Zephaniah 1:4

The prophet turns to Judah and Jerusalem. Though the Day of the Lord was the revelation of Jehovah to the world, and therefore a thing universal, the centre of the judgment in the view of the pre-exile prophets was Israel (Amos 1:2; Isaiah 2:3), for judgment began at the house of God (Amos 3:2). With the exile the judgment on Israel seemed to have been fulfilled, and during the exile and later the judgment of the Day of the Lord is represented as falling on the heathen world (Isaiah 13; Zechariah 1-6), and its issue is Israel's redemption. But after the Restoration, when Israel was again a people and far from answering to its ideal, prophets have to threaten it anew with the refiner's fire of the Day of the Lord (Malachi 3:2 ff.).

I will also stretch And I will stretch out my hand, i.e. in order to smite, Isaiah 5:25; Isaiah 9:12; Isaiah 14:26-27. As in Amos 1:2 the cloud laden with judgment trails round the horizon, discharging itself on one nation after another, and finally settles over Israel, so here Jehovah's wrath against all created things concentrates itself on Judah and Jerusalem.

the remnant of Baal from this place The words "from this place" imply that Zephaniah lived in Jerusalem. The term Baalappears to he used, particularly in later writers, not only of Baal proper, but also of the images of Jehovah, and even in a wider way of Jehovah under any false conception of His being. Worship rendered nominally to Jehovah, but unworthy of Him, and implying an inadequate conception of His nature, was stigmatised as Baal-worship. The expression the remnant, besides its natural sense of "that which is left," may mean "the whole," so that "remnant of Baal" may have the sense of "false worship wholly" (Isaiah 14:22), and this is probably the meaning here. For "remnant" Sept. gives namesof Baal, a rendering which may be due to the influence of Hosea 2:17, "I will take away the names of the Baalim out of her mouth." Cf. Zechariah 13:2.

the name of the Chemarims The A.V. plur. Chemarims is of the same sort as Cherubims (Genesis 3:24) and Seraphims (Isaiah 6:2); in Heb. the word Chemarim (pronounced Kemârim) is itself a plural. The term is derived from an Aramaic root, meaning "to be black," but whether the priests were so named as "black-robed" or for some other reason is not certain. In addition to the present passage the word is used in Hosea 10:5 of the priests of the calves in the northern kingdom, and in 2 Kings 23:5 of the priests of the high places in the cities of Judah and outside Jerusalem (A.V. idolatrous priests). In the latter passage the construction leaves it somewhat uncertain whether the strictly idolatrous priests who offered sacrifice to Baal, the sun and the moon, be also included among the Chemarim. In Hosea 10:5 the Sept. does not read the word, and in 2 Kings 23:5 it merely transcribes the name in Greek letters.

with the priests The clause is wanting in Sept., and may be a later addition. The view of Keil that "the priests" are the strictly idolatrous priests who sacrificed to Baal and other deities, while the Chemarim are the priests of the high places, has little probability; in such a case the term "priests" would have been more fully defined. Whether the clause be a gloss or not, the "priests" are probably the degenerate regular priests of Jehovah, such as are described in ch. Zephaniah 3:4.