TEXT [Commentary]

  D.   Final Exhortation (3:14-20)

14 Sing, O daughter of Zion;

shout aloud, O Israel!

Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,

O daughter of Jerusalem!

15 For the LORD will remove his hand of judgment

and will disperse the armies of your enemy.

And the LORD himself, the King of Israel,

will live among you!

At last your troubles will be over,

and you will never again fear disaster.

16 On that day the announcement to Jerusalem will be,

“Cheer up, Zion! Don’t be afraid!

17 For the LORD your God is living among you.

He is a mighty savior.

He will take delight in you with gladness.

With his love, he will calm all your fears.[*]

He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”

18 “I will gather you who mourn for the appointed festivals;

you will be disgraced no more.[*]

19 And I will deal severely with all who have oppressed you.

I will save the weak and helpless ones;

I will bring together

those who were chased away.

I will give glory and fame to my former exiles,

wherever they have been mocked and shamed.

20 On that day I will gather you together

and bring you home again.

I will give you a good name, a name of distinction,

among all the nations of the earth,

as I restore your fortunes before their very eyes.

I, the LORD, have spoken!”

NOTES

3:14 Sing . . . shout aloud . . . Be glad and rejoice. Walker (1985:564) calls attention to the piling up of verbs of similar meaning here as an expression of strong emphasis. The future scene of God’s blessing will be one of boundless joy. The use of personification, anthropopoeia, and metaphor in 3:14-16 is striking.

3:15 remove . . . disperse. The Hebrew verbs constitute a play on ideas: “turned aside . . . turned away.” While the first verb (sur [TH5493, ZH6073]) indicates the removal of the source of stress, the second (panah [TH6437, ZH7155]) emphasizes their being sent away. Since the objects of the verbs are “judgment” and “enemy” respectively, the scene may be that of a courtroom where God the judge has overturned the sentence against his people and sent their enemies away. The second verb may have been chosen as a deliberate echo of the earlier use of pinnah [TH6438, ZH7157] (stronghold) in 1:16; 3:6.

hand of judgment. Zephaniah had previously brought up the themes of judgment and justice (2:3; 3:5, 8), so their presence here is not without precedent. God serves as witness against all the world and also as its judge (3:8). He is Jerusalem’s righteous judge (3:5) who will deliver those who humbly practice his judgments and statutes (2:3). Now that there is a purified and humble remnant in the city, he may freely terminate its sentence and remove those he had sent to execute its punishment.

enemy. Roberts (1991:220) follows the lead of the LXX, Peshitta, and Targum in reading a plural here (enemies). The Hebrew noun is probably to be viewed as a collective plural and, as Berlin (1994:143) suggests, a noun designating a particular class.

you will never again fear disaster. For the Hebrew lo’-thire’i [TH3808/3372, ZH4202/3707], some mss (followed by the LXX and Peshitta; cf. KJV, NKJV) read lo’-thir’i [TH3808/7200, ZH4202/8011] (you will not see). But the weight of Hebrew mss favors the MT, a reading reflected in the Vulgate. Accordingly, most newer translations follow the MT (cf. NIV, NASB, NRSV, NJB). “Fear” also provides a play on the notion of Israel’s failure to demonstrate proper fear in the midst of God’s chastisement (cf. 3:7) and also anticipates the emphases of the next two verses. “Disaster” (ra‘ [TH7451A, ZH8273]) can designate any calamity, injury, or adverse circumstance, even God’s judicial punishment.

3:16 Cheer up . . . Don’t be afraid! The Hebrew text reads “fear not . . . let not your hands hang limp.” The latter verb means basically “be slack.”

3:17 a mighty savior. Lit., “a warrior who saves.” In the OT, gibbor [TH1368A, ZH1475] is employed most frequently “in connection with military activities, especially as a designation for a warrior, either a man who is eligible for military service or is able to bear arms, or one who has actually fought in combat, who has already distinguished himself by performing heroic deeds” (TDOT 2.374). God is called El Gibbor, “The Mighty God” (Isa 10:21; cf. the Messianic title in Isa 9:6), and as Israel’s hero and warrior par excellence, he gains the victory (Ps 24:8-10; Isa 42:13; Hab 3:8-15) and delivers his people (Exod 15:2; Ps 68:17-20). Although Israel was saved by the Lord (Deut 33:29), their physical deliverance was an outward sign of God’s spiritual relation to them (Ezek 37:20-28).

he will calm all your fears. Lit., “he will quiet you with/in his love.” The verb kharesh [TH2790A, ZH3087] has been explained variously as (1) keeping silent about or covering up people’s sins (Rashi), (2) God’s silence due to the overwhelming depths of his love (Keil 1954), (3) God’s preoccupation with planning Israel’s good (Nowack 1922), (4) God’s resting in his love (Laetsch 1956), (5) a means for the believer to cultivate peace and silence in his heart (Luther), (6) God’s singing out of the joy of his loving concern (O’Connor 1980), and (7) God’s refraining from bringing accusation of wrongdoing against Jerusalem (Ben Zvi). In addition, a relation to the Akkadian eresu (to desire) might be suggested.

The uncertainty of meaning here and the force of the verbs in the succeeding parallel lines (“rejoice,” “exult”) have caused many scholars to suggest an emendation to the verb khadash [TH2318, ZH2542] (“renew”; e.g., G. A. Smith; cf. LXX, Peshitta, NRSV, NJB). Although the alternate reading simply involves a common confusion between the Hebrew consonants daleth (ד) and resh (ר), the Masoretic reading is not altogether inappropriate—the thought of quieting being perhaps related to Israel’s fear in 3:16.

with joyful songs. The word berinnah [TH871.2/7440, ZH928/8262] (with singing) is positioned last in the clause and in the verse so as to form an inclusio with ranni [TH7442, ZH8264] in v. 14. Verses 14-17 thus compose a strophe within the final stanza.

3:18 I will gather you who mourn . . . you will be disgraced no more. This verse has defied the interpretive efforts of all ages. Each of the ancient versions reads differently, and the renderings of modern translations and commentators likewise show marked variation. While there is general agreement as to the first half of the verse, the latter half has proved to be an insoluble crux. The verb translated “mourn” (yagah [TH3013, ZH3324]) could also be understood as belonging to the root nug [TH3013A, ZH5652] (“depart”; cf. the Ugaritic Keret Epic text reading: wng mlk lbty, “depart, O king, from my house”; Gordon 1965:250, lines 11-12). So construed, the first half of the sentence may be understood as “I will gather those who were driven from your appointed feasts.” The Hebrew appears to add a further note regarding the fact that Jerusalem’s deportees were carried away as booty (or tribute) by the city’s conquerors. (For a discussion of the difficulties of the Hebrew syntax here, see Patterson 1991:384-386.)

Because the latter half of the verse contains the prepositional phrase ‘aleha [TH5921/1886.3, ZH6584/2023] (upon her), it may suggest that driving out the festival worshipers was a disgrace upon Jerusalem. So taken, one may understand that God will regather those who, due to Jerusalem’s sin, were carried away as booty for the Babylonian army—a fact that stands as a reproach upon the holy city. The NLT, however, has made tolerable sense of the whole verse by stressing the regathering of the disgraced exiles to the festivals for which they have mourned so long. Thus understood, it prepares the reader for the details of 3:19.

3:19 And I will deal severely with. The Hebrew construction opens with hineni (“behold”; cf. KJV, ESV), emphasizing the certainty and the immediacy of the action. The verb ‘asah [TH6213, ZH6913] (do/make) followed by the particle ’et [TH853, ZH906] is often used in the sense of “deal with” (e.g., Jer 21:2; Ezek 22:14; 23:25, 29). Thus, God will deal vigorously and swiftly with those who afflict his people.

weak and helpless ones. Lit., “the lame and the outcast.” Berlin (1994:147) calls attention to the similar sentiment in Mic 4:6 and remarks, “The image is of a shepherd rescuing his sheep from predators and keeping them from straying. The shepherd image is commonly used for kings in the ancient Near East and this metaphor continues the picture of God as king in v. 15.”

I will give glory and fame to my former exiles, wherever they have been mocked and shamed. The Hebrew text reads, “I will set them for praise and honor in all the land, their shame.” The syntax of the clause is awkward. Because the prepositional phrase “in all the land” contains a definite article, it would be grammatically anomalous for “their shame” to be part of that construction (i.e., “in all the land of their shame”). Among the many proposals for understanding this crux, the simplest solution seems to be to relate “their shame” to the controlling verb of the sentence and translate, “I will turn their shame to praise and honor in (throughout) all the earth” (cf. NRSV, NASB). The NLT gives the sense of the passage.

3:20 restore your fortunes. The KJV (cf. LXX, NKJV; so also Robertson 1990) reads, “I will turn back your captivity.” Because the idea of the restoration of the captives would appear to be a first step in the total blessing of the restored remnant, however, the reading of the NLT is widely adopted by modern translations and scholars (e.g., NIV, NRSV, Roberts 1991).

their very eyes. Lit., “your eyes”; cf. LXX, Vulgate, Targum. The NLT follows the lead of the Peshitta and some Greek mss. Note also Roberts (1991:222), who observes, “The context, however, which speaks of Israel’s fame among all the nations, suggests that this will happen when God restores Israel’s fortunes before the eyes of these nations. They will see God’s salvation of Israel and form a new opinion about these formerly oppressed people (cf. Isa 52:10-15).”

COMMENTARY [Text]

The consideration of the eschatological Day of the Lord, with which the prophecy closes, lays emphasis upon the felicity and serenity attendant to restored Israel’s final state. Zephaniah’s words of instruction will doubtless be carried out: Sing for joy, shout aloud, be glad and rejoice (3:14). The commands are happy ones, heaped up to underscore the great expectation of the joyous times that lie beyond the immediate punishment. In that coming day, there will be singing and shouting, together with joy and rejoicing such as has never been known. Although the command was aimed at the future Jerusalem, the message would certainly not be lost on the godly worshipers of Zephaniah’s own day.

In connection with this happy scene, Israel was again reminded that the guarantee of its happiness lies in the person of God himself. He, the righteous judge would deem their punishment completed and Jerusalem’s correction accomplished. Accordingly, the judicial sentence may be commuted and God could now deal with his agents of chastisement. He would turn them away from his city and people and judge them for their sins. Moreover, Yahweh, Israel’s king (Isa 44:6), would again dwell in his royal city. Cleansed by long ages of corrective judgment, Jerusalem will now be made permanently holy by the presence of the Holy One of Israel (cf. Isa 54:4-8; 57:14-19; 62:10-12; Ezek 48:35; Joel 3:17, 21).

The promise of the release from fear is accompanied by words of encouragement to the people not to let fright or anxiety grip their hearts. Zion’s citizens will at last be free of the all-too-common fear that had left their hands hanging limp in despondency, paralyzed from terror. Each will remind the other of God’s abiding presence. He, the sovereign Lord of the universe and Israel’s heavenly warrior, would deliver them from their enemies, effect their redemption, and live among them in glory.

Here the Divine Warrior motif reaches its culmination. He who can sweep away all creation (1:2-3) and who fights against all idolatry (1:4-6) and injustice, whether in the pagan nations (2:4-15) or in his own people (1:7-13; 3:1-7), has appointed a day in which he will go out to battle against entrenched sin (1:14-18; 3:8, 15-17). He will deliver his people (3:14-15, 17) and bring everlasting peace in all the fullness that shalom [TH7965, ZH8934] connotes (completeness, health, prosperity, safety, and well-being) for all believing people (3:9-10, 14-20). Thus, the Scriptures record that God is not simply the biggest and most powerful of the so-called gods of the earth, as is so often portrayed in typical treatments of the Divine Warrior motif. Rather, he is the God whose purpose in revealing himself according to human cultural forms is not only the suppression of evil, but the supplying of mankind’s full felicity. That which is best for man shall be realized in the person of a sovereign and gracious God who himself is the summum bonum, the ultimate good.

The theme of restoration and final felicity centers in the motif and theological teaching of the divine shepherd. Zephaniah’s metaphor of the good shepherd is a familiar one in the Old Testament. The figure of the shepherd was assumed by God himself. He had led Israel all along the way (Gen 48:15; Ps 80:1), taking care of their needs (Ps 23:1-2), protecting and guiding them in accordance with his good purposes for them (Isa 40:9-11; cf. Ezek 34:12; Zech 9:15-16).

God announced through his prophets that he would send his own true shepherd, the Messiah, who would save and care for his flock (Ezek 34:22-24). Jesus Christ affirmed that he was that good shepherd who would lay down his life for the sheep (John 10:11-18). The New Testament writers reveal that Christ is also that great shepherd who cares for the well-being of his believing flock (Heb 13:20-21; cf. 1 Pet 2:25), and he is the chief shepherd who has entrusted his work to other “under shepherds” until he himself will come again for his flock (1 Pet 5:1-4). May we of the present Christian community live as good sheep under the care of faithful shepherds, looking forward to that day when our divine shepherd will return and make us to “lie down” in the “green pastures” of his eternal and bountiful provision.