Zephaniah Chapter One, The Master's Threshold

Zephaniah 1:9 In the same day I will punish all those who leap over the threshold, who fill their masters’ houses with violence and deceit.

In the Day of the Lord God will punish those who leap over the threshold. This incident refers to 1 Samuel chapter 5. The Ark of the Covenant had been taken by the Philistines after Israel incurs a disastrous loss. The Philistines put the ark in the temple of one of their principle gods, Dagon.

Dagon was a Mesopotamian deity, conducted into Canaan out of the city of Ugarit, where there was a great temple founded for him in 2000 BC. His cult carried his worship into foreign lands, and in time the Philistines adopted Dagon as their chief deity, whose name means either “little fish” or “dear”. According to documents found in Ugarit from about the 14th century BC, it was said that Dagon was the father of Baal, and like Baal was a god of the harvest and storms.

In the aforementioned incident, the priests of Dagon continued to find the idol of Dagon fallen before the Ark of the Covenant in his own temple, as if Dagon was worshiping Yahweh. This occurred until one day the priests found Dagon’s idol broken so only the torso was left intact; superstitiously, they leapt over the threshold of the temple where Dagon fell and broke, in an apparent act of reverence for their patron god who had been humbled by Israel’s King, 1 Samuel 5:5. The writer of Samuel (likely Samuel himself for this portion) informed his readership that this was the habit of the priests still. We find that in Zephaniah’s time it was still so.

God will punish false religion and the superstitious pageantry and ceremony that attends it. One of the greatest modern perpetrators of this immense spiritual farce has to be Rome. We read of the significance of Rome’s Holy Doors, similar to Dagon’s thresholds, “The Holy Doors are a significant part of the Jubilee tradition, which occurs every 25 years. Pilgrims who pass through these doors during the Jubilee can receive plenary indulgence, symbolizing forgiveness and spiritual renewal,” cited from Wanted in Rome.

The concept of the Jubilee began with Pope Boniface VIII, but the Holy Doors did not enter into the equation until 1423 under Pope Martin V. These clearly human, external religious add ons are nowhere found in Scripture. Yes, Jesus our Lord said that He was the Door, and that men entering by Him would be saved, John 10:9. But He did not mean that men should literally walk through Him, or erect a door to symbolically represent Him. No, these things, which men do, can suggest works done in order to garner earnings. Salvation is not earned; it is freely given by God’s grace. The plenary indulgence offered by Rome is not assurance of salvation; it is a grant by the Pope to remit temporal punishment in Purgatory for payment of sins still due after absolution. But since this was something that continued to be done for the Roman faithful, it was clearly not efficacious for the removal of sin, or else why would anyone need to have sin remitted again, Hebrews 10:1-3?

God will remove religious superstition from Israel. The latter portion of this verse may be a play on words. The name Baal can mean “master”. Christ Himself referred to God as a master whom the wealthy refused to submit to, Matthew 6:24. Those who leap over the threshold, that is, are outwardly and ceremoniously religious and pious, secretly (or not so secretly) fill the houses of their professed masters with violence and deceit–or fraud, cheating or trickery. “Therefore the Lord said: “Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths and honor Me with with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men…for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden,” Isaiah 29:13, 14.

All religion is really a temple to glorify the deity of man. It is a system that may incorporate the concept of God, however close to the Bible it may stray, but its focus is on mankind, and the vehicle that keeps it relevant is man’s never ending search to earn his way into Heaven or find spiritual peace without God’s direct interposition rendering his efforts null and void. The gods of men provide systems in which we function as we work out our own salvation, and as diverse as all of them are, they overlap in certain critical areas, revealing their commonality and mutual source. Whatever the god, whatever the heaven, whatever the course charted, it all becomes man’s effort to work toward spiritual peace, or to work with said god for a place in eternity. The Bible offers the only contrary word amongst this busy milieu of seemingly competing ideas: that salvation is an impossible goal for man to achieve. We have lost the right to enter Heaven under our own esteem; we have forfeited that opportunity and stand dead in sin. Only God gives new life, and only through faith in His gospel does man freely receive new life. Outward ceremony avails nothing. Inward transformation, affected by the realization of the truth as it works in us, means everything. Christ bestows a new nature and we are made new, and this entirely by the grace of a loving, merciful God.

This is the God Israel spurned, and now their external form of religion amounts to nothing more than violence and deceit from God’s perspective. Whichever master they cling to, they do not fully align with because in the end the crux of religion magnifies man’s importance in the scheme of renewal. How can man be humbled or acknowledge our inherent unworthiness when we are clearly given a divine roadmap to self improvement? But that road is broad and leads to Hell, Matthew 7:13. Religious ceremony will be revealed as the fraud that it is; and those who espouse it will be cast out with it on that day.