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Zephaniah, Prophet of Divine Protection, Part 2, God's Declaration of Judgment

Zephaniah 1:2 gives us the opening thesis of his prophetic revelation:

² “I will completely remove [asoph aseph, “to end, I end”] all things from the face of the earth,” declares the Lord.

God declares here that He will bring everything to an end. The old order will end, and the dominion of unrighteousness will cease. It is in this context that God will also protect His remnant. Divine judgment is directed at the ungodly world order, not at the righteous.

Zephaniah 1:3 shows what He means by “all things”:

³ “I will remove man and beast; I will remove the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea, and the ruins along with the wicked, and I will cut off man from the face of the earth [h’adamah, “the ground”],” declares the Lord.

When God brings in His New World Order, He describes it as a reversal of the original creation story, where He created these various forms of life on earth. This prepares the ground for the new heavens and the new earth. Isaiah 65:17 prophesies,

¹⁷ For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things [old world order, once discredited] will not be remembered or come to mind.

It is the same new heavens and new earth that is confirmed in Revelation 21:1,

¹ Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.

It is difficult to know how literally we should take this, as well as the scope of this. In the days of the prophets, their focus was primarily on the land/territory of Israel and Judah, but in later times the application has become worldwide. Perhaps this prophecy will be applicable on both levels in different ways.

Local and Worldwide Applications

We know from Isaiah 29:1-6 that “Ariel” (Jerusalem) and the land itself will be consumed by fire (Isaiah 29:6), whose description sounds like nuclear fire. We also know from Isaiah 26:7, 8 that no one will get that land, suggesting the possibility of nuclear fallout that would prevent anyone from living there for the foreseeable future. Nuclear fallout would also affect all wildlife.

Yet it is doubtful that the entire planet would suffer the same fate, because the book of Revelation makes it clear that “the nations will walk by its light” (Revelation 21:24) and that the leaves of the tree of life will bring healing to the nations (Revelation 22:2). Likewise, the overcomers will be given dominion over the earth (Revelation 5:10). The meek will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5 KJV, Psalm 2:8). Nonetheless, there will be radical changes, which cannot be fully known prior to that time.

Zephaniah 1:4 seems to narrow the scope of destruction to the old land of Israel, saying,

⁴ “So I will stretch out My hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem…”

This appears to conform to the prophecy of Jeremiah 19:10, 11, telling us that the city and its inhabitants will be broken as a potter’s jar that cannot again be repaired.

False Priests, False Worship

Verse 4 continues,

⁴ “… And I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the names of the idolatrous [Chemarims, KJV, literally, “black-robed”] priests along with the priests.”

The Chemarims (from kamar, “to be black”) were the pagan priests who dressed in black robes. The regular priests of the temple were dressed in white linen, yet they too had become idolatrous, as Jeremiah asserts (Jeremiah 19:4, 5). Keep in mind that Zephaniah and Jeremiah were contemporaries, so it is likely that Zephaniah had heard or even seen what Jeremiah had done when he smashed the earthen jar in the valley of Ben-hinnom.

Zephaniah 1:5, 6 continues,

⁵ “And those who bow down on the housetops to the host of heaven, and those who bow down and swear to the Lord and yet swear by Milcom [or Molech, the Ammonite god], ⁶ and those who have turned back from following the Lord, and those who have not sought the Lord or inquired of Him.”

Many worshiped the heavens and constellations from their flat rooftops. Jeremiah 19:13 says,

¹³ The houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like the place Topheth, because of all the houses on whose rooftops they burned sacrifices to all the heavenly host and poured out drink offerings to other gods.

Both Zephaniah and Jeremiah asserted that such worship of false gods justified God’s judgment upon the city and its people.

Mixtures in Worship

Zephaniah said that the Judahites in his day “bow down and swear to the Lord and yet swear by Milcom.” Hence, the worshipers failed to see the contradiction of their belief system. Perhaps they believed that Milcom was just another name for Yahweh and that human sacrifice to Milcom was also acceptable to the God of Israel.

We see the same contradiction appear after the house of Israel was deported to Assyria. The Israelites were replaced by foreigners who were deported from their native countries and exiled to the land of Israel (2 Kings 17:24). When they brought their other gods with them, “the Lord sent lions among them which killed some of them” (2 Kings 17:25). Their solution was to bring back one of the priests who had been deported from Samaria, so that he could “teach them the custom of the god of the land” (2 Kings 17:27).

Then we read in 2 Kings 17:28, 29, and 33,

²⁸ So one of the priests whom they had carried away into exile from Samaria came and lived at Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord. ²⁹ But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the houses of the high places which the people of Samaria had made, every nation in their cities in which they lived… ³³ They feared the Lord and served their own gods according to the custom of the nations from among whom they had been carried away into exile.

Their faith in foreign gods remained intact, but they also learned to appease the God of Israel. While we might expect these foreigners to add Yahweh to their pantheon of gods, the people of Judah had no excuse for such practices. The prophets make this very clear. The people worshiped Yahweh in the temple in Jerusalem, but in their daily lives they served (obeyed the laws of) other gods whom they worshiped from the rooftops of their own homes.

God’s primary purpose in judgment is to institute a change, pictured as a new creation. His purpose is more than mere punishment. Destruction is not without purpose or hope. God’s judgments are court rulings which He will then enforce in order to change not only men’s behavior but their hearts as well. Hence, Isaiah 26:9 says,

⁹ … when the earth experiences Your judgments, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

The ultimate goal is the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21).