Comparison With Habakkuk and Jeremiah
Zephaniah like Habakkuk will be found to have some points of resemblance with the prophet Jeremiah; and this not merely in the fact that the Chaldean is the enemy of which both treat, but also in their both setting forth the blessedness reserved for Israel and Jerusalem when the judgments of Jehovah shall have been executed on the nations. Nevertheless, there is this wide difference between the two lesser prophets; that Zephaniah in treating of the glory of God is much more external, while Habakkuk dwells far more on the needed exercises of heart with God’s answer to the Jew both now and hereafter. Thus, the two minor prophets take up each a separate item of the prophet of Anathoth. Jeremiah’s prophecy abounds in internal exercises of heart, and here Habakkuk resembled him. We see his grief and hear his complaints and laments to Jehovah when evil was allowed to prevail. On the other hand, he shows us the execution of divine judgment which will set aside the proud Gentiles and reduce the people of God to their true place, in order that, being abased in heart, they may be exalted outwardly. Zephaniah presents rather the latter, as Habakkuk the former. Jerusalem is in the foreground, but in connection with the general judgment of the nations from whose evils the Jews had in no way kept themselves apart. Thus, there is no precise mention of the apostate powers of the latter day. As Antichrist therefore is not named or specially described, so neither is the Messiah, save generally as the Jehovah God of Israel.