Zephaniah Chapter One, The Lord's Sacrifice

Zephaniah 1:8 “And it shall be, in the day of the Lord’s sacrifice, that I will punish the princes and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with foreign apparel.

The day of the Lord’s sacrifice is still in reference to the Day of the Lord, the day of God’s holy wrath on a sinful world. In the same time period when the Lord gathers His guests and offers a sacrifice, He will punish Israel for her transgressions. Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 address Gog, who represents a mighty coalition of nations that fall upon Israel and are suddenly and brutally defeated by the Lord’s intercession. The prophet writes, “Surely it is coming, and it shall be done,” says the Lord God. “This is the day of which I have spoken,” Ezekiel 39:8.

Later, the Lord describes His sacrificial meal, which is for the birds and beasts of the wild in the wake of the great battle, Ezekiel 39:1-20. The result of this intense and brief conflict is this: “So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day forward,” Ezekiel 39:22. After this, it is written, “And I will come near you for judgment,” Malachi 3:5. Israel needed the Lord’s arrival to cleanse them of their national unbelief (Romans 11:26, Zechariah 12:10); Christ will do just that. He will purge them, as He said through Malachi, so that He may come near to reign over them.

The leadership will suffer judgment first, since it was their responsibility to discharge the knowledge of God to their people. Instead they had become entirely corrupt, and the corruption suffered at the head trickles down through the body. God bemoans the pitiful state in which Israel had fallen in Zephaniah’s time, saying, “An astonishing and horrible thing has been committed in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own power; and My people love to have it so. But what will you do in the end?” Jeremiah 5:30, 31. The ecclesiastical rulers governed through perversion and ambition and the people in turn suffered for it, becoming like them. However, this was not their function. God explained, “For the lips of a priest should keep knowledge, and people should seek the law from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts,” Malachi 2:7. Those in power and those clothed in foreign apparel would be punished.

The idea of foreign apparel denotes an outsider that has integrated into Israel, not to convert to Judaism, but to corrupt Judaism with his own pagan belief system. The Canaanites were never expelled from the land when Joshua led Israel across the Jordan to conquer. After his demise the tribes compromised with many of them and let them live as servants and the like, eventually mingling with the Jewish seed and producing the abominations that led to both Samaria and Judah being led into captivity. But we know that God will fulfill His intention for Israel on the Day of the Lord when we read, “In that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts,” Zechariah 14:21. We know the parable of the wedding guest who was not clothed appropriately for the king’s wedding, Matthew 22:11, 12. The king had that man expelled at once, because he endeavored to enter presumptuously, not coming as he was commanded to, but choosing his own method of approach. God will expel this thinking from Israel, and diffuse the truth of God and salvation through Israel to the world during His thousand year reign.

The ESV renders the term “Canaanite,” as “trader” in Zechariah. The connotation seems to be that those who peddle and profit from religion or God’s name will be entirely expunged; the folly and danger of that proclivity will be entirely laid bare for the world to see. Charlatans who pretend to speak for God or from God without His Spirit and void of Scriptural truth will be silenced. “It shall come to pass that if anyone still prophesies, then his father and mother who begot him will say to him, ‘You shall not live, because you have spoken lies in the name of the Lord.’ And his father and mother who begot him will thrust him through when he prophesies. And it shall be in that day that every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies; they will not wear a robe of coarse hair to deceive,” Zechariah 13:3, 4. Many people today claim to speak on God’s behalf, but their revelations are deception and lies; it is not founded upon truth but the deceit of their heart or the doctrines of demons. It is not grounded in Scripture as the Holy Spirit leads His children to all truth, but the delusions of ambition, greed and hubris. People who claim to speak for Christ but speak like the Devil are legion, and on that day they will be expunged and silenced, for God will speak for Himself.