Zephaniah 1:11 Commentary and Bible Study

Another category of citizens to come under judgment is the merchants. As you go through these verses you can see the agony of Jerusalem and Judah. ‘Maktesh’ means a mortar (as in pestle and mortar) or deep hollow, which evidently refers to an area in Jerusalem where the merchants lived. The merchant area of Jerusalem is cut down, and trade ends, forcing people to provide for themselves. Apart from royalty, this was the wealthiest class, and they will be cut off by God. As Matthew Henry comments, the wealth, which had been their security, now makes them the targets of the invading forces. ‘And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart, The LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil.’ The ignorant and the indifferent people will also be searched out by the light of God. There will be nobody exempted from the judgment of Jerusalem when it comes, just as there will be nobody exempted from the judgment at the end of time. Obscurity cannot hide us from the Lord. He knows every heart, and all our secrets are open to him. Zephaniah goes into great detail. Do some imagine that they can adopt a neutral position towards God, in which they neither strongly believe or strongly disbelieve? Their God is a God who is either indifferent to human conduct – perhaps because he does not know the details of individual lives or does not care about them – or who lacks the power to intervene in the affairs of man. He is a God who has little to do with the circumstances of our everyday lives. He is there in the background, but he is ineffective, and they take little notice of him in living out their lives. In their minds they create a small God who lacks interest in what we think or do or say, or who has created a world which he just leaves to get on with itself. By viewing God in this way, they set themselves free from his oversight, and try to live under the radar of heaven. God is not responsible, they say, for every detail of our lives; he gives us freedom to make our own decisions. ‘Therefore their goods shall become a booty, and their houses a desolation.’ Do men comfort themselves that the treasures of sin that they most want to keep for themselves are not known to God? Do they think they can keep secrets from God and avoid the full force of his judgment? He will target their most cherished possessions, and give them as booty, as plunder to their enemies. Those they most despised, and least wanted to profit from what they had will take total control of their goods and do with them as they like. The houses they lavished so much time and money on, on which they employed skilled workmen to make them objects to boast about, will be destroyed. God will impress on them the vanity of all their labours by allowing them to complete the work of building their homes and planting their vineyards, and then either destroying them or giving them to others.