[100] Josiah, born _c._ 648, succeeded _c._ 639, was about eighteen in 630, and then appears to have begun his reforms.
[101] See above, pp. 40 f., n. 85.
[102] Jer. i. 5.
[103] See G. B. Gray, _Hebrew Proper Names_.
[104] Josiah.
[105] It is not usual in the O.T. to carry a man’s genealogy beyond his grandfather, except for some special purpose, or in order to include some ancestor of note. Also the name Hezekiah is very rare apart from the king. The number of names compounded with Jah or Jehovah is another proof that the line is a royal one. The omission of the phrase _king of Judah_ after Hezekiah’s name proves nothing; it may have been of purpose because the phrase has to occur immediately again.
[106] It was not till 652 that a league was made between the Palestine princes and Psamtik I. against Assyria. This certainly would have been the most natural year for a child to be named Kushi. But that would set the birth of Zephaniah as late as 632, and his prophecy towards the end of Josiah’s reign, which we have seen to be improbable on other grounds.
[107] Jer. xxi. 1, xxix. 25, 29, xxxvii. 3, lii. 24 ff.; 2 Kings xxv. 18. The analogous Phœnician name צפנבעל, Saphan-ba’al = “Baal protects or hides,” is found in No. 207 of the Phœnician inscriptions in the _Corpus Inscr. Semiticarum_.
[108] Chap. i. 15. With the above paragraph cf. Robertson Smith, _Encyc. Brit._, art. “Zephaniah.”
[109] Chap. i. 14_b_.
[110] In fact this forms one difficulty about the conclusion which we have reached as to the date. We saw that one reason against putting the Book of Zephaniah after the great Reforms of 621 was that it betrayed no sign of their effects. But it might justly be answered that, if Zephaniah prophesied before 621, his book ought to betray some sign of the approach of reform. Still the explanation given above is satisfactory.
[111] Chap. i. 12.
[112] So _wine upon the lees_ is a generous wine according to Isa. xxv. 6.
[113] Jer. xlviii. 11.
[114] The text reads _the ruins_ (מַכְשֵׁלוֹת, unless we prefer with Wellhausen מִכְשֹׁלים, _the stumbling-blocks_, i.e. _idols_) _with the wicked, and I will cut off man_ (LXX. _the lawless_) _from off the face of the ground._ Some think the clause partly too redundant, partly too specific, to be original. But suppose we read וְהִכְשַׁלְתִּי (cf. Mal. ii. 8, Lam. i. 14 and _passim_: this is more probable than Schwally’s כִּשַׁלְתִּי, _op. cit._, p. 169), and for אדם the reading which probably the LXX. had before them, אדם רשע (Job xx. 29, xxvii. 13, Prov. xi. 7: cf. אדם בליעל Prov. vi. 12) or אדם עַוָּל (cf. iii. 5), we get the rendering adopted in the translation above. Some think the whole passage an intrusion, yet it is surely probable that the earnest moral spirit of Zephaniah would aim at the wicked from the very outset of his prophecy.
[115] LXX. _names_, held by some to be the original reading (Schwally, etc.). In that case the phrase might have some allusion to the well-known promise in Deut., _the place where I shall set My name_. This is more natural than a reference to Hosea ii. 19, which is quoted by some.
[116] Some Greek codd. take Baal as fem., others as plur..
[117] So LXX.
[118] Heb. reads _and them who bow themselves, who swear, by Jehovah_. So LXX. B with _and_ before _who swear_. But LXX. A omits _and_. LXX. Q omits _them who bow themselves_. Wellhausen keeps the clause with the exception of _who swear_, and so reads (to the end of verse) _them who bow themselves to Jehovah and swear by Milcom_.