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The Lord will be terrible unto - (upon) them that is, upon Moab and Ammon, and yet not in themselves only, but as instances of His just judgment. Whence it follows, “For He will famish all the gods of the earth” (Rup.). Miserable indeed, to whom the Lord is terrible! Whence is this? Is not God by Nature sweet and pleasurable and serene, and an Object of longing? For the Angels ever desire to look into Him, and, in a wonderful and unspeakable way, ever look and ever long to look. For miserable they, whose conscience makes them shrink from the face of Love. Even in this life they feel this shrinking, and, as if it were some lessening of their grief, they deny it, as though this could destroy the truth, which they ‹hold down in unrighteousness.‘” Romans 1:18.

For He will famish all the gods of the earth - Taking away “the fat of their sacrifices, and the wine of their drink-offerings” Deuteronomy 32:38. Within 80 years from the death of our Lord, the governor of Pontus and Bithynia wrote officially to the Roman Emperor, that “the temples had been almost left desolate, the sacred rites had been for a long time intermitted, and that the victims had very seldom found a purchaser,” before the persecution of the Christians, and consulted him as to the amount of its continuance. Toward the close of the century, it was one of the Pagan complaints, which the Christian Apologist had to answer “they are daily melting away the revenues of our temples.” The prophet began to speak of the subdual of Moab and Ammon; he is borne on to the triumphs of Christ over all the gods of the Pagan, when the worship of God should not be at Jerusalem only, but “they shall worship Him, every one from his place.”

Even all the isles of the pagan - For this is the very note of the Gospel, that, Cyril: “each who through faith in Christ was brought to the knowledge of the truth, by Him, and with Him, “worshipeth from his place” God the Father; and God is no longer known in Judaea only, but the countries and cities of the Pagan, though they be separated by the intervening sea from Judaea, no less draw near to Christ, pray, glorify, thank Him unceasingly. For formerly “His name” was “great in Israel” Psalm 76:1, but now He is well known to all everywhere; earth and sea are full of His glory, and so every one ‹worshipeth Him from his place;‘ and this is what is said, ‹As I live, saith the Lord, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord‘ Numbers 14:21.” “The isles” are any distant lands on the seashore (Jeremiah 25:22, following; Ezekiel 26:15, following; Psalm 72:10), especially the very distant Isaiah 66:19; but also Asia Minor Daniel 11:1, Daniel 11:8 and the whole coast of Europe, and even the Indian Archipelago, since the ivory and ebony came from its “many isles.”

Zephaniah revives the term, by which Moses had spoken of the dispersion of the sons of Japhet: “By these were the ‹isles of the Gentiles‘ divided in their lands, every one after his tongue” Genesis 10:5. He adds the word, “all;” all, wherever they had been dispersed, every one from his place, shall worship God. One universal worship shall ascend to God from all everywhere. So Malachi prophesied afterward; “From the rising up of the sun even to the going down of the same My Name shall be great among the Gentiles, and “in every place” incense shall be offered unto God and a pure offering, for My Name shall be great among the pagan, saith the Lord of hosts” Malachi 1:11. Even a Jew says here: “This, without doubt, refers to the time to come, when all the inhabitants of the world shall know that the Lord is God, and that His is the greatness and power and glory, and He shall be called the God of the whole earth.” The “isles” or “coasts of the sea” are the more the emblem of the Church, in that, Cyril: “lying, as it were, in the sea of this world and encompassed by the evil events in it, as with bitter waters, and lashed by the most vehement waves of persecutions, the Churches are yet founded, so that they cannot fall, and rear themselves aloft, and are not overwhelmed by afflictions. For, for Christ‘s sake, the Churches cannot be shaken, and ‹the gates of hell shall not prevail against them‘ Matthew 16:18.”

Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by My sword - Literally, “Ye Ethiopians also, the slain of My sword are they.” Having summoned them to His throne, God speaks of them, not to them anymore; perhaps in compassion, as elsewhere in indignation. The Ethiopians were not in any direct antagonism to God and His people, but allied only to their old oppressor, Egypt. They may have been in Pharaoh Necho‘s army, in resisting which, as a subject of Assyria, Josiah was slain: they are mentioned Jeremiah 46:9 in that army which Nebuchadnezzar smote at Carchemish in the 4th year of Jehoiakim. The prophecy of Ezekiel implies rather, that Ethiopia should be involved in the calamities of Egypt, than that it should be itself invaded. “Great terror shall be in Ethiopia, ‹when the slain shall fall in Egypt‘ Ezekiel 30:4.” “Ethiopia and Lybia and Lydia etc. and all the men of the land that is in league, shall fall ‹with these,‘ by the sword” Ezekiel 30:5. “They also that ‹uphold Egypt‘ shall fall” Ezekiel 30:6.

Syene, the frontier-fortress over against Ethiopia, is especially mentioned as the boundary also of the destruction. “Messengers” God says, “shall go forth from Me to make the careless Ethiopians afraid” Ezekiel 30:9, while the storm was bursting in its full desolating force upon Egypt. All the other cities, whose destruction is foretold, are cities of lower or upper Egypt.

But such a blow as that foretold by Jeremiah and Ezekiel must have fallen heavily upon the allies of Egypt. We have no details, for the Egyptians would not, and did not tell of the calamities and disgraces of their country. No one does. Josephus, however, briefly but distinctly says, that after Nebuchadnezzar had in the 23rd year of his reign, the 5th after the destruction of Jerusalem, “reduced into subjection Moab and Ammon, he invaded Egypt, with a view to subdue it,” “killed its then king, and having set up another, captured for the second time the Jews in it and carried them to Babylon.” The memory of the devastation by Nebuchadnezzar lived on apparently in Egypt, and is a recognized fact among the Muslim historians, who had no interest in the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, of which it does not appear that they even knew.

Bokht-nasar (Nebuchadnezzar), they say, “made war on the son of Nechas (Necho), slew him and ruined the city of Memphis” and many other cities of Egypt: he carried the inhabitants captive, without leaving one, so that Egypt remained waste forty years without one inhabitant.” Another says, The refuge which the king of Egypt granted to the Jews who fled from Nebuchadnezzar brought this war upon it: for he took them under his protection and would not give them up to their enemy. Nebuchadnezzar, in revenge, marched against the king of Egypt and destroyed the country.” “One may be certain,” says a good authority, “that the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar was a tradition generally spread in Egypt and questioned by no one.”

Ethiopia was then involved, as an ally, and as far as its contingent was concerned, in the war, in which Nebuchadnezzar desolated Egypt for those 40 years. But, although this fulfilled the prophecy of Ezekiel, Isaiah, some sixty years before Zephaniah, prophesied a direct conquest of Ethiopia. I “have given,” God says, “Egypt as thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee” Isaiah 43:3. It lay in God‘s purpose, that Cyrus should restore His own people, and that his ambition should find its vent and compensation in the lands beyond. It may be that, contrary to all known human policy, Cyrus restored the Jews to their own land, willing to bind them to himself, and to make them a frontier territory toward Egypt, not subject only but loyal to himself. This is quite consistent with the reason which he assigns; “The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and He hath charged me to build Him an house at Jerusalem which is in Judah” Ezra 1:2-3; and with the statement of Josephus, that he was moved thereto by “reading the prophecy which Isaiah left, 210 years before.”

It is, alas! nothing new to Christians to have mixed motives for their actions: the exception is to have a single motive, “for the glory of God.” The advantage to himself would doubtless flash at once on the founder of a great empire, though it did not suggest the restoration of the Jews. Egypt and Assyria had always, on either side, wished to possess themselves of Palestine, which lay between them. Anyhow, one Persian monarch did restore the Jews; his successor possessed himself of “Egypt, and part, at least, of Ethiopia.” Cyrus wished, it is related, “to war in person against Babylon, the Bactrians, the Sacae, and Egypt.” He perished, as is known, before he had completed the third of his purposed conquests. Cambyses, although after the conquest of Egypt he planned ill his two more distant expeditions, reduced “the Ethiopians bordering upon Egypt” (“lower Ethiopia and Nubia”), and these “brought gifts” permanently to the Persian Sovereign. Even in the time of Xerxes, the Ethiopians had to furnish their contingent of troops against the Greeks. Herodotus describes their dress and weapons, as they were reviewed at Doriscus. Cambyses, then, did not lose his hold over Ethiopia and Egypt, when forced by the rebellion of Pseudo-Smerdis to quit Egypt.

Zephaniah began by singling out Judah amid the general destruction, “I will also stretch out My Hand upon Judah” Zephaniah 1:4; he sums up the judgment of the world in the same way; “He will stretch out, or, Stretch He forth, “His Hand against the north and destroy Asshur, and make Nineveh a desolation.” Judah had, in Zephaniah‘s time, nothing to fear from Assyria. Isaiah Isaiah 39:6 and Micah Micah 4:10 had already foretold, that the captivity would be to Babylon. Yet of Assyria alone the prophet, in his own person, expresses his own conformity with the mind of God. Of others he had said, “the word of the Lord is against you, O Canaan, and I will destroy thee; As I live, saith the Lord, Moab shall be as Sodom. Ye also, O Ethiopians, the, slain of My sword are they.” Of Assyria alone, by a slight inflection of the word, he expresses that he goes along with this, which he announces.

He does not say as an imprecation, “May He stretch forth His hand;” but gently, as continuing his prophecies, “and,” joining on Asshur with the rest; only instead of saying “He will stretch forth,” by a form almost insulated in Hebrew, he says, “And stretch He forth His Hand.” In a way not unlike, David having declared God‘s judgments, “The Lord trieth the righteous; and the wicked and the lover of violence doth His soul abhor, subjoineth, On the wicked rain He snares,” signifying that he (as all must be in the Day of judgment), is at one with the judgment of God. This is the last sentence upon Nineveh, enforcing that of Jonah and Nahum, yet without place of repentance now. He accumulates words expressive of desolateness. It should not only be a “desolation” Zephaniah 2:4, Zephaniah 2:9, as he had said of Ashkelon, Moab and Amman, but a dry, parched, unfruitful Isaiah 53:2 land. As Isaiah, under the same words, prophesies that the dry and desolate land should, by the Gospel, be glad, so the gladness of the world should become dryness and desolation. Asshur is named, as though one individual, implying the entireness of the destruction; all shall perish as one man; or as gathered into one and dependent upon one, its evil King. “The north” is not only Assyria, in that its armies came upon Judah from the north, but it stands for the whole power of evil (see Isaiah 14:13), as Nineveh for the whole beautiful, evil, world. The world with “the princes of this world” shall perish together.

And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her - No desolation is like that of decayed luxury. It preaches the nothingness of man, the fruitlessness of his toils, the fleetingness of his hopes and enjoyments, and their baffling when at their height. Grass in a court or on a once beaten road, much more, in a town, speaks of the passing away of what has been, that man was accustomed to be there, and is not, or is there less than he was. It leaves the feeling of void and forsakenness. But in Nineveh not a few tufts of grass here and there shall betoken desolation, it shall be one wild rank pasture, where “flocks” shall not feed only, but “lie down” as in their fold and continual resting place, not in the outskirts only or suburbs, but in the very center of her life and throng and busy activity, “in the midst of her,” and none shall fray them away. So Isaiah had said of the cities of Aroer, “they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down and none shall make them afraid” Isaiah 17:2, and of Judah until its restoration by Christ, that it should be “a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks” (Isaiah 32:14, compare Jeremiah 6:2). And not only those which are wont to be found in some connection with man, but “all the beasts of a nation”, the troops of wild and savage and unclean beasts which shun the dwellings of man or are his enemies, these in troops have their lair there.

Both the cormorant and the bittern - They may be the same. The pelican retires inland to consume its food. Tristram, Houghton, in Smith‘s Bible Dictionary, “Pelican” note. It could be a hedgehog.

Shall lodge in the upper lintels of it. - The “chapiters” (English margin) or capitals of the pillars of the temples and palaces shall lie broken and strewn upon the ground, and among those desolate fragments of her pride shall unclean animals haunt. The pelican has its Hebrew name from vomiting. It vomits up the shells which it had swallowed whole, after they had been opened by the heat of the stomach, and so picks out the animal contained in them, the very image of greediness and uncleanness. It dwells also not in deserts only but near marshes, so that Nineveh is doubly waste.

A voice shall sing in the windows - In the midst of the desolation, the muteness of the hedgehog and the pensive loneliness of the solitary pelican, the musing spectator is even startled by the gladness of a bird, joyous in the existence which God has given it. Instead of the harmony of music and men-singers and women-singers in their palaces shall be the sweet music of some lonely bird, unconscious that it is sitting “in the windows” of those, at whose name the world grew pale, portions of the outer walls being all which remain of her palaces. “Desolation” shall be “in the thresholds,” sitting, as it were, in them; everywhere to be seen in them; the more, because unseen. Desolation is something oppressive; we “feel” its presence. There, as the warder watch and ward at the empty portals, where once was the fullest throng, shall “desolation sit,” that no one enter. “For He shall uncover (hath uncovered, English margin) the cedar-work:” in the roofless palaces, the carved “cedar-work” shall be laid open to wind and rain. Any one must have noticed, how piteous and dreary the decay of any house in a town looks, with the torn paper hanging uselessly on its walls. A poet of our own said niche beautiful ruins of a wasted monastery:

“For the gay beams of lightsome day

Gild, but to flout the ruins gray.”

But at Nineveh it is one of the mightiest cities of the world which thus lies waste, and the bared “cedar-work” had, in the days of its greatness, been carried off from the despoiled Lebanon or Hermon.

This utter desolation is “the rejoicing city” (so unlike is it, that there is need to point out that it is the same); this is she, who was full of joy, exulting exceedingly, but in herself, not in God; “that dwelt carelessly,” literally, “securely,” and so carelessly; saying “Peace and safety” 1 Thessalonians 5:3, as though no evil would come upon her, and so perishing more certainly and miserably (see Judges 18:27) “That said in her heart,” this was her inmost feeling, the moving cause of all her deeds; “I am and there is none beside me;” literally, “and there is no I beside,” claiming the very attribute of God (as the world does) of self-existence, as if it alone were “I,” and others, in respect of her, were as nothing. Pantheism, which denies the being of God, as Author of the world, and claims the life in the material world to be God, and each living being to be a part of God, is only this self-idolatry, reflected upon and carried out in words. All the pride of the world, all self-indulgence which says, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” all covetousness which ends in this world, speaks this by its acts, “I and no I beside.”

How is she become a desolation - Has passed wholly into it, exists only as a desolation, “a place for beasts to lie down in,” a mere den for “the wild beasts. Every one that passeth by her shall hiss” in derision, “and wag” (or wave) “his hand” in detestation, as though putting the hand between them and it, so as not to look at it, or, as it were, motioning it away. The action is different from that of “clapping the hands in exultation” Nahum 3:19.

“It is not difficult,” Jerome says, “to explain this of the world, that when the Lord hath stretched forth His Hand over the north and destroyed the Assyrian, the Prince of this world, the world also perishes together with its Princes, and is brought to utter desolation, and is pitied by none, but all hiss and shake their hands at its ruin. But of the Church it seems, at first sight, blasphemous to say that it shall be a pathless desert, and wild beasts shall dwell in her, and that afterward it shall be said insultingly over her; ‹This is the city given up to ill, which “dwelt carelessly and said in her heart, I and none beside.”‘ But whoso should consider that of the Apostle, wherein he says, “in the last days perilous times shall come” 2 Timothy 3:1-5, and what is written in the Gospel, that “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” Matthew 24:12, so that then shall that be fulfilled, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find the faith on the earth?” he will not marvel at the extreme desolation of the Church, that, in the reign of antichrist, it shall be reduced to a desolation and given over to beasts, and shall suffer whatever the prophet now describes.

For if for unbelief “God spared not the natural branches,” but “brake them off,” and “turned rivers into a wilderness and the water-springs into a dry ground,” and “a fruitful land into barrenness, for the iniquity of them that dwell therein,” why not as to those of whom He had said, “He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into water-springs, and there He maketh the hungry to dwell” Psalm 107:33-36; and as to those whom “out of the wild olive He hath grafted into the good olive tree,” why, if forgetful of this benefit, they depart from their Maker and worship the Assyrian, should He not undo them and bring them to the same thirst wherein they were before? Which, whereas it may be understood generally of the coming of antichrist or of the end of the world, yet it may, day by day, be understood of those who feign to be of the Church of God, and “in works deny it, are hearers of the word not doers,” who in vain boast in an outward show, whereas herds that is, troops of vices dwell in them, and brute animals serving the body, and all the beasts of the field which devour their hearts (and pelicans, that is, gluttons, whose ‹god is their belly‘) and hedgehogs, a prickly animal full of spikes which pricketh whatever it toucheth.

After which it is subjoined, that the Church shall therefore suffer this, or hath suffered it, because it lifted itself up proudly and raised its head like a cedar, given up to evil works, and yet promising itself future blessedness, and despising others in its heart, nor thinking that there is any other beside itself, and saying, “I am, and there is no other beside me,” how is it become a solitude, a lair of beasts! For where before, dwelt the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and Angels presided over its ministries, there shall beasts dwell. And if we understand that, every one that passeth by shall hiss, we shall explain it thus; when Angels shall pass through her, and not remain in her, as was their wont, they shall be amazed and marvel, and shall not support and bear her up with their hand, when falling, but shall lift up the hands and shall pass by. Or they shall make a sound as those who mourn. But if we understand this of the devil and his angels, who destroyed the vine also that was brought out of Egypt, we shall say, that through the soul, which before was the temple of God and hath ceased so to be, the serpent passeth, and hisseth and spitteth forth the venom of his malice in her, and not this only, but setteth in motion his works which figuratively are called hands.”

Rup.: “The earlier and partial fulfillment of prophecy does not destroy, it rather confirms, the entire fulfillment to come. For whoso heareth of the destruction of mighty cities, is constrained to believe the truth of the Gospel, that the fashion of this world passeth away, and that, after the likeness of Nineveh and Babylon, the Lord will in the end judge the whole world also.”

The Lord will be terrible unto - (upon) them that is, upon Moab and Ammon, and yet not in themselves only, but as instances of His just judgment. Whence it follows, “For He will famish all the gods of the earth” (Rup.). Miserable indeed, to whom the Lord is terrible! Whence is this? Is not God by Nature sweet and pleasurable and serene, and an Object of longing? For the Angels ever desire to look into Him, and, in a wonderful and unspeakable way, ever look and ever long to look. For miserable they, whose conscience makes them shrink from the face of Love. Even in this life they feel this shrinking, and, as if it were some lessening of their grief, they deny it, as though this could destroy the truth, which they ‹hold down in unrighteousness.‘” Romans 1:18.

For He will famish all the gods of the earth - Taking away “the fat of their sacrifices, and the wine of their drink-offerings” Deuteronomy 32:38. Within 80 years from the death of our Lord, the governor of Pontus and Bithynia wrote officially to the Roman Emperor, that “the temples had been almost left desolate, the sacred rites had been for a long time intermitted, and that the victims had very seldom found a purchaser,” before the persecution of the Christians, and consulted him as to the amount of its continuance. Toward the close of the century, it was one of the Pagan complaints, which the Christian Apologist had to answer “they are daily melting away the revenues of our temples.” The prophet began to speak of the subdual of Moab and Ammon; he is borne on to the triumphs of Christ over all the gods of the Pagan, when the worship of God should not be at Jerusalem only, but “they shall worship Him, every one from his place.”

Even all the isles of the pagan - For this is the very note of the Gospel, that, Cyril: “each who through faith in Christ was brought to the knowledge of the truth, by Him, and with Him, “worshipeth from his place” God the Father; and God is no longer known in Judaea only, but the countries and cities of the Pagan, though they be separated by the intervening sea from Judaea, no less draw near to Christ, pray, glorify, thank Him unceasingly. For formerly “His name” was “great in Israel” Psalm 76:1, but now He is well known to all everywhere; earth and sea are full of His glory, and so every one ‹worshipeth Him from his place;‘ and this is what is said, ‹As I live, saith the Lord, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord‘ Numbers 14:21.” “The isles” are any distant lands on the seashore (Jeremiah 25:22, following; Ezekiel 26:15, following; Psalm 72:10), especially the very distant Isaiah 66:19; but also Asia Minor Daniel 11:1, Daniel 11:8 and the whole coast of Europe, and even the Indian Archipelago, since the ivory and ebony came from its “many isles.”

Zephaniah revives the term, by which Moses had spoken of the dispersion of the sons of Japhet: “By these were the ‹isles of the Gentiles‘ divided in their lands, every one after his tongue” Genesis 10:5. He adds the word, “all;” all, wherever they had been dispersed, every one from his place, shall worship God. One universal worship shall ascend to God from all everywhere. So Malachi prophesied afterward; “From the rising up of the sun even to the going down of the same My Name shall be great among the Gentiles, and “in every place” incense shall be offered unto God and a pure offering, for My Name shall be great among the pagan, saith the Lord of hosts” Malachi 1:11. Even a Jew says here: “This, without doubt, refers to the time to come, when all the inhabitants of the world shall know that the Lord is God, and that His is the greatness and power and glory, and He shall be called the God of the whole earth.” The “isles” or “coasts of the sea” are the more the emblem of the Church, in that, Cyril: “lying, as it were, in the sea of this world and encompassed by the evil events in it, as with bitter waters, and lashed by the most vehement waves of persecutions, the Churches are yet founded, so that they cannot fall, and rear themselves aloft, and are not overwhelmed by afflictions. For, for Christ‘s sake, the Churches cannot be shaken, and ‹the gates of hell shall not prevail against them‘ Matthew 16:18.”

Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by My sword - Literally, “Ye Ethiopians also, the slain of My sword are they.” Having summoned them to His throne, God speaks of them, not to them anymore; perhaps in compassion, as elsewhere in indignation. The Ethiopians were not in any direct antagonism to God and His people, but allied only to their old oppressor, Egypt. They may have been in Pharaoh Necho‘s army, in resisting which, as a subject of Assyria, Josiah was slain: they are mentioned Jeremiah 46:9 in that army which Nebuchadnezzar smote at Carchemish in the 4th year of Jehoiakim. The prophecy of Ezekiel implies rather, that Ethiopia should be involved in the calamities of Egypt, than that it should be itself invaded. “Great terror shall be in Ethiopia, ‹when the slain shall fall in Egypt‘ Ezekiel 30:4.” “Ethiopia and Lybia and Lydia etc. and all the men of the land that is in league, shall fall ‹with these,‘ by the sword” Ezekiel 30:5. “They also that ‹uphold Egypt‘ shall fall” Ezekiel 30:6.

Syene, the frontier-fortress over against Ethiopia, is especially mentioned as the boundary also of the destruction. “Messengers” God says, “shall go forth from Me to make the careless Ethiopians afraid” Ezekiel 30:9, while the storm was bursting in its full desolating force upon Egypt. All the other cities, whose destruction is foretold, are cities of lower or upper Egypt.

But such a blow as that foretold by Jeremiah and Ezekiel must have fallen heavily upon the allies of Egypt. We have no details, for the Egyptians would not, and did not tell of the calamities and disgraces of their country. No one does. Josephus, however, briefly but distinctly says, that after Nebuchadnezzar had in the 23rd year of his reign, the 5th after the destruction of Jerusalem, “reduced into subjection Moab and Ammon, he invaded Egypt, with a view to subdue it,” “killed its then king, and having set up another, captured for the second time the Jews in it and carried them to Babylon.” The memory of the devastation by Nebuchadnezzar lived on apparently in Egypt, and is a recognized fact among the Muslim historians, who had no interest in the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, of which it does not appear that they even knew.

Bokht-nasar (Nebuchadnezzar), they say, “made war on the son of Nechas (Necho), slew him and ruined the city of Memphis” and many other cities of Egypt: he carried the inhabitants captive, without leaving one, so that Egypt remained waste forty years without one inhabitant.” Another says, The refuge which the king of Egypt granted to the Jews who fled from Nebuchadnezzar brought this war upon it: for he took them under his protection and would not give them up to their enemy. Nebuchadnezzar, in revenge, marched against the king of Egypt and destroyed the country.” “One may be certain,” says a good authority, “that the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar was a tradition generally spread in Egypt and questioned by no one.”

Ethiopia was then involved, as an ally, and as far as its contingent was concerned, in the war, in which Nebuchadnezzar desolated Egypt for those 40 years. But, although this fulfilled the prophecy of Ezekiel, Isaiah, some sixty years before Zephaniah, prophesied a direct conquest of Ethiopia. I “have given,” God says, “Egypt as thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee” Isaiah 43:3. It lay in God‘s purpose, that Cyrus should restore His own people, and that his ambition should find its vent and compensation in the lands beyond. It may be that, contrary to all known human policy, Cyrus restored the Jews to their own land, willing to bind them to himself, and to make them a frontier territory toward Egypt, not subject only but loyal to himself. This is quite consistent with the reason which he assigns; “The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and He hath charged me to build Him an house at Jerusalem which is in Judah” Ezra 1:2-3; and with the statement of Josephus, that he was moved thereto by “reading the prophecy which Isaiah left, 210 years before.”

It is, alas! nothing new to Christians to have mixed motives for their actions: the exception is to have a single motive, “for the glory of God.” The advantage to himself would doubtless flash at once on the founder of a great empire, though it did not suggest the restoration of the Jews. Egypt and Assyria had always, on either side, wished to possess themselves of Palestine, which lay between them. Anyhow, one Persian monarch did restore the Jews; his successor possessed himself of “Egypt, and part, at least, of Ethiopia.” Cyrus wished, it is related, “to war in person against Babylon, the Bactrians, the Sacae, and Egypt.” He perished, as is known, before he had completed the third of his purposed conquests. Cambyses, although after the conquest of Egypt he planned ill his two more distant expeditions, reduced “the Ethiopians bordering upon Egypt” (“lower Ethiopia and Nubia”), and these “brought gifts” permanently to the Persian Sovereign. Even in the time of Xerxes, the Ethiopians had to furnish their contingent of troops against the Greeks. Herodotus describes their dress and weapons, as they were reviewed at Doriscus. Cambyses, then, did not lose his hold over Ethiopia and Egypt, when forced by the rebellion of Pseudo-Smerdis to quit Egypt.

Zephaniah began by singling out Judah amid the general destruction, “I will also stretch out My Hand upon Judah” Zephaniah 1:4; he sums up the judgment of the world in the same way; “He will stretch out, or, Stretch He forth, “His Hand against the north and destroy Asshur, and make Nineveh a desolation.” Judah had, in Zephaniah‘s time, nothing to fear from Assyria. Isaiah Isaiah 39:6 and Micah Micah 4:10 had already foretold, that the captivity would be to Babylon. Yet of Assyria alone the prophet, in his own person, expresses his own conformity with the mind of God. Of others he had said, “the word of the Lord is against you, O Canaan, and I will destroy thee; As I live, saith the Lord, Moab shall be as Sodom. Ye also, O Ethiopians, the, slain of My sword are they.” Of Assyria alone, by a slight inflection of the word, he expresses that he goes along with this, which he announces.

He does not say as an imprecation, “May He stretch forth His hand;” but gently, as continuing his prophecies, “and,” joining on Asshur with the rest; only instead of saying “He will stretch forth,” by a form almost insulated in Hebrew, he says, “And stretch He forth His Hand.” In a way not unlike, David having declared God‘s judgments, “The Lord trieth the righteous; and the wicked and the lover of violence doth His soul abhor, subjoineth, On the wicked rain He snares,” signifying that he (as all must be in the Day of judgment), is at one with the judgment of God. This is the last sentence upon Nineveh, enforcing that of Jonah and Nahum, yet without place of repentance now. He accumulates words expressive of desolateness. It should not only be a “desolation” Zephaniah 2:4, Zephaniah 2:9, as he had said of Ashkelon, Moab and Amman, but a dry, parched, unfruitful Isaiah 53:2 land. As Isaiah, under the same words, prophesies that the dry and desolate land should, by the Gospel, be glad, so the gladness of the world should become dryness and desolation. Asshur is named, as though one individual, implying the entireness of the destruction; all shall perish as one man; or as gathered into one and dependent upon one, its evil King. “The north” is not only Assyria, in that its armies came upon Judah from the north, but it stands for the whole power of evil (see Isaiah 14:13), as Nineveh for the whole beautiful, evil, world. The world with “the princes of this world” shall perish together.

And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her - No desolation is like that of decayed luxury. It preaches the nothingness of man, the fruitlessness of his toils, the fleetingness of his hopes and enjoyments, and their baffling when at their height. Grass in a court or on a once beaten road, much more, in a town, speaks of the passing away of what has been, that man was accustomed to be there, and is not, or is there less than he was. It leaves the feeling of void and forsakenness. But in Nineveh not a few tufts of grass here and there shall betoken desolation, it shall be one wild rank pasture, where “flocks” shall not feed only, but “lie down” as in their fold and continual resting place, not in the outskirts only or suburbs, but in the very center of her life and throng and busy activity, “in the midst of her,” and none shall fray them away. So Isaiah had said of the cities of Aroer, “they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down and none shall make them afraid” Isaiah 17:2, and of Judah until its restoration by Christ, that it should be “a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks” (Isaiah 32:14, compare Jeremiah 6:2). And not only those which are wont to be found in some connection with man, but “all the beasts of a nation”, the troops of wild and savage and unclean beasts which shun the dwellings of man or are his enemies, these in troops have their lair there.

Both the cormorant and the bittern - They may be the same. The pelican retires inland to consume its food. Tristram, Houghton, in Smith‘s Bible Dictionary, “Pelican” note. It could be a hedgehog.

Shall lodge in the upper lintels of it. - The “chapiters” (English margin) or capitals of the pillars of the temples and palaces shall lie broken and strewn upon the ground, and among those desolate fragments of her pride shall unclean animals haunt. The pelican has its Hebrew name from vomiting. It vomits up the shells which it had swallowed whole, after they had been opened by the heat of the stomach, and so picks out the animal contained in them, the very image of greediness and uncleanness. It dwells also not in deserts only but near marshes, so that Nineveh is doubly waste.

A voice shall sing in the windows - In the midst of the desolation, the muteness of the hedgehog and the pensive loneliness of the solitary pelican, the musing spectator is even startled by the gladness of a bird, joyous in the existence which God has given it. Instead of the harmony of music and men-singers and women-singers in their palaces shall be the sweet music of some lonely bird, unconscious that it is sitting “in the windows” of those, at whose name the world grew pale, portions of the outer walls being all which remain of her palaces. “Desolation” shall be “in the thresholds,” sitting, as it were, in them; everywhere to be seen in them; the more, because unseen. Desolation is something oppressive; we “feel” its presence. There, as the warder watch and ward at the empty portals, where once was the fullest throng, shall “desolation sit,” that no one enter. “For He shall uncover (hath uncovered, English margin) the cedar-work:” in the roofless palaces, the carved “cedar-work” shall be laid open to wind and rain. Any one must have noticed, how piteous and dreary the decay of any house in a town looks, with the torn paper hanging uselessly on its walls. A poet of our own said niche beautiful ruins of a wasted monastery:

“For the gay beams of lightsome day

Gild, but to flout the ruins gray.”

But at Nineveh it is one of the mightiest cities of the world which thus lies waste, and the bared “cedar-work” had, in the days of its greatness, been carried off from the despoiled Lebanon or Hermon.

This utter desolation is “the rejoicing city” (so unlike is it, that there is need to point out that it is the same); this is she, who was full of joy, exulting exceedingly, but in herself, not in God; “that dwelt carelessly,” literally, “securely,” and so carelessly; saying “Peace and safety” 1 Thessalonians 5:3, as though no evil would come upon her, and so perishing more certainly and miserably (see Judges 18:27) “That said in her heart,” this was her inmost feeling, the moving cause of all her deeds; “I am and there is none beside me;” literally, “and there is no I beside,” claiming the very attribute of God (as the world does) of self-existence, as if it alone were “I,” and others, in respect of her, were as nothing. Pantheism, which denies the being of God, as Author of the world, and claims the life in the material world to be God, and each living being to be a part of God, is only this self-idolatry, reflected upon and carried out in words. All the pride of the world, all self-indulgence which says, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” all covetousness which ends in this world, speaks this by its acts, “I and no I beside.”

How is she become a desolation - Has passed wholly into it, exists only as a desolation, “a place for beasts to lie down in,” a mere den for “the wild beasts. Every one that passeth by her shall hiss” in derision, “and wag” (or wave) “his hand” in detestation, as though putting the hand between them and it, so as not to look at it, or, as it were, motioning it away. The action is different from that of “clapping the hands in exultation” Nahum 3:19.

“It is not difficult,” Jerome says, “to explain this of the world, that when the Lord hath stretched forth His Hand over the north and destroyed the Assyrian, the Prince of this world, the world also perishes together with its Princes, and is brought to utter desolation, and is pitied by none, but all hiss and shake their hands at its ruin. But of the Church it seems, at first sight, blasphemous to say that it shall be a pathless desert, and wild beasts shall dwell in her, and that afterward it shall be said insultingly over her; ‹This is the city given up to ill, which “dwelt carelessly and said in her heart, I and none beside.”‘ But whoso should consider that of the Apostle, wherein he says, “in the last days perilous times shall come” 2 Timothy 3:1-5, and what is written in the Gospel, that “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” Matthew 24:12, so that then shall that be fulfilled, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find the faith on the earth?” he will not marvel at the extreme desolation of the Church, that, in the reign of antichrist, it shall be reduced to a desolation and given over to beasts, and shall suffer whatever the prophet now describes.

For if for unbelief “God spared not the natural branches,” but “brake them off,” and “turned rivers into a wilderness and the water-springs into a dry ground,” and “a fruitful land into barrenness, for the iniquity of them that dwell therein,” why not as to those of whom He had said, “He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into water-springs, and there He maketh the hungry to dwell” Psalm 107:33-36; and as to those whom “out of the wild olive He hath grafted into the good olive tree,” why, if forgetful of this benefit, they depart from their Maker and worship the Assyrian, should He not undo them and bring them to the same thirst wherein they were before? Which, whereas it may be understood generally of the coming of antichrist or of the end of the world, yet it may, day by day, be understood of those who feign to be of the Church of God, and “in works deny it, are hearers of the word not doers,” who in vain boast in an outward show, whereas herds that is, troops of vices dwell in them, and brute animals serving the body, and all the beasts of the field which devour their hearts (and pelicans, that is, gluttons, whose ‹god is their belly‘) and hedgehogs, a prickly animal full of spikes which pricketh whatever it toucheth.

After which it is subjoined, that the Church shall therefore suffer this, or hath suffered it, because it lifted itself up proudly and raised its head like a cedar, given up to evil works, and yet promising itself future blessedness, and despising others in its heart, nor thinking that there is any other beside itself, and saying, “I am, and there is no other beside me,” how is it become a solitude, a lair of beasts! For where before, dwelt the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and Angels presided over its ministries, there shall beasts dwell. And if we understand that, every one that passeth by shall hiss, we shall explain it thus; when Angels shall pass through her, and not remain in her, as was their wont, they shall be amazed and marvel, and shall not support and bear her up with their hand, when falling, but shall lift up the hands and shall pass by. Or they shall make a sound as those who mourn. But if we understand this of the devil and his angels, who destroyed the vine also that was brought out of Egypt, we shall say, that through the soul, which before was the temple of God and hath ceased so to be, the serpent passeth, and hisseth and spitteth forth the venom of his malice in her, and not this only, but setteth in motion his works which figuratively are called hands.”

Rup.: “The earlier and partial fulfillment of prophecy does not destroy, it rather confirms, the entire fulfillment to come. For whoso heareth of the destruction of mighty cities, is constrained to believe the truth of the Gospel, that the fashion of this world passeth away, and that, after the likeness of Nineveh and Babylon, the Lord will in the end judge the whole world also.”