NINIVE DELENDA
Zep 2:4-15

THERE now come a series of articles on foreign nations, connected with the previous prophecy by the conjunction for, and detailing the worldwide judgment which it had proclaimed. But though dated from the same period as that prophecy, circa 626, these oracles are best treated by themselves.

These oracles originally formed one passage in the well-known Qinah or elegiac measure; but this has suffered sadly both by dilapidation and rebuilding. How mangled the text is may be seen especially from Zep 2:6 and Zep 2:14, where the Greek gives us some help in restoring it. The verses (Zep 2:8-11) upon Moab and Ammon cannot be reduced to the meter which both precedes and follows them. Probably, therefore, they are a later addition: nor did Moab and Ammon lie upon the way of the Scythians, who are presumably the invaders pictured by the prophet.

The poem begins with Philistia and the seacoast, the very path of the Scythian raid. Evidently the latter is imminent, the Philistine cities are shortly to be taken and the whole land reduced to grass. Across the emptied strip the long hope of Israel springs seaward; but-mark!-not yet with a vision of the isles beyond. The prophet is satisfied with reaching the edge of the Promised Land: "by the sea shall they feed" their flocks

"For Gaza forsaken shall be,
Ashk’lon a desert.
Ashdod-by noon shall they rout her,
And Ekron be torn up!"

"Ah! woe, dwellers of the sea-shore,
Folk of Kerethim.
The word of Jehovah against thee, Kenaan,
Land of the Philistines!"

"And I destroy thee to the last inhabitant,
And Kereth shall become shepherds’ cots, And folds for
flocks".

And the coast for the remnant of Judah’s house;
By the sea shall they feed
In Ashkelon’s houses at even shall they couch;

For Jehovah their God shall visit them,
And turn their captivity.

There comes now an oracle upon Moab and Ammon (Zep 2:8-11). As already said, it is not in the elegiac measure which precedes and follows it, while other features cast a doubt upon its authenticity. Like other oracles on the same peoples, this denounces the loud-mouthed arrogance of the sons of Moab and Ammon.

"I have heard {Cf. Isa 16:6} the reviling of Moab and the insults of the sons of Ammon, who have reviled My people and Vaunted themselves upon their border. Wherefore as I live, saith Jehovah of Hosts, God of Israel, Moab shall become as Sodom, and Ammon’s sons as Gomorrah-the possession of nettles, and saltpits, and a desolation forever; the remnant of My people shall spoil them, and the rest of My nation possess them. This to them for their arrogance, because they reviled, and vaunted themselves against, the people of Jehovah of Hosts. Jehovah showeth Himself terrible against them, for He hath made lean all gods of earth, that all the coasts of the nations may worship Him, every man from his own place."

The next oracle is a very short one (Zep 2:12) upon Egypt, which after its long subjection to Ethiopic dynasties is called, not Misraim, but Kush, or Ethiopia. The verse follows on naturally to Zep 2:7, but is not reducible to the elegiac measure.

Also ye, O Kusbites, are the slain of My sword

The Elegiac measure is now renewed in an oracle against Assyria, the climax and front of heathendom (Zep 2:13-15). It must have been written before 608; there is no reason to doubt that it is Zephaniah’s.

"And may He stretch out His hand against the North,
And destroy Asshur;
And may He turn Nineveh to desolation,
Dry as the desert."

And herds shall couch in her midst,
Every beast of . . .

Yea, pelican and bittern shall roost on the capitals;
The owl shall hoot in the window,
The raven on the doorstep.

"Such is the City, the Jubilant,
She that sitteth at ease,
She that saith in her heart, I am
And there is none else!
How hath she become desolation!
A lair of beasts
Everyone passing by her hisses,
Shakes his hand".

The essence of these oracles is their clear confidence in the fall of Nineveh. From 652, when Egypt revolted from Assyria, and, Assurbanipal notwithstanding, began to push northward, men must have felt, throughout all Western Asia, that the great empire upon the Tigris was beginning to totter. This feeling was strengthened by the Scythian invasion, and after 625 it became a moral certainty that Nineveh would fall-which happened in 607-6. These are the feelings, 625 to 608, which Zephaniah’s oracles reflect. We can hardly over-estimate what they meant. Not a man was then alive who had ever known anything else than the greatness and the glory of Assyria. It was two hundred and thirty years since Israel first felt the weight of her arms. It was more than a hundred since her hosts had swept through Palestine, and for at least fifty her supremacy had been accepted by Judah. Now the colossus began to totter. As she had menaced, so she was menaced. The ruins with which for nigh three centuries She had strewn Western Asia-to these were to be reduced her own impregnable and ancient glory. It was the close of an epoch.