he destruction of all the patrons of idolatry and the rich and
presumptuous sinners in Jerusalem. In the second chapter he exhorts the
covenant people to repentance in view of the judgments that are coming
upon them (verses 1-3), threatens the surrounding nations--Philistia,
Moab, and Ammon--with desolation (verses 4-11), and denounces the
judgments of God upon the Ethiopians and Assyrians (verses 12-15). In
the third chapter, after a severe rebuke of Jerusalem for her
incorrigible rebellion against God (verses 1-7), he foretells in glowing
language the future purification and enlargement of Zion, and the
destruction of all her enemies (verses 8-20). The style of Zephaniah is
clear and flowing, having a general resemblance to that of Jeremiah. He
has frequent allusions to the earlier prophets. Chap. 1:7 compared with
Isa. 34:6; chap. 2:13-15 compared with Isa. 13:21, 22; 34:13-15; chap.
1:14, 15 with Joel 2:1, 2; chap. 1:13 with Amos 5:11, etc.

The genealogy of Zephaniah is given through Cushi, Gedaliah, and
Amariah to Hezekiah; for in the original Hebrew the words
Hizkiah and Hezekiah are the same. As it is not usual that the
descent of prophets should be given with such particularity, it
has been assumed, with some probability, that this Hezekiah was
the king of that name; though in this case we should have
expected the addition "king of Judah." The "chemarim," verse 4,
are the idol-priests; that is, priests devoted to idol worship.
In 2 Kings 33:5, where the writer is speaking of the reformation
under Josiah, the word is translated "idolatrous priests;" in
Hosea 10:5 simply "priests," which is its meaning in the Syriac
language. Some have maintained that the invasion of Judah to
which Zephaniah refers was that of the Scythians described by
Herodotus, 1. 105; but this is very improbable. From the fact
that "the king's children" are included in the threatened
visitation--in the Hebrew, "I will visit upon the princes and
the king's children" (1:8)--some have inferred that they must
have been already grown and addicted to idolatrous practices;
consequently that Zephaniah wrote later than the eighteenth year
of Josiah. But, as Keil and others have remarked, the mention of
the king's children may have been added simply to indicate the
universality of the approaching visitation; not to say that the
prophetic vision of Zephaniah may