Zeno Tiin Stoic. See Stoics.
Zephani'ah (Heb. Tsephanyah', H^rEIi' [in the prolonged form Tsephanya'hu, iin"3SjJ, 2 Kings xxv, 18], hidden of Jehovah; Sept. ^oipoi'iat; v. r. [in 1 Chron.] '!£a(pavia(:, Vulg. Suphonias), the name of four Hebrews.
1. A Kohathite Levite, son of Tahath and father of .\zariali, in the ancestry of the prophet .Samuel (([. v.) and of Heman (1 Chron. vi, 36 [Heb. 21]); the same elsewhere (ver. 24 [9]) called UuiiiL (q. v.) the father of Uzziali.
2. A prophet of whom we have no information be- yond what his book furnishes. In this tZcph. i. 1) he is said to have been "the son of Cuslii. the son of (ied- aliali, the son of Amariah, the son of llizkiali." which last is usually regarded as the same wiili king Hezeki- ah. If so,he lived B.C.cir.620. Willi this agrees the date of his prophecy there given ; namely, in the reign of Josiali. We do not elsewhere, however, rea<l of any such son of Ilezekiah as Amariah, and, so far as the
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record and pri)bability go, Manasseh was his only son. See Zeph.vniaii, Hook of.
3. The son of Maaseiah (Jer. xxi, 1) and sagan, or second priest, in the reign of Zedokiah. He succeeded Jehoiada (xxix, 25, 26), and was probably a ruler of the Temple, whose office it was, among others, to punish pretenders to the gift of prophecy. In this capacity he was appealed to by Shemaiah the Nehelamitc, in a let- ter from Babylon, to punish Jeremiah (ver. 29). Twice was he sent from Zedekiah to inquire of Jeremiah the issue of the siege of the city by the Chalda?ans (xxi, 1), and to implore him to intercede for the people (xxxvii, 3). On the capture of Jerusalem bj' Nebtizaradan, he was taken with Scraiah the high-priest and others, and slain at Kiblah (Hi, 24, 27; 2 Kings xxv, 18, 21).— Smith. B.C. 588.
4. Father of Josiah 2 (Zech. vi, 10), and of Hen, ac- cording to the reading of the received text of Zech. vi, 1-i as given in the A. V. B.C. ante 519. See Josiah.
ZEPHANIAH, Book of, the ninth in order of the minor projjhets, both in the Hebrew and Greek copies of the Scriptures (Jerome, Prolog, ad Paul, et Eu- s(och.). Besides his genuine prophecy, there was in the ancient Cliristian Church an apocryphal book as- scribed to Zephaniah the prophet, and quoted by some of the fathers under the name of his 'AvdXrixpig or IIpo^ (pt'jTeia. See Apocrypha.
1. Authoi: — 1. The- name of this prophet has been variousl}' explained. Disputes upon it arose as early as the times of Jerome, for in his Commentary on this book he says, "Nomen .Sophonise, alii speculam, alii arcanum Dei, transtulerunt." The word was thus de- rived either from USS, he watched, or "jS^, he hid, with the common afHx IT', i. e. Jah. The old father made it a matter of indifference which etymon he adopted, as both, according to him, give virtually the same sense — the commission of a prophet being virtually that of a watchman or seer, and the burden of his message some secret revealed to him by God. Abarbanel (Praf. in Ezeh.) adheres to the latter mode of derivation, and the Pseudo-Dorotheus, following the former, translates the prophet's name by the Greek participle aicoTrtinov. Hiller and Simonis differ also in a similar way; Hiller, taking the term from '|S1£, renders it "abscondidit se, i. e. delituit Jehovah" {Onomast. s. v.), as if the name had contained a mystic reference to the character of the age in which the prophet lived, when God had withdrawn himself from his apostate people; but Si- monis {Onomast. V. 7'.) gives the true signitication, one sanctioned by Gesenius — "abscondidit, i, e. custodivit Jehovah," Jehovah hath guarded, the verb "S^ being used of divine protection in Psa. xxvii, 5 and Ixxxiii, 4. The name seems to have been a common one among the Jews.
2. Parentage. — Contrary to usual custom, the pedi- gree of the prophet is traced back for four generations — " the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah." This formal record of his lineage has led many to suppose that Zephaniah had sprung from a noble stock (Cyril, Praf. ad Zeph.), and the occurrence of the highest name in the list, which in the Hebrew text is spelled and pointed in the same way as that rendered Hezekiah in the books of Kings and Chronicles, has induced some to identify it with that of the good king Hezekiah, and to pronounce the prophet a cadet of the royal house of Judah. Kim- chi is ver\' cautious in his opinion, and leaves the point undecided; but Aben-Ezra, ever read}' to magnify his nation, at once concludes that Zephaniah was descend- ed from Hezekiah ; and his opinion has been followed by Huet (^Demonstrat. Evangel. Propos. iv, 303), and partially by Eichhorn (Einleit. § 593). The conjecture has little else to recommend it than the mere occurrence of the royal name. But it was not a name confined to royalty ; and had it been the name of the pious mon-
arch to which Zephaniah's genealogy is traced, certain- ly his official designation, " king of Judah," would have been subjoined in order to prevent mistake. Such an addition is found in connection with his name in Prov. xxv, 1 and Isa. xxxviii, 9. It forms no objection to this statement to affirm that the phrase " king of Judah" is added to Josiah, and to avoid repetition may have been omitted after Hizkiah, for such regard to eupho- ny, such finical delicacy, is no feature of Hebrew com- position. The argument of Carpzov {Inti-od. p. 414), copied by Eosenmiiller {Prooemitim in Zeph.), against the supposed connection of the prophet with the blood royal is of no great weight. These critics say that from Hezekiah to Josiah, in whose reign Zephaniah flourish- ed, are onlv three generations, while from Hezekiah to Zephaniah four are reckoned in the first verse of the prophecy. But as Hezekiah reigned twenty-nine years, and his successor sat on the throne no less than fifty- five years, there is room enough in such a period for the four specified descents; and Amariah, though not heir to the crown, may have been much older than his youthful brother Manasseh, who was crowned at the age of twelve. As there was at least another Zepha- niah, a conspicuous personage at the time of the Cap- tivity, the parentage of the prophet may have been re- counted so minutely to prevent any reader fa»m con- founding the two individuals. The descent of the prophet from king Hezekiah, therefore, is not in itself improbable, and the fact that the pedigree terminates with that name points to a personage of rank and im- portance. Late critics and commentators generally ac- quiesce in this hypothesis, viz. Eichhorn, Hitzig, F. Ad. Strauss ( Vaticinia Zephanice [Berlin, 1843]), Hiivernick, Keil, and Bleek {Einleitung in das Alte Testament).