' the navies [mcr instead of nKE* ; LXX t4 dvifutra] of Baal ' ; cf. IIos 2" ' I will take away the names of the Baalim out of her mouth,' and Zee IS'' 'I will cut oil' the names of the idols out of the land.' Or (6) iiJy' may be taken in the sense of ' the rest' = ' every vestige,' so that the meaning will be ' I will wholly root out Baal-worship,' ' I will cut it off tUl not a trace of it is left' (cf. Is H'-"^ ' I will cut ofl from Babylon name and remnant ') ; so A. B. David.son, Wellhausen, NoAvack. Probably the same sense should be attributed to the n'lx^f* of Am 1' and the rnq!! of Am 4'- !)'. Or (c), even if the expres.sion be taken in its narrowest sense, the ' remnant of Baal ' may refer to the Baal-worship which survi\od the reforms which, if we can trust the Chronicler (2 Ch 34'' ), Josiah had undertaken six years previously. Besides, as A. B. David.son points out, Baal may stand here for any kind of false worship, even that which is nominarty oli'cred to Jaliweh. On the Chemarim see article under that title.
A (litticulty in the way of assigning the prophecy to the earlier part of Josiah's reign has been felt owing to the mention of 'the king's sons' in I', seeing that it is imjiossible that Josiah, who could not have been much over 21 years of age at the time (cf. 2 K 21'-'), could have had sons capable of perpetrating the outrages attributed to them in v.". But here again (a) it is not unlikely that the LXX 6 oiA-ot Tov ^a<jiX^ws [i.e. -'■^n n'5 instead of TiSsn -jj] has
S reserved the original reading — ' the king's house.' r (h) ' the king's sons ' may mean simply members of the royal family (who had a king, but not neces- sarily the reigning king, among tlieir ancestors) ; cf. 1 K 22=^ 2 K IP, Jer SG'-" [see Hitzig-Graf] 38'. Owing to the youth of the king, his relatives at court would have all the freer scope for their mal- practices.
The early date for which we are contending is further supported by the projihet's allusions to an appioachin" foe, whom he does not name, but who is with much probability identified by most moderns with the Scythians, whose incursions are referred to bj' Herodotus (i. 102 d'.), and who prob.ably passed along the Philistine seaboard, c. 626 B.C. [This exjiliiii.'ition is in e\ery way preferable to that of Sctnvally, who supjioses the toe to be Egypt (see A. B. Davidson, p. ',18, for a conclusive refutation of Schwally)]. '1 hese Scj'thian hordes appear also to have been the subject of Jer 4"-6*' in its original form, and to have suggested the imagery of Ezk 38"''. In the year 626 Josiah would be 21 years of age, and Zephaniah jiossibly a little older. The latter and Jeremiah probably began their prophetic activity in one and the .same yea'' (02(i).
The i)resent position of the book, both in MT and LXX, between 3abal>kuk and Ilaggai proves nothing, for the arrangement of the Twelve is in other instances (e.g. JOEL and Obadiah) demon- strably unchronological. The proper nlace of our book is between Nahum and I.Tabal>kuV.
2. AVhile ch. 1, with the ]iossible exception of a few expressions which may have found their waj' from the margin into the text, is universally attributed to Zephaniah, and dated by the great majority of scholars within the first half of Josiah's reign, tliere are considerable differences of ojiinion as to the unity and the date of the rest of the book.
Kuenen (} 78. 6-8) accepted the genuineness of all but S^*-*", which, on account, chief ;, of differences both in tone anfl situa- tion from the rest of the prophecy, he was inclined to make pOBt-exilic (c. 6.'!(1 B.C.). He d"(endeil 21* " against Stade((;r/ i. 044 n. 8), who denied to Ztphuniah also the whole of ch. 8. — WellhauBen (followed pretty dosely by Nowack) is suspicious of 22.3, he rejects vv.8-11, and treats ch. 3 as a later supplement, added in two stages, vv.i-7 and vv.8-20, upon the analogv ol Mic 111 and vv.7 -20. _ Budde (lollowod by Co'nill, Kinltit.* 5 ZU, .1 [contrast his more consc-native position in - { 31. 3]) would admit 2'** 81-6-7-s-fl {in this order] n 13 as In harmony with ^ephaniah's sltUAtlon and a suitable sequel to ch. 1 ; hi
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ZEPHANIAH, BOOK OF
rejects the whole of 2+18 mainly because Israel appears in these verses as the victim instead of aa the perpetrator of wrong (the conception in ch. 1); 3"- lo are excluaed as breaking the con- nexion between v. 8 and vMt while vv.l-* 20 are declared to be a later lyrical epilogue to w.^i 13. — Schwally allows to Zephaniah notbintr outside ch, 1 except 2^3 IB and possibly 21-*, holding 2*^12 to be exilic and ch. 3 post-exilic. He concedes, however, that 31-7 * may be' ^ephaniaji's. — O. A. Snuth accepts the whole of ch. 2 except vv,8-io (the oracle against Moab and Ammon, which is suspicious for reasons noted below) and v.u which breaks the connexion between vj and v. 12, in 31-13 he considers w.9. 10 to be 'obviously an intrusion/ while v. 8 should possibly precede V.6, as IJudde proposes. He has no doubt about attributing w. 14-20 to the end of the Exile or the period after the Iteturn. — Driver remarks that 2" seems to be out of place, and that S'^^o is somewhat doubtful, although even here, the picture being of course an imaginative one, * the question remains whether it is sufficiently clear that it was beyond the power of ?ephaniah'8 imagination to construct it' (LOTe 342 1., where the author adds a reference to his discussion on Mic T^-O). — Davidson con- siders it quite possible that 2-*-ls has in various places been expanded, but defends the genuineness of ch. 2 as a whole. He allows that 3^0 should possibly be omitted, but otherwise vv.1-13 appear to him to be genuine, although they might suggest that the passage was later than ch. 1. Towards vv.1+20 he" holds the same attitude as Kuenen, recognizing in them quite a different situation from that of the rest of the book. — Konig would apparently accept the whole book as genuine, with the exceinion of that part of the title which refers the prophecy to the days of .Josiah.