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Selected Verse: Zephaniah 3:6 - King James
| Verse |
Translation |
Text |
| Zep 3:6 |
King James |
I have cut off the nations: their towers are desolate; I made their streets waste, that none passeth by: their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant. |
Summary Of Commentaries Associated With The Selected Verse
| A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882] |
I had hoped that My people by My judgments on other nations would be led to amendment; but they are not, so blinded by sin are they.
towers--literally, "angles" or "corners"; hence the towers built at the angles of their city walls. Under Josiah's long and peaceful reign the Jews were undisturbed, while the great incursion of Scythians into Western Asia took place. The judgment on the ten tribes in a former reign also is here alluded to. |
| Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834] |
I have cut off the nations - God appeals to His judgments on pagan nations, not on any particular nation, as far as we know; but to past history, whether of those, of whose destruction Israel itself had been the instrument, or others. The judgments upon the nations before them were set forth to them, when they were about to enter on their inheritance, as a warning to themselves. "Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things, for in all these have the nations defiled themselves, which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled; therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants. And ye, ye shall keep My statutes and My judgements and shall not commit any of these abominations - And the land shall not spue you out when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations which were before you" (Lev 18:24-26, Lev 18:28, add Lev 20:23). The very possession then of the land was a warning to them; the ruins, which crowned so many of its hilltops , were silent preachers to them; they lived among the memories of God's visitations; if neglected, they were an earnest of future judgments on themselves.
Yet God's judgments are not at one time only. Sennacherib appealed to their own knowledge, "Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly. Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed?" Isa 37:11, Isa 37:13. Hezekiah owned it as a fact which he knew: "Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their land" Isa 37:18. And God owns him as His instrument: "Now I have brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defensed cities into ruinous heaps" Isa 37:26 : and, "I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to tread them down as the mire of the streets," and says of him, "It is in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations not a few" . The king of Babylon too he describes as "the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms. that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof" Isa 14:16-17. Habakkuk recently described the wide wasting by the Babylonians, and the helplessness of nations before him Hab 1:14-16.
Their towers, corner towers - o, the most carefully fortified parts of their fortified cities, "are desolate; I made their streets waste." The desolation is complete, within as well as without; ruin itself is hardly so desolate as the empty habitations and forsaken streets, once full of life, where
"The echoes and the empty tread
Would sound like voices from the dead." |
| Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible, by John Wesley [1754-65] |
| The nations - Of old, the Canaanites, lastly the ten tribes, and later yet, the Assyrians. |
| Adam Clarke Commentary on the Whole Bible - Published 1810-1826 |
| I have cut off the nations - Syria, Israel, and those referred to, Isa 36:18, Isa 36:20. - Newcome. |
14 And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them?
15 They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag: therefore they rejoice and are glad.
16 Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag; because by them their portion is fat, and their meat plenteous.
16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;
17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?
26 Hast thou not heard long ago, how I have done it; and of ancient times, that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps.
18 Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations, and their countries,
13 Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arphad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?
11 Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly; and shalt thou be delivered?
23 And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.
28 That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.
24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:
25 And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.
26 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you:
20 Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?
18 Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The LORD will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?