Zephaniah 1:4 Commentary and Bible Study

‘I will also stretch out my hand upon Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem’, and what follows shows that it is because of the idolatry and the Baal worship. So the structure is this: there is a final day of judgement when the whole present order will be brought to a close, and the world will be judged. In the meantime more imminently judgment will fall on Judah. Israel has gone; the northern kingdom has long now been in captivity. And Judah in the south is going to be judged also, and taken into Babylonian captivity, but this must be dealt with in the context of the final judgement. It's the prophet's way of saying that the judgement of Jerusalem is literally going to take place, and it has a definite and specific purpose for the Jews, but in a way it is only a token of a final coming judgement. Zephaniah seems to say, I want you to keep both in view throughout this vision. There is a final judgement, and this imminent judgement for Judah and Jerusalem is a first phase of it. It's a demonstration of what will come more largely at the end of time. So you keep these two things in parallel view, and the prophet says, I want you to do this as you go through the book, and it's so important to do so. You have two judgments here, a judgment of Judah, the Jews, and a final judgment in the end of the world. This book rolls the two together, all the way through the book. In fact, if you like, it rolls three judgments together, and speaks of three different judgments. First there is the way in which God will judge the Jews and they will be sent off into captivity in Babylon. But there will be a deliverance, and back will come a remnant of them, a proportion of them. A tiny fraction, but a proportion of them will be saved and will come back and worship once again. Secondly he will judge them again when Christ comes and Jerusalem falls to the oppression of the Roman Empire and everything is destroyed in AD 70, and the Jewish flag is run down and the flag of the new Christian church goes up. At the time of Christ, the majority of Jews are apostate. They have rejected the word of God, which is given to them for safekeeping. They have denied and turned aside all the teaching of their great prophets. But out of that judgment will come another deliverance because a minority of those Jews, together with a minority of peoples from every land and nation all over the world, will come to God and will be saved by him.Then there is a third destruction at the end of the world, when God will bring all people into judgment, destroy the world and reconstitute it, rejuvenate it for those people who are saved. Those people who are saved from past generations right up to that time will now be reigning with Christ in heaven, everlastingly. So you see there are three judgments and three deliverances. Each deliverance is in the heart of a minority of the people who are judged. ‘I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarims with the priests.’ God will judge all idolatry which had been so clearly forbidden. He will cut off the Chemarims, the priests of Baal, together with the legitimate priests of the temple, who are no better and are utterly compromised.