the bad are packed to Babylon; but with this difference that God will there set his eyes upon the good for good, Jeremiah 24:6, as the grain is cut down as well as the weeds, but for better purpose. Saith the Lord] Who hath spoken it twice that you may once well observe it, and lay it to heart.