CHAPTER II THE BOOK OF ZEPHANIAH HE Book of Zephaniah is one of the most difficult THE in the prophetic canon. The title is very generally accepted; the period from which chap. i. dates is recognised by practically all critics to be the reign of Josiah, or at least the last third of the seventh century. But after that doubts start, and we find present nearly every other problem of introduction. To begin with, the text is very damaged. In some passages we may be quite sure that we have not the true text;1 in others we cannot be sure that we have it, and there are several glosses. The bulk of the second chapter was written in the Qinah, or elegiac measure, but as it now stands the rhythm is very much broken. It is difficult to say whether this is due to the dilapidation of the original text or to wilful insertion of glosses and other later passages. The Greek version of Zephaniah possesses the same general features as that of other difficult prophets. Occasionally it enables us to correct the text; but by the time it was made the text must already have contained the same corruptions which we encounter, and the 1 i. 36, 56; ii. 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 last word, 146; iii. 18, 19, 20. * i. 36, 56; ii. 2, 6; iii. 5 (?). translators were ignorant besides of the meaning of some phrases which to us are plain.1 2 The difficulties of textual criticism as well as of translation are aggravated by the large number of words, grammatical forms and phrases which either happen very seldom in the Old Testament, or nowhere else in it at all. Of the rare words and phrases, a very few (as will be seen from the appended notes) are found in earlier writings. Indeed all that are found are from the authentic prophecies of Isaiah, with whose style and doctrine Zephaniah's own exhibit most affinity. All the other rarities of vocabulary and grammar are shared only by later writers; and as a whole the language of Zephaniah exhibits symptoms which separate it by many years from the language of the prophets of the eighth century, and range it with that of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Second Isaiah and still later literature. It may be useful to the student to collect in a note the most striking of these 1 For details see translation below. 2 i. 3, n, only in Isa. iii. 6; 15, ND, only in Job xxx. 3, xxxviii. 27-cf. Psalms lxxiii. 18, lxxiv. 3; ii. 8, D'D7), Isa. xliii. 28— cf. li. 7; 9, 17, Prov. xxiv. 31, Job xxx. 7;, 15, ny, Isa. xxii. 2, xxiii. 7, xxxii. 13-cf. xiii. 3, xxiv. 8; iii. 1,,, see next note but one; 3, 7 N, Hab. i. 8; 11, 7", Isa. xiii. 3; 18, 21, נוגות 4 .Lam. i i. 11, as the name of a part of Jerusalem, otherwise only Jer. xv. 19; 0; 12, NDP in pt. Qal, and otherwise only Exod. xv. 8, Zech. xiv. 6, Job x. 10; 14, (adj.), but the pointing may viii, 1, 3; y in Qal, be wrong-cf. Maher-shalal-hash-baz, Isa. elsewhere only once in Hi. Isa. xlii. 13; 17, Job xx. 23; 18, if a noun (?); ii. 1, in sense of flesh, cf. P in Qal and Hithpo, ,to make lean רזה ,II ; מכרה,ממשק, ;elsewhere only in Polel otherwise only in Isa. xvii. 4, to be lean; 14, MN (?); iii. 1, AND, pt. of ;, pt. Qal, in Jer. xlvi. 16, 1, 16, it may be a noun; פנה (15; (?) עתרי בת־פוצי 10 ; שכם אחד; נצדו6; אנשי בגדות 4 in sense to turn away; 18, I'N DD (?). symptoms of the comparative lateness of Zephaniah's dialect.1 We now come to the question of date, and we take, to begin with, the First Chapter. It was said above that critics agree as to the general period-between 639, when Josiah began to reign, and 600. But this period was divided into three very different sections, and each of these has received considerable support from modern criticism. The great majority of critics place the chapter in the early years of Josiah, before the enforcement of Deuteronomy and the great Reform in 621.2 Others have argued for the later years of Josiah, 621-608, on the ground that the chapter implies that the great Reform has already taken place, and otherwise shows knowledge of Deuteronomy; while some prefer the days of reaction under Jehoiakim, 608 ff.,* and assume that the phrase in the title, in the days of Josiah, is a late and erroneous inference from i. 4. The evidence for the argument consists of the title and the condition of Judah reflected in the body of the 1 i. 8, etc., by pa, followed by person, but not by thing-cf. Jer. ix. 24, xxiii. 34, etc., Job xxxvi. 23, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 23, Ezek. i. 2; 13, DVD, only in Hab. ii. 7, Isa. xlii., Jer. xxx. 16, 2 Kings xxi. 14; 17,, Hi. of 778, only in 1 Kings viii. 37, and Deut., 2 Chron., Jer., Neh.; ii. 3, 11JV; 8, D1Ð17), Isa. xliii. 28, li. 7 (fem. pl.); 9, Prov. xxiv. 31, Job xxx. 7; iii. 1, п, Ni, pt.-impure, Isa. lix. 3, Lam. iv. 14; 7, a pt. in Jer. xlvi. 16, l. 16; 3, 'ANI, חרול ,ברר ,2 .Isa. xlix ברור ; זאב ערבות,6 .Hab. i. 8-cf. Jer. v Ezek. xx. 38, 1 Chron. vii. 40, ix. 22, xyi. 41, Neh. v. 18, Job xxxiii. 3, Eccles. iii. 18, ix. 1; 11, П, Isa. xiii. 3; 18, 29, Lam. i. 4 has . 2 So Hitzig, Ewald, Pusey, Kuenen, Robertson Smith (Encyc. Brit.), Driver, Wellhausen, Kirkpatrick, Budde, von Orelli, Cornill, Schwally, Davidson. • So Delitzsch, Kleinert, and Schulz (Commentar über den Proph. Zeph., 1892, p. 7, quoted by König), 4 So König, chapter. The latter is a definite piece of oratory. Under the alarm of an immediate and general war, Zephaniah proclaims a vast destruction upon the earth. Judah must fall beneath it: the worshippers of Baal, of the host of heaven and of Milcom, the apostates from Jehovah, the princes and house of the king, the imitators of foreign fashions, and the forceful and fraudulent, shall be cut off in a great slaughter. Those who have grown sceptical and indifferent to Jehovah shall be unsettled by invasion and war. This shall be the Day of Jehovah, near and immediate, a day of battle and disaster on the whole land. The conditions reflected are thus twofold-the idolatrous and sceptical state of the people, and an impending invasion. But these suit, more or less exactly, each of the three sections of our period. For Jeremiah distinctly states that he had to attack idolatry in Judah for twenty-three years, 627 to 604;1 he inveighs against the falseness and impurity of the people alike before the great Reform, and after it while Josiah was still alive, and still more fiercely under Jehoiakim. And, while before 621 the great Scythian invasion was sweeping upon Palestine from the north, after 621, and especially after 604, the Babylonians from the same quarter were visibly threatening the land. But when looked at more closely, the chapter shows several features which suit the second section of our period less than they do the other two. The worship of the host of heaven, probably introduced under Manasseh, was put down by Josiah in 621; it revived under Jehoiakim,2 but during the latter years of Josiah it cannot possibly have been so public as Zephaniah describes.3 Other reasons which have been given for those years are inconclusive-the chapter, for instance, makes no indubitable reference to Deuteronomy or the Covenant of 621-and on the whole we may leave the end of Josiah's reign out of account. Turning to the third section, Jehoiakim's reign, we find one feature of the prophecy which suits it admirably. The temper described in ver. 12-men who are settled on their lees, who say in their heart, Jehovah doeth neither good nor evil-is the kind of temper likely to have been produced among the less earnest adherents of Jehovah by the failure of the great Reform in 621 to effect either the purity or the prosperity of the nation. But this is more than counterbalanced by the significant exception of the king from the condemnation which ver. 8 passes ' Kleinert in his Commentary in Lange's Bibelwerk, and Delitzsch in his article in Herzog's Real-Encyclopadie2, both offer a number of inconclusive arguments. These are drawn from the position of Zephaniah after Habakkuk, but, as we have seen, the order of the Twelve is not always chronological; from the supposition that Zephaniah i. 7, Silence before the Lord Jehovah, quotes Habakkuk ii. 20, Keep silence before Him, all the earth, but the phrase common to both is too general to be decisive, and if borrowed by one or other may just as well have been Zephaniah's originally as Habakkuk's; from the phrase remnant of Baal (i. 4), as if this were appropriate only after the Reform of 621, but it was quite as appropriate after the beginnings of reform six years earlier; from the condemnation of the sons of the king (i. 8), whom Delitzsch takes as Josiah's sons, who before the great Reform were too young to be condemned, while later their characters did develop badly and judgment fell upon all of them, but sons of the king, even if that be the correct reading (LXX. house of the king), does not necessarily mean the reigning monarch's children; and from the assertion that Deuteronomy is quoted in the first chapter of Zephaniah, and "so quoted as to show that the prophet needs only to put the people in mind of it as something supposed to be known," but the verses cited in support of this (viz. 13, 15, 17: cf. Deut. xxviii. 30 and 29) are too general in their character to prove the assertion. See translation below. |