Zephaniah 1:8 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Zephaniah 1:8

Comments

Zephaniah moves systematically through the different classes of people in the land, and has a unique form of judgment for each of them. First it is the royal family. These are most powerful and influential, and therefore the most responsible, and judgment will start with them. The leaders have the ability to address the situation, to bring about reform, and they have completely failed to do so. What is picked out is their self-pampering and their love of self-enrichment. They live up the characteristics of rulers – ‘Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings' courts’ (Luke 7:25) – but these have gone further and coveted the dress of foreign rulers which they admire so much. The princes and the leaders are not dressing as Jews should dress. They are dressing in the finery of the nations round about them, because they would prefer not to be Jews. They would prefer to be like the other nations, and they want for themselves the trappings of wealth and affluence that the nations have. Instead of being cautioned by the lifestyle and idolatry of those who wore such things in the surrounding nations, they wanted to imitate them, and this had taken them a step nearer to the judgment of those nations. The first half of verse 9 seems to be interpreted by the second half. To leap upon the threshold has been understood as a superstition based on the practice of the Philistines in connection with the temple of Dagon, in which they avoided treading on the doorstep (1 Samuel 5:5), but this is fanciful. Much more likely is the view that this is about acts of violence in attacking and robbing the houses of others. The second half of the verse would then be saying that they were working for masters who sent them out for this very purpose, and when they were successful, they brought back, not violence itself, but (by metonymy) the fruit of violence and deceit against others as gain for their masters. This indicates the breakdown of law and order and a society in which one party was constantly abusing another.

Application

In the professing church of Christ, there are many, many churches and even preachers who are dressed in the clothing of the world around. That is where they really belong. They don't belong in the church. They don't preach from the Bible. They don't love the old gospel. They don't seek to see souls won. You meet them and you talk to them, and they are more like worldlings. They want to sing worldly songs, attend worldly events, enjoy worldly entertainment. This poetry covers them also. They are in ‘Judah’, but they are dressed in foreign clothes, and they do not really belong. Instead of living peacefully together, there is widespread deception through lies and misrepresentations, and spiritual violence carried out against the defenceless.

The Lord sees all man’s ill-gotten gains. He may store them up in a secret place where others cannot see, and even kid himself that the Lord does not know, but the subsequent judgment which he brings down on his head says otherwise. This applies to prosperity gospel preachers, for they milk the flock of God and use false doctrine in order to enrich themselves with the wealth that they see around them in the world. It is full of deceit, and spiritual violence. The reward they get for themselves is all they will ever get, for they will have no reward in the world to come.

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Zephaniah 1:8 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning of Zephaniah 1:8 explained