Zephaniah 1:13 Kommentar

After the title of the book (Zep 1:1) here is, I. A threatening of the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem, an utter destruction, by the Chaldeans (Zep 1:2-4). II. A charge against them for their gross sin, which provoked God to bring that destruction upon them (Zep 1:5, Zep 1:6); and so he goes on in the rest of the chapter, setting both the judgments before them, that they might prevent them or prepare for them, and the sins that destroy them, that they might judge themselves, and justify God in what was brought upon them. 1. They must hold their peace because they had greatly sinned (Zep 1:7-9). But, 2, They shall howl because the trouble will be great. The day of the Lord is near, and it will be a terrible day (Zep 1:10-18). Such fair and timely warning as this did God give to the Jews of the approaching captivity; but they hardened their neck, which made their destruction remediless.

Therefore their goods shall become a booty To the enemy; the riches they trusted in, and thought themselves so secure of; and therefore denied divine Providence, which ought to be depended upon amidst the greatest affluence; or otherwise the Lord has various ways by which he can soon strip men of all their enjoyments, and dispose of them to others: and their houses a desolation; be pulled down by the enemy; or left uninhabited, they being killed or carried captive, even their whole families: they shall also build houses, but not inhabit [them]; not long, at least; not always, as they expected, and promised themselves when they built them: and they shall plant vineyards, and not drink the wine thereof: but before the vines planted by them bring forth grapes, and these are pressed, and wine made of them, they should fall into the hands of the enemy, who would drink it, and not they; and all this agreeably to what was threatened them in the law of Moses, which they ought to have regarded, ( Deuteronomy 28:30 ) .

The lust of possessions and money are not to be sought for. In Solomon, in Ecclesiastes: “He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver.” Also in Proverbs: “He who holds back the corn is cursed among the people; but blessing is on the head of him that communicates it.” Also in Isaiah: “Woe to them who join house to house, and lay field to field, that they may take away something from their neighbor. Will you dwell alone upon the earth?” Also, in Zephaniah: “They shall build houses, and shall not dwell in them; and they shall appoint vineyards, and shall not drink the wine of them, because the Day of the Lord is near.” Also in the Gospel according to Luke: “For what does it profit a man to make a gain of the whole world, but that he should lose himself?”

(Verse 13, 14.) And their strength shall be for plunder, and their houses for desolation. And they shall build houses, but not inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, but not drink their wine. The great day of the Lord is near, it is near and hastens quickly. LXX: And their strength shall be for robbery, and their houses shall be destroyed. And they shall build houses, but shall not live in them; and they shall plant vineyards, but shall not drink their wine, for the great day of the Lord is near; it is near and hastens quickly. It is evident that, according to both captivities, their entire army has been cut down and their houses have been destroyed, and the fields and vineyards have been laid waste: and no longer will God delay his patience towards them. But when they spoke to the prophets, they said, this will be in the time to come, and for many days, a great and exceedingly swift day of the Lord will come upon them. According to the interpretation, however, when the time of judgment comes, whether for the death of each individual or the departure from the world: then all their strength will be turned to ruin, so that what was once strong and lifted up against the Lord will become weak and broken, turned to something better. Just as if someone were to rob the strength of a bandit, a pirate, and a thief, and render them weak, their weakness benefits them: for their weakened limbs, which they were previously not using well, will cease from evil work. And that which follows: 'And their houses become a desert,' many in the Church are building Zion in blood, and Jerusalem in iniquity, to whom such houses being destroyed benefits. Let us read Leviticus, where it is commanded to destroy a leprous house (Lev. 14). And because leprosy remains and spreads, its stones and wood and all dust are commanded to be thrown outside the city into an unclean place. But also in the beginning of Jeremiah, something such is written, 'Behold, I have given my words in your mouth: behold, I have set you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms: to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to build, and to plant' (Jeremiah 1:9-10). The wicked construction is destroyed so that later a good construction may be built: the unjust plantation is uprooted so that a righteous plantation may be placed nearby. And in Solomon we read: It is better to dwell under the open sky than in a disputed house with iniquity, and in a new house (Prov. 21:9). As if God, therefore, brought ruin upon the homes of those who were fixed in their own filth and said in their hearts: The Lord will not do good, nor will he do evil. He does not allow them to dwell in leprous and impure houses, nor does he allow them to drink wine from the vines they have planted. For if they had planted the vine of Sorek and the chosen vineyard, they would have drunk their wine and become intoxicated with the patriarch Noah and Joseph at noon (Gen. 9 and 43). But because they said: The Lord will not do good, nor will he do evil (Deut. 32:32-33), and their vineyard was the vineyard of Sodom, and their offspring was from Gomorrah, their grapes were grapes of gall, and their clusters were bitter, their wine was the fury of dragons and the incurable madness of asps (Jer. 9:23), therefore they planted vineyards and will not drink their wine. And mystically it is said of Sodom and Gomorrah, that all their plantation perished. For if they had remained in what they had begun, so as to be as it were the paradise of God, and had not ended in evil, so as to be as it were the land of Egypt, their plantation would certainly have remained. Such a thing and that sounds above the Egyptians in the Psalms: He destroyed their vineyards with hail, and their mulberry trees with frost. (Ps. LXXVII, 47). Indeed, as a most merciful God, He killed and overturned all the Egyptian plantation and little trees, which have blood-like fruits rooted in Egypt, so that those who planted evilly may not drink and eat from them. The day of the Lord is near and very swift, to which no one can resist: it is near either because of eternity, since nothing is long to it, or because of the magnitude of punishment, since to the one who endures, the punishment that is to be inflicted never seems far away. Whether near, as we have said, when we depart from the world, and the death of each person will bring about the end of the world; and not only near, but also very swift, as the speed of his coming is shown in the fact that it is added, very swift.

With reference to that day the prophet Amos says, “Woe to them that desire the Day of the Lord. To what end is this Day of the Lord for you? The day itself is darkness and not light.” The prophet Zephaniah says the same thing: “The voice of the Day of the Lord is grim and bitter.” That is why the penitent now introduced before us earnestly supplicates in the ordered divisions of his prayer that he may not be convicted for his deeds on that day of judgment. What is more beneficial and farsighted for the person who could have no hope in his own deserts because of the sins which he has committed than to decide to pray to God’s fatherly love while in this world, where there is opportunity for repentance?

Their goods (in which they trust) shall become a booty - To the Chaldeans. They shall have no profit of all their labors. The houses they have built they shall not inhabit; of the wine of the vineyards they have planted, they shall not drink. See Amo 5:11, where we find the same evils threatened.

GOD'S SEVERE JUDGMENT ON JUDAH FOR ITS IDOLATRY AND NEGLECT OF HIM: THE RAPID APPROACH OF THE JUDGMENT, AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ESCAPE. (Zep. 1:1-18) days of Josiah--Had their idolatries been under former kings, they might have said, Our kings have forced us to this and that. But under Josiah, who did all in his power to reform them, they have no such excuse. son of Amon--the idolater, whose bad practices the Jews clung to, rather than the good example of Josiah, his son; so incorrigible were they in sin. Judah--Israel's ten tribes had gone into captivity before this.

Therefore their goods shall become a booty, &c.--Fulfilling the prophecy in Deu 28:30, Deu 28:39 (compare Amo 5:11).

Judgment upon All the World, and upon Judah in Particular - Zephaniah 1 The judgment will come upon all the world (Zep 1:2, Zep 1:3), and will destroy all the idolaters and despisers of God in Judah and Jerusalem (Zep 1:4-7), and fall heavily upon sinners of every rank (Zep 1:8-13). The terrible day of the Lord will burst irresistibly upon all the inhabitants of the earth (Zep 1:14-18).