Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgement; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger.- Zep_2:3.
1. The prophet's mood takes another turn. He implores the people to repent before that day of the Lord come upon them. (This point of transition is obscured by the Authorized Version-“Gather yourselves together,” where the real meaning, as Rosenmüller has pointed out, is “Carefully examine your souls and be ashamed.” Fuerst renders it “Play the man.”) Then the prophet adds soothingly, “Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgement; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger”-a passage which is suspected for the lateness of its ring and the religious sense of “meek,” and which, indeed, hardly belongs to this portion of the prophecy, but is confessedly the highest word on the religious life in the Old Testament.
Repentance is a principle of hope and a pledge of restoration through return to God. Lacerated pride is a principle of despair: the self on which it relied has failed, and there is no other strength within its view. Repentance, then, is essentially different from sorrow at having to suffer, and from self-contempt at having failed. Repentance is sorrow for having offended the love of God: and we must add, that, where repentance exists, full forgiveness follows.… Repentance must go before forgiveness: and the sorrow in which repentance consists must be real suffering, deeply felt and patiently endured. The acuteness of the suffering is the measure of our repentance; and repentance is the guarantee of forgiveness.1 [Note: Bishop A. Chandler, Ara Cœli.]
2. Note the absence of all mention of the Divine mercy as the cause of deliverance. Zephaniah has no gospel of that kind. The conditions of escape are sternly ethical-meekness, the doing of justice and righteousness. His view of God insists on a rigid adherence to the principles of morality, which the purity, justice, and righteousness of God undoubtedly require of His subjects. Acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Jehovah will therefore naturally result in a humble worship and a moral life. According to the view of this prophet, God rules by fear, and only by chastisement can erring men be brought to worship and to live as they ought. It is a stern gospel, but it is earnest, virile, and rigidly moral. This austerity is largely the result of Zephaniah's faith and moral convictions. He has a marvellous grip of universal history, and the Divine Providence is recognized by him in the movements of great nations. These are but the instruments of the Almighty Ruler over all, and fulfil His great purposes. Divine judgment falls universally upon them, because they do not acknowledge the power of the God Jehovah. It falls most heavily on Judah, because its people, notwithstanding their special privileges, are false and faithless to Him. Nothing but the fires of judgment can proclaim the Divine sovereignty and bring all people to their true attitude towards Jehovah. The meek and the humble alone can live before Him and secure His Divine protection.
The conception of God in His world, not as the mere spectator of the fulfilment of His own immutable decrees, but as the Lord of Hosts, presiding over the great scene of conflict between good and evil in the souls of men who can only attain to real holiness through real liberty, and warring mightily on the side of good in order that it may win the victory, infinitely exalts and glorifies Him. We see Him in the teaching of Jesus, as the High Captain of the armies of love, working salvation in the midst of the earth, pleading with men to accept His mercy, warning them to escape from His judgments, sustaining the good in their goodness, overthrowing the wicked in their wickedness, bringing light out of darkness and triumph out of defeat, amid all strifes and storms maintaining His kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. His sovereignty embraces human liberty as the ocean surrounds an island. His sovereignty upholds human liberty as the air upholds a flying bird. His sovereignty defends human liberty as the authority of a true king defends the liberty of his subjects,-nay, rather, as the authority of a father tenderly and patiently respects and protects the spiritual freedom of his children in order that they may learn to love and obey him gladly and of their own accord. For this is the end of God's sovereignty: that His kingdom may come; that His will may be done on earth,-not as it is done in the circling of the stars or in the blossoming of flowers,-but as it is done in heaven, where created spirits freely strike the notes that blend in perfect harmony with the music of the Divine Spirit.1 [Note: H. van Dyke, The Gospel for an Age of Doubt, 270.]
3. The permanent value of such a message is proved by the thirst which we feel even to-day for the clear, cold water of its simple promises. Where a glaring optimism prevails, and the future is preached with a loud assurance, where many find their only religious enthusiasm in the resurrection of mediæval ritual or the singing of stirring and gorgeous hymns of second-hand imagery, how needful to be recalled to the earnestness and severity of life, to the simplicity of the conditions of salvation, and to their ethical, not emotional, character! Where sensationalism has so invaded religion, how good to hear the sober insistence upon God's daily commonplaces-“morning by morning he bringeth forth his judgment to light”-and to know that the acceptance of discipline is what prevails with Him. Where national reform is vaunted and the progress of education, how well to go back to a prophet who ignored all the great reforms of his day that he might impress his people with the indispensableness of humility and faith. Where Churches have such large ambitions for themselves, how necessary to hear that the future is destined for a poor folk, the meek and the honest. Where men boast that their religion-Bible, Creed, or Church-has undertaken to save them, “vaunting themselves on the mount of my holiness,” how needful to hear salvation placed upon character and a very simple trust in God.
Action may be formally and even morally correct without rendering its agent good; whereas goodness of character ensures good conduct. A man may tell the truth a hundred times, and for various reasons, without being a truthful man. But an essentially truthful man cannot but tell the truth. And so what we are is ethically more important than what we do. This importance of character in relation to conduct is obvious when once stated, and has been recognized by all the great ethical systems, but it is tacitly ignored in much that passes muster for morality in the rough-and-ready estimate of the ordinary world. For men are very apt to lead departmental lives, and, if they do their duty in that department which meets the public eye, they are allowed higher moral rank than in fact they deserve. Thus a man may be a brave soldier, or an able statesman, or a just judge, or a skilful surgeon, or an honest merchant, and be accepted accordingly, without, all the while, being a good man. And however useful such men may be to society, and rightly recognized as such, their total effect is, in many subtle and imperceptible ways, to lower and confuse the moral standard of the world. There is always need, therefore, for the protest that no amount of externally good conduct, however praiseworthy in itself, can take the place of a good will-a will, that is to say, which does not merely will this or that particular good action, but goodness for its own sake, goodness as such; or, in other words, a good character.1 [Note: J. R. Illingworth, Christian Character (ed. 1904), 29.]
4. Next follows an elegy or dirge, rising occasionally to a wild ecstasy of denunciation. The threatened doom will engulf, he declares, in succession the Philistines, Moab and Ammon, Ethiopia, and even Nineveh, the proud Assyrian capital, itself. From Nineveh the prophet turns again to address Jerusalem, and describes afresh the sins rampant in her, especially the sins of her judges and great men, and her refusal to take warning from the example of her neighbours. The threat against Assyria and Nineveh, its chief city, was not new. About this period it received its strongest and most passionate expression in the prophecy of Nahum. One can understand how, after the tyranny and cruelty of Assyria, and after Isaiah's teaching that though Jehovah might use the proud empire He would punish it, the people of Judah came to look upon this particular foreign power as the personification of wickedness. The judgment of the world has as one of its chief features the destruction of Nineveh. A century later Babylon came to occupy this place in the thoughts of Jewish patriots, but as yet the Babylonian conquest with all its horrors is still in the future. This prediction is not a mere cry for revenge, but an expression of faith in a righteous Ruler who will bring the proud nation to account for its many crimes.
The prophet spoke, and in fact it happened that judgment fell; the nations passed. Israel was chastised; it went into captivity. And there did come back that meek, that poor, that lowly, that afflicted people, despised even of the Samaritans-those feeble Jews. They came back trusting in Jehovah; they laid the foundations of that piteous and miserable new Temple. Its very foundations caused contempt; those who remembered the old Temple could but weep. But this new Temple was to be clothed with a glory which the old Temple had never known. It was the religion of humanity that was to come out from that regenerated and purged people-that little band of the meek of the earth. It happened in fact. It happened over again when Israel had become proud and haughty; once more, and once again, Mary sang her Magnificat in the glory of her royal heart-“He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted the humble and meek.” And, once again, it was the unknown and the meek, it was Simeon and Anna, it was Joseph and Mary, it was the despised of Nazareth, who formed the seed of God's new Israel. Such is the glorious result of the discipline of the Lord. An evil and corrupt people passes through the ordeal of purification and affliction, and comes forth united, strong, full of trust in the Lord, no longer lifted up with pride, no longer boastful of wealth, but meek, and poor, and true.
However much pessimists, like Schopenhauer and Hartmann, may rail at the suffering, as distinct from the sin, that is in the world, it is an incontestable fact of experience that suffering can fashion human character as nothing else can do. Bacon and Shakespeare are no mean authorities where a knowledge of human nature is concerned; and we are all familiar with Shakespeare's “Sweet are the uses of adversity,” while Bacon forcibly says, “Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.” “That misery does not make all virtuous,” says Dr. Johnson, “experience too clearly informs us; but it is no less certain that of what virtue there is, misery produces far the greater part.” These are not the words of morose fanatics, but of thoughtful men of the world. And an equally impartial modern moralist makes the striking observation that “the older men grow in life, the more work becomes their real play, and suffering their real work.”
We cannot help feeling at times that there are deeper reasons for this than we yet understand; but at the same time those which we can understand are very plain. In the first place, self-will is the root of all the sin that we have to overcome; and the patient acceptance of events which conflict sharply with our self-will is often a more powerful remedy for it than even voluntary self-denial, since it involves a greater effort, and is less liable to be tainted by any admixture of pride, which has so often in the history of asceticism brought back the old self in a new form. It is therefore the best cure for self-will. But, further, the Christian, as such, believes in a particular providence, and therefore that his misfortunes represent not merely the incidence upon him of general laws, but God's personal will for him in particular. Their acceptance, therefore, is a direct acquiescence in God's will, a union of the will with God. And further again than this, it is in times of trouble that men most immediately feel their need of Divine assistance. And this leads them to prayer, wherein not the will only, but their whole personality, seeks union with God-seeks it, and, as those alone know who have so sought it in the way of sorrows, finds it in a degree that language has no power to express. “It is good for me that I have been in trouble,” says the Psalmist, “that I might learn thy statutes.” “Before I was troubled I went wrong: but now have I kept thy testimonies.”
And this is the universal verdict of the religious consciousness.1 [Note: J. R. Illingworth, Christian Character (ed. 1904), 52.]
