to gather for any purpose · verb, qal infinitive absolute
consume
אָסֵ֜ף'a.Sef
H5486
to snatch away · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
land
פְּנֵ֥יpe.Nei
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · noun, common masculine plural construct
saith
נְאֻםne.'um-
H5002
an oracle · noun, common masculine singular construct
LORD
יְהוָֽהYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
2 Kings 22:16-17 Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book which the k…
Micah 7:13 Notwithstanding the land shall be desolate because of them that dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings.
Jeremiah 36:29 And thou shalt say to Jehoiakim king of Judah, Thus saith the LORD; Thou hast burned this roll, saying, Why hast thou written therein, sayin…
Ezekiel 33:27-29 Say thou thus unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; As I live, surely they that are in the wastes shall fall by the sword, and him that is in…
Genesis 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the f…
2 Chronicles 36:21 To fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept s…
Isaiah 6:11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utt…
Jeremiah 6:8-9 Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee; lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Zephaniah 1:1-6
Here is, I. The title-page of this book (Zep 1:1), in which we observe, 1. What authority it has, and who gave it that authority; it is from heaven, and not of men: It is the word of the Lord. 2. Who was the instrument of conveying it to the church. His name was Zephaniah, which signifies the servant of the Lord, for God revealed his secrets to his servants the prophets. The pedigree of other prophets, whose extraction we have an account of, goes no further back than their father, except Zecharias, whose grandfather also is named. But this of Zephaniah goes back four generations, and the highest mentioned is Hizkiah; it is the very same name in the original with that of Hezekiah king of Juda…
utterly consume--from a root to "sweep away," or "scrape off utterly." See Jer 8:13, Margin, and here.
from off the land--of Judah.
Adam Clarke on Zephaniah 1:2
I will utterly consume all things - All being now ripe for destruction, I will shortly bring a universal scourge upon the land. He speaks particularly of the idolaters.
John Gill on Zephaniah 1:2
I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. That is, from the land of Judah, by means of the Chaldeans or Babylonians: this is a general denunciation of the judgments of God, the particulars follow: or, "in gathering I will gather"; all good things out of the land; all the necessaries of life, and blessings of Providence; all that is for the sustenance and pleasure of man, as well as all creatures, by death or captivity; and so the land should be entirely stripped, and left naked and bare. The phrase denotes the certainty of the thing, as well as the utter, entire, and total consumption that should be made, and the vehemence and earnestness in which it is expressed.
John Calvin on Zephaniah 1:2-3
The Church Fathers
(Verse 2, 3.) Gathering I will gather all from the face of the earth, says the Lord, gathering man and beast, gathering the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea: and the ruins of the wicked will be, and I will destroy men from the face of the earth, says the Lord. LXX: They will fail from the face of the earth, says the Lord: man and beast will fail: the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea will fail ÷ and the wicked will be weakened, and I will remove the unjust from the face of the earth, says the Lord. What we have placed in the Septuagint, and the wicked will be weakened, was added from Theodotion's translation: for which Symmachus interpreted, and the stumbling blocks with the wicked, so that it is understood, will be gathered, or will fail. But the fifth edition, the weakness will fail with the wicked. Therefore, following our custom, we must first relate the history, and afterwards debate about the higher things. For it is beyond doubt that the final kingdom of the two tribes, which were called Judah and Benjamin, was under Josiah. For, with him being killed, his sons who later reigned and his grandsons should not be believed to have ruled so much as to have been mocked by the Egyptian king and the Chaldeans and various captivities and tortures. Therefore, because the people were able to excuse themselves in the face of wicked kings and say, 'We want to serve God, but we are prohibited by the kings,' a just king is given, who zealously seeks the zeal of the Lord, and yet the people persist in the worship of idols. Thus, a just cause for anger is brought forth by the Lord, and the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of Judah and the victory of Nebuchadnezzar are prophesied. And the Lord said through the prophet: I will no longer show mercy; instead I will consume everything on the face of the earth: no man, no beast, no bird, no fish of the sea will remain. For even the animals feel the anger of the Lord; and with cities destroyed and people killed, a desolation and scarcity of beasts, birds, and fish also occurs, as witness is Illyricum, witness is Thrace, witness is where I was born, a land where everything, except the sky and the earth and the growing thorns, and the thickets of the forests, has perished. However, as the prophet says, this will happen because there was an excessive multitude of the wicked. Therefore, the wicked will…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Zephaniah 1:2, 3
2. I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord
2. Perdendo perdam (vel, colligendo colligam) omnia ex superficie terrae, dicit Jehova.
3. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord.
3. Perdam (vel, colligam) hominem et bestiam; perdam autem avem coelorum, et pisces maris; et offendicula erunt impiis; et excidam hominem e superficie terrae, dicit Jehova.
It might seem at the first view that the Prophet dealt too severely in thus fulminating against his own nation; for he ought to have begun with do…
Zep 1:1 contains the heading, which has been explained in the introduction. Zep 1:2 and Zep 1:3 form the preface. - Zep 1:2. "I will sweep, sweep away everything from the face of the earth, is the saying of Jehovah. Zep 1:3. I will sweep away man and cattle, sweep away the fowls of heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the offences with the sinners, and I cut off men from the face of the earth, is the saying of Jehovah." The announcement of the judgment upon the whole earth not only serves to sharpen the following threat of judgment upon Judah and Jerusalem in this sense, "Because Jehovah judges the whole world, He will punish the apostasy of Judah all the more;" but the judgment upon the w…
The list of the things that God will sweep away in his judgment is in reverse order to their creation (Gen 1:20-26): people and animals . . . birds . . . fish, because judgment is a reversal of creation.
Rashi on Zephaniah 1:2
I will totally destroy An expression of destruction, as in (Jud. 18:25) “and you will lose your life,” mentioned regarding Micah. The “aleph” is defective in the second word, for it should have been written אֶאֱסֹף There are many [defective alephs] like these, as in (Isa. 13:20) “no Arab shall pitch his tent there,” which is like יֶאֱהַל.
