Note 114 — Chapter III

The text reads the ruins (מַכְשֵׁלוֹת, unless we prefer with Wellhausen ‎מִכְשֹׁלים, the stumbling-blocks, i.e. idols) with the wicked, and I will cut off man (LXX. the lawless) from off the face of the ground. Some think the clause partly too redundant, partly too specific, to be original. But suppose we read וְהִכְשַׁלְתִּי (cf. Mal. ii. 8, Lam. i. 14 and passim: this is more probable than Schwally’s כִּשַׁלְתִּי, op. cit., p. 169), and for אדם the reading which probably the LXX. had before them, ‎אדם רשע (Job xx. 29, xxvii. 13, Prov. xi. 7: cf. אדם בליעל Prov. vi. 12) or אדם עַוָּל (cf. iii. 5), we get the rendering adopted in the translation above. Some think the whole passage an intrusion, yet it is surely probable that the earnest moral spirit of Zephaniah would aim at the wicked from the very outset of his prophecy.