Zephaniah 1:1

THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ZEPHANIAH

Chronological Notes relative to this Book, upon the supposition that it was written in the twelfth year of the reign of Josiah, king of Judah

-Year from the Creation, according to Archbishop Usher, 3374.

-Year of the Julian Period, 4084.

-Year since the Flood, 1718.

-Year from the vocation of Abram, 1291.

-Year from the foundation of Solomon's temple, 382.

-Year since the division of Solomon's monarchy into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, 346.

-Year since the conquest of Coroebus at Olympia, usually called the first Olympiad, 147.

-Third year of the thirty-seventh Olympiad.

-Year from the building of Rome, according to the Varronian computation, 124.

-Year of the era of Nabonassar, 118.

-Year since the destruction of the kingdom of Israel by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, 92.

-Year before the birth of Christ, 626.

-Year before the vulgar era of Christ's nativity, 630.

-Cycle of the Sun, 24.

-Cycle of the Moon, 18.

-Eighteenth year of Phraortes, king of Media. This monarch is supposed by some to have been the same with the Arphaxad of the Apocrypha.

-Eleventh year of Philip I., king of Macedon.

-Twenty-second year of Archidamus, king of Lacedaemon, of the family of the Proclidae.

-Fifteenth year of Eurycrates II., king of Lacedaemon, of the family of the Eurysthenidae.

-Twenty-ninth year of Cypselus, who had seized upon the government of Corinth.

-Forty-second year of Psammitichus, king of Egypt, according to Helvicus.

-Tenth year of Kiniladachus, king of Babylon, according to the same chronologer. This monarch was the immediate predecessor of Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar.

-Second year of Sadyattes, king of Lydia.

-Eleventh year of Ancus Martius, the fifth king of the Romans.

-Twelfth year of Josiah, king of Judah.

CHAPTER I

This chapter begins with denouncing God's judgments against

Judah and Jerusalem, 1-3.

Idolaters, and sinners of several other denominations, are then

particularly threatened; and their approaching visitation

enlarged on, by the enumeration of several circumstances which

tend greatly to heighten its terrors, 4-18.

NOTES ON CHAP. I

Verse Zephaniah 1:1. The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah] Though this prophet has given us so large a list of his ancestors, yet little concerning him is known, because we know nothing certain relative to the persons of the family whose names are here introduced. We have one chronological note which is of more value for the correct understanding of his prophecy than the other could have been, how circumstantially soever it had been delivered; viz., that he prophesied in the days of Josiah, son of Amon, king of Judah; and from the description which he gives of the disorders which prevailed in Judea in his time, it is evident that he must have prophesied before the reformation made by Josiah, which was in the eighteenth year of his reign. And as he predicts the destruction of Nineveh, Zephaniah 2:13, which, as Calmet remarks, could not have taken place before the sixteenth of Josiah, allowing with Berosus twenty-one years for the reign of Nabopolassar over the Chaldeans; we must, therefore, place this prophecy about the beginning of the reign of Josiah, or from B.C. 640 to B.C. 609. But see the chronological notes.