Zephaniah 2.7a-The Remnant of Judah Will Occupy the Mediterranean Coast and the Philistine City Ashkelon
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Wednesday April 20, 2016
Zephaniah: Zephaniah 2:7a-The Remnant of Judah Will Occupy the Mediterranean Coast and the Philistine City Ashkelon
Lesson # 45
Zephaniah 2:5 Woe to the inhabitants of the seacoast, the nation of the Cherethites! The word of the LORD is against you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines; And I will destroy you so that there will be no inhabitant. 6 So the seacoast will be pastures, with caves for shepherds and folds for flocks. 7 And the coast will be for the remnant of the house of Judah, they will pasture on it. In the houses of Ashkelon they will lie down at evening; For the LORD their God will care for them and restore their fortune. (NASB95)
“And the coast will be for the remnant of the house of Judah” is advancing upon and intensifying the previous prophetic declaration recorded in Zephaniah 2:6 which asserted that the Mediterranean coastal plains will, as a certainty be pasture lands, dwelling places as well as sheep pens for shepherds.
“The coast” is the masculine singular form of the noun ḥebel (חֶבֶל), which means “boundary, region, coast” since it pertains to the end or limit of a fixed area.
“For the remnant of the house of Judah” is composed of the following: (1) preposition l (לְ), “for” (2) feminine singular construct form of the noun šĕʾērît (שְׁאֵרִית), “the remnant of” (3) masculine singular construct form of the noun bayit (בַּיִת), “the house” (4) masculine singular form of the proper name yĕhûdâ (יְהוּדָה), “Judah.”
The proper name yĕhûdâ, “Judah” means “I will praise the Lord” and was the name given to the fourth child that Leah bore to Jacob whose birth is recorded in Genesis 29:35.
In Zephaniah 2:7 it refers to the southern kingdom.
After the death of Solomon, the nation of Israel had a civil war and was divided into a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom.
The former contained ten tribes whereas the latter contained the tribes of Judah and Benjamin and yet was called Judah.
The noun šĕʾērît means “remnant” since it pertains to that which is left over from a whole or that which is a part of a whole.
This word speaks of that which has survived after a previous elimination process or catastrophe.
Here it refers to those Jews in the kingdom of Judah who would survive the day of the Lord in Zephaniah’s day.
Historically, it refers to those Jews who returned to the land occupied by Judah before the Babylonian invasions in 605, 597 and 586 B.C. as a result of returning from the Babylonian exile.
The noun bayit means “house” and pertains to a major subjunctive unit of a nation or race organized around a single ancestor.
Here it refers to those Jews who descended from Jacob’s sons Judah and Benjamin since it speaks of those Jews who belonged to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin that constituted the southern kingdom in Zephaniah’s day in the seventh century B.C.
The noun šĕʾērît is the object of the preposition l, which means “for, for the benefit of” since it is functioning as a marker of advantage indicating that the Mediterranean coast will be “for the benefit of” the remnant belonging to the kingdom of Judah.
“They will pasture on it” is composed of the following: (1) preposition ʿal (עַל), “on” (2) third person masculine plural form of the pronominal suffix hēmâ (־הֵמָה), “it” (3) third person masculine plural qal active imperfect form of the verb rāʿâ (רָעָה), “they will pasture.”
The verb rāʿâ is in the qal stem and means “to shepherd” since the word pertains to caring for any needs that flocks of small mammals have, and so act as a herdsman with emphasis on providing grazing pasture for the flock and moving the flocks around to the grazing grounds.
Therefore, this word describes a person whose occupation is tending, feeding and guarding sheep in a pasture.
It is not clear what is the antecedent for the third person masculine plural form of the pronominal suffix hēmâ which means “them.”
It could refer to the feminine plural form of the absolute noun nāwâ (נָוָה), “pasture lands” as well as the feminine plural construct form of the noun kārâ (כָּרָה), “dwelling places” which appear in Zephaniah 2:6.
However, these nouns are in the feminine gender and the pronominal suffix is masculine.
This lack of syntactical agreement is not necessarily a problem since it can be explained by interpreting the writer as using the figure of constructio ad sensum which means that sense agreement is superseding syntactical agreement.
However, it is more likely that there was a misdivision and transposition of letters in the MT.
So it is preferable to emend the text from עֲלֵיהֶם (’alehem) to עַל־הַיָּם (’al-hayyam, “by the sea”).
So instead of the third person masculine plural form of the pronominal suffix hēmâ we have the articular masculine singular construct form of the noun yām (יָם), which refers to a body of water and specifically refers to the Mediterranean Sea.
The articular construction of this word is anaphoric meaning that the word was used in verse 6 and retains the same meaning and referent here in verse 7.
The noun yām is the object of the preposition ʿal which means “on, by” since it is a marker of a spatial position which is in front of another object.
Here it refers to the shepherds of the remnant of Judah “residing by” the Mediterranean Sea.
Zephaniah 2:5 Disaster for those who inhabit the seacoast, namely the Cretan nation. The message originating from the Lord is directed against each and every one of you inhabitants of Canaan, the inhabitants of the land of the Philistines because “I will surely cause each and every one of you to be killed until there is absolutely not one inhabitant.” 6 Consequently, the seacoast will, as a certainty be pasture lands, dwelling places for those who are shepherds as well as sheep pens. 7 Indeed, the coast will, as a certainty be for the remnant belonging to the kingdom of Judah. They will be shepherds by the sea. In the houses of Ashkelon, they will recline during the evening because the Lord, their God will care for them. In fact, He will surely restore their prosperity. (My translation)
Zephaniah 2:7 contains five more prophetic declarations.
The first asserts that the Mediterranean seacoast will, as a certainty be for the remnant belonging to the kingdom of Judah.
This assertion is advancing upon and intensifying the previous prophetic declaration recorded in Zephaniah 2:6 which asserted that the Mediterranean coastal plains will, as a certainty be pasture lands, dwelling places as well as sheep pens for shepherds.
The advancement and intensification is that the Mediterranean seacoast will not only be inhabited by shepherds but by those who belong to the remnant of the kingdom of Judah.
In other words, the advancement and intensification is that verse 7 identifies the nationality of these shepherds who will pasture their flocks and herds on the Mediterranean seacoast as being Jewish.
“The remnant” refers to those Jews in the kingdom of Judah who would survive the day of the Lord in Zephaniah’s day.
Historically, it refers to those Jews who returned to the land occupied by Judah before the Babylonian invasions in 605, 597 and 586 B.C. as a result of returning from the Babylonian exile.
The second prophetic statement recorded in Zephaniah 2:7 is that this remnant of the kingdom of Judah will shepherd their flocks and herds by the Mediterranean seacoast.
The third prophetic declaration asserts that this remnant will recline during the evening in the houses of Ashkelon.
“Ashkelon” was located geographically on the Philistine plain, 32 miles south of Joppa and was one of the five cities of the Philistines (Josh. 13:3; 1 Sam. 6:17).
It stood on the shore of the Mediterranean and was located 12 miles north/northeast of Gaza.
Like Gaza, the city of Ashkelon was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 603 B.C.
Its kings were killed and prisoners were taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.
Ashkelon’s destruction was not only predicted by Zephaniah but also by Jeremiah (47:5-7).
The city recovered and became a famous Hellenistic city.
So this promise of a remnant surviving the Babylonian invasions in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. is not only promised here in Zephaniah 2:7 but it is also promised elsewhere by the prophets of Israel (Isa. 37:31; Jer. 29:1-14; 32:36-44; 50:20; Ezek. 6:8).
The books of Nehemiah and Ezra record the Lord fulfilling this promise of restoring a remnant from the kingdom of Judah to the land they once occupied before the Babylonian exile.