Zephaniah 2:4 Commentary and Bible Study

But then the verses go on with the theme of judgment. Zephaniah 2:1-3 is enough to tell us that God’s words of grace lie behind all these dire warnings, and that the offer of forgiveness is still there for those who return to the Lord with all their hearts. But lest any should take this lightly, the warning is that for those who persist in their evil ways, there will be no escape. God adapts his message to the state of men’s hearts. He knows those who are intransigent, and they will have much firmer dealings with their souls than others. Now follow prophecies against four countries that were ancient and persistent adversaries of Israel and Judah. They are the Philistines – to the west; the Moabites and Ammonites – to the east; the Ethiopians – to the south; and the Assyrians – top the north, from which direction they came. Israel was surrounded, and the church is surrounded by opposition. We cannot make friends with, or rely on any secular power. We cannot make an agreement with those who worship any other God, but we must overcome with the help of God alone. That stance itself creates enmity, but what do we have in common with any other power that they should fight alongside us?Whenever we read of judgments on the long-established enemies of Israel and Judah, we remember that they stand for the enemies of God in all ages. Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Ekron were all major cities of the Philistines, and are among the five lords of the Philistines mentioned in Joshua 13:3, whose land was given to Israel. They will all experience devastating judgments which will all but erase them. Gill says of Gaza, ‘Gaza was one of the five lordships of the Philistines; a strong and fortified place, as its name signifies: but should be demolished, stripped of its fortifications, and forsaken by its inhabitants. It was smitten by Pharaoh king of Egypt; and was laid waste by Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah 47:1,4-5; and afterward taken by Alexander the great; and, having gone through various changes, was in the times of the apostles called Gaza of the desert, Acts 8:26’, and he documents the ruined state of the other cities. The inhabitants of the sea coast, the Mediterranean coast, were the Philistines themselves from whom we get the name Palestine, and Cherethites (or executioners) was the Hebrew name for the inhabitants of that region. So intense would be the destruction that there would be little trace of their former existence, and where cities have been rebuilt, it has often been in a new location (Gill). Verse 6 is a description of the simplified way of life that shall exist there after the destruction foretold by the prophet. That destruction would come not through Israel but through the Babylonians who would overrun the Philistines and the other nation names next by Zephaniah. Of course Judah would also fall victim to Nebuchadnezzar.But those sparsely populated areas would be occupied by the remnant of Jews left behind after the Babylonian invasion. ‘And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed thereupon: in the houses of Ashkelon shall they lie down in the evening: for the LORD their God shall visit them, and turn away their captivity.’ It is once again a message of the good that will come out of this. The downside, the negative side is that Judah will be judged, but then some will be saved, some to whom Zephaniah appealed and they listened to him. More in the course of time would come back from Babylon, and they would re-establish their faith in the land of Judah and they are mentioned here as the remnant. ‘A remnant of them shall return’, says Isaiah; a remnant shall be re-established (Isaiah 10:21-22). That great word, ‘the remnant’! At the end of that period of chastisement ‘their God shall visit them, and turn away their captivity.’ And so the exiles returned under the leadership of godly men provided by the Lord.