Zephaniah 1.5a-The Lord Will Violently Execute As Criminals Those Worshipping the Celestial Bodies
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Tuesday February 9, 2016
Zephaniah: Zephaniah 1:5a-The Lord Will Violently Execute As Criminals Those Worshipping the Celestial Bodies
Lesson # 14
Zephaniah 1:4 “So I will stretch out My hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the names of the idolatrous priests along with the priests. 5 And those who bow down on the housetops to the host of heaven, and those who bow down and swear to the LORD and yet swear by Milcom.” (NASB95)
“And those who bow down on the housetops to the host of heaven” is an addition to the previous prophetic statements recorded in Zephaniah 1:4.
“The host of heaven” is composed of the following: (1) masculine singular construct form of the noun ṣābāʾ (צָבָא), “the host of” (2) articular masculine plural dual noun šāmayim (שְׁמַיִן), “heaven.”
The noun ṣābāʾ means “host” referring to a large group or vast array of people or things and here it is used of the celestial bodies (cf. Genesis 1:2; Deuteronomy 4:19).
The word therefore, refers to the various luminous bodies in the stellar universe such as moons, stars, suns and planets that generate light or have luminescence and are visible to people on earth through the naked eye.
The noun ṣābāʾ is the object of the preposition l which is used to mark this word as the direct object of the verb ḥāwâ indicating that the various luminous bodies in the stellar universe receive the action of being worshipped by certain individuals in the city of Jerusalem.
The articular masculine plural dual noun šāmayim means “the heavens” referring to the stellar universe.
“Those who bow down” is the articular masculine plural ʾeštafʿēl or Hishtaphel participle form of the verb ḥāwâ (חָוָה), which pertains to the act of prostrating oneself to worship a particular deity.
It speaks of taking a low stance as a sign of honor, worship and homage of a particular deity with an associative meaning of allegiance to that deity.
Prostration was quite common in the ancient world as an act of submission before a superior.
The ʾeštafʿēl or Hishtaphel stem of this verb ḥāwâ expresses the causative reflexive action “to prostrate oneself.”
This is specifically a reflexive-iterative ʾeštafʿēl or Hishtaphel stem where the subject acts upon itself repeatedly.
This would therefore indicate a person who repeatedly prostrates themselves on the ground in order to worship a particular or thing or person.
“On the housetops” is composed of the following: (1) preposition ʿal (עַל), “on” (2) articular feminine plural form of the noun gāg (גָּג), “the housetops.”
The noun gāg is in the plural and means “rooftops” since it pertains to the top part of a building construction, flat and available for use by humans.
It speaks of the highest point of an edifice.
The roof referred to here is flat and not peaked.
People would easily be able to go on the roofs of their houses, because in Palestine house roofs were normally flat.
Zephaniah 1:4 “Furthermore, I will surely stretch out My hand against Judah as well as each and every one of Jerusalem’s inhabitants. Specifically, I will bring about the violent removal from this place the number belonging to Baal, the well-known pagan priests. 5 Also, those who repeatedly prostrate themselves on their rooftops before the multitude of celestial bodies belonging to the stellar universe. Likewise those who bind themselves by a promise to remain loyal to the Lord while at the same they bind themselves by a promise to remain loyal to the king.” (Author’s translation)
Zephaniah 1:5 contains two more prophetic statements which are an addition to the previous prophetic statements recorded in Zephaniah 1:4 and Zephaniah 1:3.
Zephaniah 1:5 presents another group of individuals who will be violently removed from the city of Jerusalem by the Lord in addition to those who worship Baal and their well-known pagan priests.
The first prophetic statement in Zephaniah 1:5 predicts that the Lord will violently remove from the city of Jerusalem those who repeatedly prostrate themselves on their rooftops before the multitude of celestial bodies belonging to the stellar universe.
In other words, the Lord will violently execute those in the city of Jerusalem in Zephaniah’s day who worship the various celestial bodies in the stellar universe on their rooftops of their homes.
So this prophecy indicates that many Jews in Judah and in the city of Jerusalem climbed onto the flat roofs of their homes to worship the sun, moon, and the stars.
This practice is as old as Babylon where it originated and is also as modern as the horoscope in your newspaper.
This worship of the various luminescent bodies in the stellar universe took place at night since the heavenly bodies could only be seen at night (cf. Jer. 19:13; 32:29).
This type of worship was also called “Sabeanism.”
It was quite prevalent early in the Middle East and was widely practiced in Israel, both northern and southern kingdoms (see 2 Kings 21:3, 5; 23:5-6; Jeremiah 7:17-18; 44:17-19, 25).
King Josiah of Judah outlawed the practice in Judah (2 Kings 23:5).
These individuals were thus practicing idolatry in that they were worshipping the creation of God rather than God Himself.
Thus they were worthy of death because they disobeyed the first and second of the Ten Commandments.
God warned Israel about this practice but Manasseh led Israel into this perversion according to 2 Kings 21:3, 5 (cf. 2 Kings 23:4-5).
Instead of letting God guide in making decisions in their lives by listening and reading His Word and asking for advice in prayer, these individuals turn to astrology to give them answers.
Astrology and the worship of the stars is prohibited in the Mosaic Law.
Deuteronomy 4:19 “And beware not to lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” (NASB95)
Deuteronomy 17:3 and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly host, which I have not commanded, 4 and if it is told you and you have heard of it, then you shall inquire thoroughly. Behold, if it is true and the thing certain that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, 5 then you shall bring out that man or that woman who has done this evil deed to your gates, that is, the man or the woman, and you shall stone them to death. 6 “On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. 7 “The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” (NASB95)
Michael Bentley writes “A while ago, my wife and I were on a trip into the outback of Australia and we stayed one night at a cattle station rest house where the nearest neighbours were over 300 kilometres away and the camp generator was switched off at 10 p.m. At 2 a.m. I needed to visit the toilet block. Initially I was very careful where I put my foot, because the area was infested with many highly poisonous snakes, but I forgot all about that as my eyes were drawn upwards. My mouth fell open as I was transfixed by the wonder and glory of the night sky. I had never seen the Milky Way with such clarity and, although the southern night sky was completely foreign to me—apart from the Southern Cross—I just gazed in awe at the vastness of it all. Having seen that, I can easily understand why heathen people, without knowledge of God, would have been in dread of the immensity of the heavens and the gods who, they believed, dwelt there. It is no surprise that heathen people would have gone up onto their flat roofs and bowed down to worship the starry hosts. Certainly most people who gaze up into the night sky cannot fail to realize that there is someone, somewhere, who is far greater than we are. Heathens would have worshipped the heavens; but God’s people should have known better. Those who want to follow the practices of the world around them, however, will quickly learn to accept the norms of society. Worship of the stars had been closely linked to Baal fertility worship for many generations, and, for Zephaniah, the adoption of this false religion was just one more way of men serving ‘created things rather than the Creator’ (Rom. 1:25).”