Chapter IX: Epilogue: Verses 14-20

Zephaniah’s prophecy was fulfilled. The Day of the Lord came, and the people met their judgment. The Remnant survived—_a folk poor and humble_. To them, in the new estate and temper of their life, came a new song from God—perhaps it was nearly a hundred years after Zephaniah had spoken—and they added it to his prophecies. It came in with wonderful fitness, for it was the song of the redeemed, whom he had foreseen, and it tuned his book, severe and simple, to the full harmony of prophecy, so that his book might take a place in the great choir of Israel—the diapason of that full salvation which no one man, but only the experience of centuries, could achieve.

_Sing out, O daughter of Zion! shout aloud, O Israel! Rejoice and be jubilant with all thy[185] heart, daughter of Jerusalem! Jehovah hath set aside thy judgments,[186] He hath turned thy foes. King of Israel, Jehovah is in thy midst; thou shalt not see[187] evil any more._

_In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear not. O Zion, let not thy hands droop! Jehovah, thy God, in the midst of thee is mighty;[188] He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy, He will make new[189] His love, He will exult over thee with singing._

_The scattered of thy congregation[190] have I gathered—thine[191] are they, ...[192] reproach upon her. Behold, I am about to do all for thy sake at that time,[193] and I will rescue the lame and the outcast will I bring in,[194] and I will make them for renown and fame whose shame is in the whole earth.[195] In that time I will bring you in,[196] even in the time that I gather you.[197] For I will set you for fame and renown among all the peoples of the earth, when I turn again your captivity before your eyes, saith Jehovah.[198]_

FOOTNOTES:

[168] See above, pp. 43-45.

[169] Heb. _the city the oppressor_. The two participles in the first clause are not predicates to the noun and adjective of the second (Schwally), but vocatives, though without the article, after הוֹי.

[170] LXX. _wolves of Arabia_.

[171] The verb left untranslated, גרמו, is quite uncertain in meaning. גרם is a root common to the Semitic languages and seems to mean originally _to cut off_, while the noun גרם is _a bone_. In Num. xxiv. 8 the Piel of the verb used with another word for bone means _to gnaw_, _munch_. (The only other passage where it is used, Ezek. xxiii. 34, is corrupt.) So some take it here: _they do not gnaw bones till morning_, _i.e._ devour all at once; but this is awkward, and Schwally (198) has proposed to omit the negative, _they do gnaw bones till morning_, yet in that case surely the impf. and not the perf. tense would have been used. The LXX. render _they do not leave over_, and it has been attempted, though inconclusively, to derive this meaning from that of _cutting off_, i.e. _laying aside_ (the Arabic Form II. means, however, _to leave behind_). Another line of meaning perhaps promises more. In Aram. the verb means _to be the cause of anything, to bring about_, and perhaps contains the idea of _deciding_ (Levy _sub voce_ compares κρίνω, _cerno_); in Arab. it means, among other things, _to commit a crime, be guilty_, but in mod. Arabic _to fine_. Now it is to be noticed that here the expression is used of _judges_, and it may be there is an intentional play upon the double possibility of meaning in the root.

[172] Ezek. xxii. 26: _Her priests have done violence to My Law and have profaned My holy things; they have put no difference between the holy and profane, between the clean and the unclean._ Cf. Jer. ii. 8.

[173] Schwally by altering the accents: _morning by morning He giveth forth His judgment: no day does He fail_.

[174] On this ver. 6 see above, p. 44. It is doubtful.

[175] Or _discipline_.

[176] Wellhausen: _that which I have commanded her_. Cf. Job xxxvi. 23; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 23; Ezra i. 2.

[177] So LXX., reading מֵעֵינֶיהָ for the Heb. מְעוֹנָהּ, _her dwelling_.

[178] A frequent phrase of Jeremiah’s.

[179] משפטי, decree, ordinance, decision.

[180] Heb. _My anger._ LXX. omits.

[181] That is to say, the prophet returns to that general judgment of the whole earth, with which in his first discourse he had already threatened Judah. He threatens her with it again in this eighth verse, because, as he has said in the preceding ones, all other warnings have failed. The eighth verse therefore follows naturally upon the seventh, just as naturally as in Amos iv. ver. 12, introduced by the same לֵָכן as here, follows its predecessors. The next two verses of the text, however, describe an opposite result: instead of the destruction of the heathen, they picture their conversion, and it is only in the eleventh verse that we return to the main subject of the passage, Judah herself, who is represented (in harmony with the close of Zephaniah’s first discourse) as reduced to a righteous and pious remnant. Vv. 9 and 10 are therefore obviously a later insertion, and we pass to the eleventh verse. Vv. 9 and 10: _For then_ (this has no meaning after ver. 8) _will I give to the peoples a pure lip_ (elliptic phrase: _turn to the peoples a pure lip_—i.e. _turn their_ evil lip into _a pure lip_: pure = _picked out_, _select_, _excellent_, cf. Isa. xlix. 2), _that they may all of them call upon the name of the Lord, that they may serve Him with one consent_ (Heb. _shoulder_, LXX. _yoke_). _From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia_—there follows a very obscure phrase, עֲתָרַי בַּת־פּוּצַי, _suppliants (?) of the daughter of My dispersed_, but Ewald _of the daughter of Phut—they shall bring Mine offering_.

[182] Wellhausen _despair_.

[183] Heb. _the jubilant ones of thine arrogance_.

[184] See vv. 4, 5, 11.

[185] Heb. _the_.

[186] מִשְׁפָּטַיִךְ. But Wellhausen reads מְשׁוֹפְטַיִךְ, thine adversaries: cf. Job ix. 15.

[187] Reading תִּרְאִי (with LXX., Wellhausen and Schwally) for תִּירָאִי of the Hebrew text, _fear_.

[188] Lit. _hero_, _mighty man_.

[189] Heb. _will be silent in_, יַחֲרִישׁ, but not in harmony with the next clause. LXX. and Syr. render _will make new_, which translates יַחֲדִישׁ, a form that does not elsewhere occur, though that is no objection to finding it in Zephaniah, or יְחַדֵּשׁ. Hitzig: _He makes new things in His love_. Buhl: _He renews His love_. Schwally suggests יחדה, _He rejoices in His love_.

[190] LXX. _In the days of thy festival_, which it takes with the previous verse. The Heb. construction is ungrammatical, though not unprecedented—the construct state before a preposition. Besides נוגי is obscure in meaning. It is a Ni. pt. for נוגה from יגה, _to be sad_: cf. the Pi. in Lam. iii. 33. But the Hiphil הוגה in 2 Sam. xx. 13, followed (as here) by מן, means _to thrust away from_, and that is probably the sense here.

[191] LXX. _thine oppressed_ in acc. governed by the preceding verb, which in LXX. begins the verse.

[192] The Heb., מַשְׂאֵת, _burden of_, is unintelligible. Wellhausen proposes מִשְׂאֵת עֲלֵיהֶ.

[193] This rendering is only a venture in the almost impossible task of restoring the text of the clause. As it stands the Heb. runs, _Behold, I am about to do_, or _deal, with thine oppressors_ (which Hitzig and Ewald accept). Schwally points מְעַנַּיִךְ (active) as a passive, מְעֻנַּיִךְ, _thine oppressed_. LXX. has ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ποιῶ ἐν σοὶ ἕνεκεν σοῦ, _i.e._ it read אִתֵּךְ לְמַעֲנֵךְ. Following its suggestion we might read אֶת־כֹּל לְמַעֲנֵךְ, and so get the above translation.

[194] Micah iv. 6.

[195] This rendering (Ewald’s) is doubtful. The verse concludes with _in the whole earth their shame_. But בָּשְׁתָּם may be a gloss. LXX. take it as a verb with the next verse.

[196] LXX. _do good to you_; perhaps אטיב for אביא.

[197] So Heb. literally, but the construction is very awkward. Perhaps we should read _in that time I will gather you_.

[198] _Before your eyes_, _i.e._ in your lifetime. It is doubtful whether ver. 20 is original to the passage. For it is simply a variation on ver. 19, and it has more than one impossible reading: see previous note, and for שבותיכם read שבותכם.

_NAHUM_

_Woe to the City of Blood,
All of her guile, robbery-full, ceaseless rapine!_

_Hark the whip,
And the rumbling of wheels!
Horses at the gallop,
And the rattling dance of the chariot!
Cavalry at the charge,
Flash of sabres, and lightning of lances!_