the Week of Proper 15 / Ordinary 20
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THE MESSAGE
Zephaniah 3:1
Bible Study Resources
Concordances:
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- EveryParallel Translations
Woe to the city that is rebellious and defiled,
Woe to her who is rebellious and polluted, the oppressing city!
Woe to her that is filthie and polluted, to the oppressing citie.
Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!
Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled, the oppressing city!
Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled, The oppressive city!
How terrible for the wicked, stubborn city of Jerusalem, which hurts its own people.
Woe (judgment is coming) to her who is rebellious and defiled, The tyrannical city [Jerusalem]!
Woe to her that is filthie and polluted, to the robbing citie.
Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled, The tyrannical city!
Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled,The oppressive city!
Woe to the city of oppressors, rebellious and defiled!
Too bad for that disgusting, corrupt, and lawless city!
Woe to her who is filthy, defiled; woe to the tyrant city!
Woe to her that is rebellious and corrupted, to the oppressing city!
Jerusalem, your people fought against God. They hurt other people, and you have been stained with sin.
OH, the famous city, the saved city; the city of Jonah!
Jerusalem is doomed, that corrupt, rebellious city that oppresses its own people.
Woe to you, O rebellious and defiled one! The oppressing city!
Woe to her rebelling and being defiled, to the oppressing city!
Woe to her that is rebellious and polluted! to the oppressing city!
Sorrow to her who is uncontrolled and unclean, the cruel town!
Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!
Wo to that abhominable, filthy, and cruel citie.
This is the scornful city that dwells securely, that says in her heart, I am, and there is no longer any to be after me: how is she become desolate, a habitation of wild beasts! every one that passes through her shall hiss, and shake his hands.
Woe to her that is rebellious and polluted, to the oppressing city!
Woe to her who is rebellious and polluted, the oppressing city!
Wo! thou citee, terrere to wraththe, and bouyt ayen a culuer.
Woe to her that is rebellious and polluted! to the oppressing city!
Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!
The filthy, stained city is as good as dead; the city filled with oppressors is finished!
Woe to her who is rebellious and polluted, To the oppressing city!
What sorrow awaits rebellious, polluted Jerusalem, the city of violence and crime!
It is bad for her who does not obey and is unclean, the city who makes it hard for the people!
Ah, soiled, defiled, oppressing city!
Alas for her that is rebellious, and polluted, the city that oppresseth!
Woe to the provoking and redeemed city, the dove.
Woe to her that is rebellious and defiled, the oppressing city!
Wo [to] the rebellious and polluted, The oppressing city!
Wo to the abhominable, fylthie and cruel cite:
Contextual Overview
Bible Verse Review
from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge
her that is filthy: or, gluttonous, Heb. craw, Leviticus 1:16
to the: Isaiah 5:7, Isaiah 30:12, Isaiah 59:13, Jeremiah 6:6, Jeremiah 22:17, Ezekiel 22:7, Ezekiel 22:29, Amos 3:9, Amos 4:1, Micah 2:2, Zechariah 7:10, Malachi 3:5
Reciprocal: Exodus 23:6 - General Psalms 55:10 - mischief Isaiah 1:5 - the whole Isaiah 1:21 - it was full Isaiah 4:4 - washed away Isaiah 59:14 - General Jeremiah 3:5 - thou hast spoken Jeremiah 5:3 - thou hast stricken Jeremiah 9:13 - General Jeremiah 11:9 - General Jeremiah 13:27 - Woe Jeremiah 16:18 - they have defiled Jeremiah 30:15 - for the Jeremiah 32:32 - they Jeremiah 38:4 - the princes Jeremiah 51:5 - though Lamentations 1:5 - for Ezekiel 9:9 - The iniquity Ezekiel 16:23 - woe Ezekiel 16:36 - Because Ezekiel 19:2 - A lioness Ezekiel 33:29 - because Hosea 4:2 - swearing Hosea 5:2 - a rebuker Nahum 3:1 - to 1 Thessalonians 4:6 - defraud
Cross-References
"The serpent seduced me," she said, "and I ate."
At that time God will unsheathe his sword, his merciless, massive, mighty sword. He'll punish the serpent Leviathan as it flees, the serpent Leviathan thrashing in flight. He'll kill that old dragon that lives in the sea.
"Stay alert. This is hazardous work I'm assigning you. You're going to be like sheep running through a wolf pack, so don't call attention to yourselves. Be as cunning as a snake, inoffensive as a dove.
Pseudo-Servants of God Will you put up with a little foolish aside from me? Please, just for a moment. The thing that has me so upset is that I care about you so much—this is the passion of God burning inside me! I promised your hand in marriage to Christ, presented you as a pure virgin to her husband. And now I'm afraid that exactly as the Snake seduced Eve with his smooth patter, you are being lured away from the simple purity of your love for Christ. It seems that if someone shows up preaching quite another Jesus than we preached—different spirit, different message—you put up with him quite nicely. But if you put up with these big-shot "apostles," why can't you put up with simple me? I'm as good as they are. It's true that I don't have their voice, haven't mastered that smooth eloquence that impresses you so much. But when I do open my mouth, I at least know what I'm talking about. We haven't kept anything back. We let you in on everything. I wonder, did I make a bad mistake in proclaiming God's Message to you without asking for something in return, serving you free of charge so that you wouldn't be inconvenienced by me? It turns out that the other churches paid my way so that you could have a free ride. Not once during the time I lived among you did anyone have to lift a finger to help me out. My needs were always supplied by the believers from Macedonia province. I was careful never to be a burden to you, and I never will be, you can count on it. With Christ as my witness, it's a point of honor with me, and I'm not going to keep it quiet just to protect you from what the neighbors will think. It's not that I don't love you; God knows I do. I'm just trying to keep things open and honest between us. And I'm not changing my position on this. I'd die before taking your money. I'm giving nobody grounds for lumping me in with those money-grubbing "preachers," vaunting themselves as something special. They're a sorry bunch—pseudo-apostles, lying preachers, crooked workers—posing as Christ's agents but sham to the core. And no wonder! Satan does it all the time, dressing up as a beautiful angel of light. So it shouldn't surprise us when his servants masquerade as servants of God. But they're not getting by with anything. They'll pay for it in the end. Let me come back to where I started—and don't hold it against me if I continue to sound a little foolish. Or if you'd rather, just accept that I am a fool and let me rant on a little. I didn't learn this kind of talk from Christ. Oh, no, it's a bad habit I picked up from the three-ring preachers that are so popular these days. Since you sit there in the judgment seat observing all these shenanigans, you can afford to humor an occasional fool who happens along. You have such admirable tolerance for impostors who rob your freedom, rip you off, steal you blind, put you down—even slap your face! I shouldn't admit it to you, but our stomachs aren't strong enough to tolerate that kind of stuff. Since you admire the egomaniacs of the pulpit so much (remember, this is your old friend, the fool, talking), let me try my hand at it. Do they brag of being Hebrews, Israelites, the pure race of Abraham? I'm their match. Are they servants of Christ? I can go them one better. (I can't believe I'm saying these things. It's crazy to talk this way! But I started, and I'm going to finish.) I've worked much harder, been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death's door time after time. I've been flogged five times with the Jews' thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I've been shipwrecked three times, and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I've had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I've been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I've known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather. And that's not the half of it, when you throw in the daily pressures and anxieties of all the churches. When someone gets to the end of his rope, I feel the desperation in my bones. When someone is duped into sin, an angry fire burns in my gut. If I have to "brag" about myself, I'll brag about the humiliations that make me like Jesus. The eternal and blessed God and Father of our Master Jesus knows I'm not lying. Remember the time I was in Damascus and the governor of King Aretas posted guards at the city gates to arrest me? I crawled through a window in the wall, was let down in a basket, and had to run for my life.
The same goes for you husbands: Be good husbands to your wives. Honor them, delight in them. As women they lack some of your advantages. But in the new life of God's grace, you're equals. Treat your wives, then, as equals so your prayers don't run aground.
Gill's Notes on the Bible
Woe to her that is filthy, and polluted,.... Meaning the city of Jerusalem, and its inhabitants; not as before the Babylonish captivity, but after their return from it, under the second temple, as Abarbinel owns; and even as in the times before and at the coming of Christ, and the preaching of his apostles among them; as the whole series of the prophecy, and the connection of the several parts of it, show; and there are such plain intimations of the conversion of the Gentiles, and of such a happy state of the Jews, in which they shall see evil no more, as can agree with no other times than the times of the Gospel, both the beginning and latter part of them. The character of this city, and its inhabitants, is, that it was "filthy", and polluted with murders, adulteries, oppression, rapine, and other sins: our Lord often calls them a wicked and an adulterous generation; and yet they pretended to great purity of life and manners; and they were pure in their own eyes, though not washed from their filthiness; they took much pains to make clean the outside of the cup, but within were full of impurity, Matthew 23:25. In the margin it is, "woe to her that is gluttonous". The word is used for the craw or crop of a fowl, Leviticus 1:16 hence some render it t "woe to the craw"; to the city that is all craw, to which Jerusalem is compared for its devouring the wealth and substance of others. The Scribes and Pharisees in Christ's time are said to devour widows' houses, Matthew 23:14 and this seems to be the sin with which they were defiled, and here charged with. Some think the word signifies one that is publicly, infamous; either made a public example of, or openly exposed, as sometimes filthy harlots are; or rather one "that has made herself infamous" u; by her sins and vices:
to the oppressing city! that oppressed the poor, the widow, and the fatherless. This may have respect to the inhabitants of Jerusalem stoning the prophets of the Lord sent unto them; to the discouragements they laid the followers of Christ under, by not suffering such to come to hear him that were inclined; threatening to cast them out of their synagogues if they professed him, which passed into a law; and to their killing the Lord of life and glory; and the persecution of his apostles, ministers, and people: see Matthew 23:13. Some render it, "to the city a dove" w; being like a silly dove without heart, as in Hosea 7:11. R. Azariah x thinks Jerusalem is so called because in its works it was like Babylon, which had for its military sign on its standard a dove; Hosea 7:11- : Hosea 7:11- : Hosea 7:11- : but the former sense is best.
t הוי מוראה "vae ingluviei", Junius Tremellius, Piscator. u ουας τη παραδειγματιζομηνη "vae huic quae infamatur", L'Empereur Not. in Mosis Kimchii οιδοποζια "ad scientiam", p. 174. so Drusius and Tarnovius. w חעיר היונה πολις η περιστερα, Sept. "civitas columba", V. L.; so Syr. Ar. Jarchi, and other Jewish interpreters. x Meor Enayin, c. 21. fol. 90. 1.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
The “woe,” having gone round the pagan nations, again circles round where it began, the “Jerusalem that killed the prophets and stoned those that were sent unto her” Matthew 23:37. Woe upon her, and joy to the holy Jerusalem, the “new Jerusalem Revelation 3:12; Revelation 21:10, the Jerusalem which is from above, the mother of us all,” close this prophecy; both in figure; destruction of her and the whole earth, in time, the emblem of the eternal death; and the love of God, the foretaste of endless joy in Him.
Woe - “Rebellious and polluted;” “thou oppressive city!” . The address is the more abrupt, and bursts more upon her, since the prophet does not name her. He uses as her proper name, not her own name, city of peace,” but “rebellious,” “polluted;” then he sums up in one, thou “oppressive city.”
Jerusalem’s sin is threefold, actively rebelling against God; then, inwardly defiled by sin; then cruel to man. So then, toward God, in herself, toward man, she is wholly turned to evil, not in passing acts, but in her abiding state:
(1) rebellious
(2) defiled
(3) oppressive
She is known only by what she has become, and what has been done for her in vain. She is rebellious, and so had had the law; defiled, and so had been cleansed; and therefore her state is the more hopeless.
Clarke's Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER III
The prophet reproves Jerusalem, and all her guides and rulers,
for their obstinate perseverance in impiety, notwithstanding
all the warnings and corrections which they had received from
God, 1-7.
They are encouraged, however, after they shall have been
chastised for their idolatry, and cured of it, to look for
mercy and restoration, 8-13;
and exited to hymns of joy at the glorious prospect, 14-17.
After which the prophet concludes with large promises of
favour and prosperity in the days of the Messiah, 18-20.
We take this extensive view of the concluding verses of this
chapter, because an apostle has expressly assured us that in
EVERY prophetical book of the Old Testament Scriptures are
confined predictions relative to the Gospel dispensation.
See Acts 3:24.
NOTES ON CHAP. III
Verse Zephaniah 3:1. Wo to her that is filthy — This is a denunciation of Divine judgment against Jerusalem.
