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COMMENTARY ON ZEPHANIAH, CHAPTER ONE Word of the Lord which came to Zephaniah son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah in the days of King Josiah of Judah, son of Amon (v.1). LESSED ZEPHANIAH prophesied in Jerusalem; he was from a distinguished lineage, and did not belong to those given to false prophecy and to concocting the divine words for the listeners, of whom the divinely inspired Ezekiel said, “Woe to those who prophesy from their heart and see nothing at all,” and as well the God of all himself said in Jeremiah, “I did not (168)1 send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.”2 Rather, he was truly a prophet, transmitting the words from the Lord’s mouth, filled with the Holy Spirit, and gushing with good things from his heart as from a good fountain. The tongue of the holy ones, after all, is not in the habit of telling lies. The purpose of the prophecy was reproof of the two tribes in Jerusalem, namely, Judah and Benjamin; history tells us that they were impious, sacrilegiously devoted to the deceits of the idols, and ready to practice anything at all that was displeasing to God. A further detail helpfully provided is the period of the kingship when he raised such matters with the offenders, the purpose being that we might grasp the situation of that time and thus understand why and to what extent the movement of divine wrath was directed at them.3 I shall therefore outline in detail what is of benefit to the readers . At one time Hezekiah had reigned in Jerusalem, a man par1 . Numerals in parentheses refer to the page numbers in the Pusey edition; see the select bibliography in this volume. 2. Ezek 13.3; Jer 23.21. 3. In a manner adopted by Antiochene commentators, Cyril identifies the historical situation of the prophet’s ministry, or hypothesis, and its purpose or thrust (skopos). 5 6 CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA ticularly devoted to God, a lover of piety, a custodian of righteousness , an enemy of deceit, who put a stop to the harmful effects of idolatry, sacred Scripture clearly testifying to such achievements of his. It was during his exercise of the kingly office in Jerusalem that the Assyrian tyrant Sennacherib went up, took Samaria, and deported Israel—that is, the ten tribes—to the territories of Persians and Medes. But though burning (169) innumerable cities of the kingdom of Judah, he did not gain control of Jerusalem, thanks to God’s protection. As the account of the facts is familiar, there is need only to summarize it. At the death of Hezekiah, Manasseh then succeeded to the kingship; despite his being Hezekiah’s offspring, he proved so impious as to leave untried no form of depravity. The second book of Kings describes him this way: “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord by way of the abominable practices of the nations that the Lord drove out before the sons of Israel. He reverted to building the high places that his father Hezekiah had overthrown, erected an altar to Baal, made groves as King Ahab of Israel had done, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served them. He built an altar in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, In Jerusalem I shall put my name, and he built an altar to all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. He made his sons pass through fire, practiced soothsaying and augury, involved himself in wizardry, and multiplied mediums for doing evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him. He set the image from the grove in the house of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel, I shall set my name forever.”4 The God of all was then angered by Manasseh’s sacrilegious actions, and rightly so, and he clearly threatened to bring the effects of wrath on Jerusalem. The text goes on in similar terms, “The Lord said by his servants (170) the prophets, Because King Manasseh of Judah has committed these abominations that are worse than all the Amorite did before him, and Judah has also sinned with his idols, thus says the Lord, the God...

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