Zephaniah 2:8 Commentary and Bible Study

The Moabites and the Ammonites were two peoples who were linked together, because both were fathered by Lot, and came through incestuous relations with his two daughters (Genesis 19:36-38). Both of these peoples had magnified themselves against Israel’s border, that is, they had contested the border and sought to enlarge their own territory. It was the king of Moab who denied passage to Israel as she journeyed to the promise land (Judges 11:17). Moab then tried to hire Balaam to curse Israel as it approached her territory, but God prevented that curse from having any effect. Moab ceased to exist as a separate nation in 582 BC when she was conquered by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar. This was over 800 years after her first refusal to let Israel pass. The Ammonites likewise denied Israel passage (Deuteronomy 23:3-4), even though Israel had promised not to harass them (Deuteronomy 2:19). Israel offered to pay for any food and water it used when it passed through Amorite territory, but Sihon refused this cooperation (Deuteronomy 2:28-29), and from what Jephthah said to the Ammonites, it is implied that Moab and Ammon did the same (Judges 11:14-17). Ammon also fell to Nebuchadnezzar at about the same time as Moab.‘Therefore as I live, saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the breeding of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual desolation: the residue of my people shall spoil them, and the remnant of my people shall possess them.’ Sodom and Gomorrah stand as exemplars of the judgment of God for all time. Their destruction is applied here to Moab and Ammon, and elsewhere to Edom (Jeremiah 49:18), to Babylon (Jeremiah 50:40), and even to Zion (Isaiah 1:8-9), Israel (Amos 4:11). Gill writes that ‘the Jews, the remnant of them that returned from Babylon: now these, in the times of the Maccabees, and those that descended from them, seized on several places in these countries; and possessed them.’ It is an image of utter destruction (though not necessarily in the same manner, by fire), and it is figure of the final judgment when this present creation will be burned up and suffer ‘the vengeance of eternal fire’ (Jude 1:7). We can similarly treat the destruction of each of these enemies of Israel as a type of the final judgment of the world. At that time the residue, the elect among God’s people, will spoil them, because God will ‘take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds (Luke 19:24), and ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’ (Matthew 5:5). ‘This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the LORD of hosts.’ It was pride that lay behind the enmity of these nations, for they could not bear to see Israel blessed by God, and treated more favourably than the surrounding nations. They knew the history of Israel – though at times they deliberately misrepresented it (Judges 11:13) – but, instead of coming to be instructed in the ways of the Lord, they hated God’s people and did all in their power to hurt them.The Lord saw all of this. ‘The LORD will be terrible unto them: for he will famish all the gods of the earth.’ He saw the idolatry of those nations, and the reproach they directed against the living God. He will one day end all idolatry and the true God alone will be worshipped, and his light and truth will be universal so that no trace remains of all the false worship which men practiced to provoke him. Finally, verse 11 ends with a wonderful gospel age prophecy: ‘and men shall worship him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen.’ Here is a picture of New Testament worship, not geographically centralised worship in Jerusalem, but local churches all over the world worshipping God where they are, and spreading across the face of the whole earth as the great commission is carried out. The isles of the heathen are the Gentiles lands everywhere, and not just literal islands (Genesis 10:5).