Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Zephaniah 2:4 - 2:4

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Zephaniah 2:4 - 2:4


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Destruction of the Philistines. - Zep 2:4. “For Gaza will be forgotten, and Ashkelon become a desert; Ashdod, they drive it out in broad day, and Ekron will be ploughed out. Zep 2:5. Woe upon the inhabitants of the tract by the sea, the nation of the Cretans! The word of Jehovah upon you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines! I destroy thee, so that not an inhabitant remains. Zep 2:6. And the tract by the sea becomes pastures for shepherds' caves, and for folds of sheep. Zep 2:7. And a tract will be for the remnant of the house of Judah; upon them will they feed: in the houses of Ashkelon they encamp in the evening; for Jehovah their God will visit them, and turn their captivity.” The fourth verse, which is closely connected by kı̄ (for) with the exhortation to repentance, serves as an introduction to the threat of judgment commencing with hōi in Zep 2:5. As the mentioning of the names of the four Philistian capitals (see at Jos 13:3) is simply an individualizing periphrasis for the Philistian territory and people, so the land and people of Philistia are mentioned primarily for the purpose of individualizing, as being the representatives of the heathen world by which Judah was surrounded; and it is not till afterwards, in the further development of the threat, that the enumeration of certain near and remote heathen nations is appended, to express more clearly the idea of the heathen world as a whole. Of the names of the Philistian cities Zephaniah makes use of two, ‛Azzâh and ‛Eqrōn, as a play upon words, to express by means of paronomasia the fate awaiting them. ‛azzâh, Gaza, will be ‛azûbhâh, forsaken, desolate. ‛Eqrōn, Ekron, will be tē‛âqēr, rooted up, torn out of its soil, destroyed. To the other two he announces their fate in literal terms, the shemâmâh threatened against Ashkelon corresponding to the ‛ăzūbhâh, and the gârēsh predicated of Ashdod preparing the way for Ekron's tē‛âqēr. בַּצָּֽהֳרַיִם at noon, i.e., in broad day, might signify, when used as an antithesis to night, “with open violence” (Jerome, Kimchi); but inasmuch as the expulsion of inhabitants is not effected by thieves in the night, the time of noon is more probably to be understood, as v. Cölln and Rosenmüller suppose, as denoting the time of day at which men generally rest in hot countries (2Sa 4:5), in the sense of unexpected, unsuspected expulsion; and this is favoured by Jer 15:8, where the devastation at noon is described as a sudden invasion. The omission of Gath may be explained in the same manner as in Amo 1:6-8, from the fact that the parallelism of the clauses only allowed the names of four cities to be given; and this number was amply sufficient to individualize the whole, just as Zephaniah, when enumerating the heathen nations, restricts the number to four, according to the four quarters of the globe: viz., the Philistines in the west (Zep 2:5-7); the Moabites and Ammonites comprised in one in the east (Zep 2:8-10); the Cushites in the south (Zep 2:11, Zep 2:12); and Asshur, with Nineveh, in the north (north-east), (Zep 2:13-15). The woe with which the threat is commenced in Zep 2:5 applies to the whole land and people of the Philistines. Chebhel, the measure, then the tract of land measured out or apportioned (see at Deu 3:4; Deu 32:9, etc.). The tract of the sea is the tract of land by the Mediterranean Sea which was occupied by the Philistines (chebhel hayyâm = 'erets Pelishtı̄m). Zephaniah calls the inhabitants gōi Kerēthı̄m, nation of the Cretans, from the name of one branch of the Philistian people which was settled in the south-west of Philistia, for the purpose of representing them as a people devoted to kârath, or extermination. The origin of this name, which is selected both here and in Eze 25:16 with a play upon the appellative signification, is involved in obscurity; for, as we have already observed at 1Sa 30:14, there is no valid authority for the derivation which is now current, viz., from the island of Crete (see Stark, Gaza, pp. 66 and 99ff.). דְּבַר יי עֲלֵיכֶם forms an independent sentence: The word of the Lord cometh over you. The nature of that word is described in the next sentence: I will destroy thee. The name Kena‛an is used in the more limited sense of Philistia, and is chosen to indicate that Philistia is to share the lot of Canaan, and lose its inhabitants by extermination.