The Pulpit Commentary — Zephaniah — Section 62

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vera. 1-8.-Jerusalem the '1'8bellious and polluted; or, the wi,,;kednas and woe of a degenerate city. I. THE NUMBER AND VARIETY OF HEB. SINS. 1. Rebellion. This, mark- ing her attitude towards God, is amplified and detailed. as consisting in four transgres- sions. (1) Disobedience. She had not obeyed J ehovah's voice speaking to her through the Law and the prophets, enjoining on her precepts and imposing on her duties, but, like an ordinary heathen nation, bad said," Who is Jehovah, that we should serve him, or that he should reign over us? " (2) Insubordination. She had not received correction, i.e. had not accepted with meek submission the discipline or chastisement Jehovah had laid upon her in· consequence of her sins, as for instance when he brought against her Shishak of Egypt (1 Kings xiv. 25, 26), Jehoash of Israel (2 Kings xiv. 13), Sargon or Sennacherib.of Assyria (2 Kings xviii. 17; 2 Chron. xxxii. l), but had resented it, not only adhering to her disobedient ways, but improving on them, "rising early and corrupting all her doings." (3) Unbelief. Not trusting in Jehovah, she had alternately trusted in Assyria and Egypt. Whereas her confidence in Jerusalem's stability and impregnability ought to have rested on the fact that Jehovah had chosen it to place his Name there, had entered into covenant with the nation of which it was the capital, had established in it his worship, and had promised to protect it, she was constant.ly basing her hopes on a r:olitical alliance either with the northern power against the southern, or with the southern against the northern (1sa. xxxvi. 6 ; Hos. xiv. 3). (4:) Irreligion. Having renounced all faith in Jehovah, she had scarce,J maintained the pretence of observing his worship-bad not drawn near to him, either externally in the way of celebrating those 1ites he had prescribed, or internally by pouring out her heart before him in supplication of his favour and help. 2. Po/l'IJ,tion. 'l'his declares what .the city was in herself. The completeness of her defilement discovered itself in the wickedness of all classes of her population, but more especially of her civil and spiritual rulers. Of the latter, (1) the prophets were light and treacherous persous, vain-glorious boasters, boiling up with their own conceited imaginings, men of treacheries who published their own false dreams as if these had been the true visions of God (Jer. xxiii. 32), and thus caused the people to err (Isa. ix. 16; Micah iii. 5). As they exercised their callings without having themselves been called to these by God (Jer. xiv. 14:), they were not his prophets, but hers. Scarcely less polluted were (2) the priests, who, as Jehovah's ministers, ought to have been holy (Lev. xxi. 6; Numb. xvi. 5), but who, through being themselves impure, profaned that which is holy, or defiled the sanctuary and all connected with it-its rites, persons, things, places, sacrifices, and violated the Law (Ezek. xxii. 26) "by treating what was holy as profane." 3. Oppression. Revealing her behaviour towards man: her civic dignitaries practised cruelties ferocious and unprovoked upon those over whom they ruled. (1) Her princes in the midst of her, i.e. her kings and nobles, like roaring lions rushing on their prey (Prov. xxvii. 15), ground down her poor and unresisting popula- tion by excessive taxations aud labours. (2) Her judges, in their administration of law and (so-called) justice, were so fixedly bent on their own enrichment, and so insatiably greedy of their evil gaino, that thoy seemed like hungry and rapacious evening wolve~ 60 TBE BOOR OF ZEPIIANIAlt. Cert. m. 1-20.