Note 84 — Chapter II

Kleinert in his Commentary in Lange’s Bibelwerk, and Delitzsch in his article in Herzog’s Real-Encyclopädie², both offer a number of inconclusive arguments. These are drawn from the position of Zephaniah after Habakkuk, but, as we have seen, the order of the Twelve is not always chronological; from the supposition that Zephaniah i. 7, Silence before the Lord Jehovah, quotes Habakkuk ii. 20, Keep silence before Him, all the earth, but the phrase common to both is too general to be decisive, and if borrowed by one or other may just as well have been Zephaniah’s originally as Habakkuk’s; from the phrase remnant of Baal (i. 4), as if this were appropriate only after the Reform of 621, but it was quite as appropriate after the beginnings of reform six years earlier; from the condemnation of the sons of the king (i. 8), whom Delitzsch takes as Josiah’s sons, who before the great Reform were too young to be condemned, while later their characters did develop badly and judgment fell upon all of them, but sons of the king, even if that be the correct reading (LXX. house of the king), does not necessarily mean the reigning monarch’s children; and from the assertion that Deuteronomy is quoted in the first chapter of Zephaniah, and “so quoted as to show that the prophet needs only to put the people in mind of it as something supposed to be known,” but the verses cited in support of this (viz. 13, 15, 17: cf. Deut. xxviii. 30 and 29) are too general in their character to prove the assertion. See translation below.