Universal Salvation (3:9-20). 

        Judgment on Israel is always linked, explicitly or im­plicitly, with ultimate restoration and blessing. This can only be denied by denying to a number of the prophets their prom­ises of restoration (cf. p. 34). The judgment is never merely punitive, though it would be difficult to find Biblical support for the modern psychologists’ objections to punitive justice. Here the principle is carried to its logical conclusion; also for the nations punishment has as its final purpose blessing.

        While it is possible to justify both the R.V. text and mg. in ver. 10, neither is very convincing, especially as the pro­phecies of exile look normally to the North as the place of exile, and not Egypt. It is far more likely that there is a minor textual corruption, and that we should read with Ewald:

        Beyond the rivers of Ethiopia they shall offer Me incense, the daughter of Put shall bring Me an offering. For Israel Ethiopia was at the ends of the earth; for Put cf. Nahum 3:9.

        There follows the picture of purified Israel (ver. 11ff). In ver. 12 “a humbled and weak people” best expresses the sense of the Hebrew.

        The book ends with a picture of the redeemed people with the presence of Jehovah in their midst (vers. 14-20). The king of Israel is Jehovah himself (cf. Isa. 41:21; Ezek. 34:11). ror the general picture cf. Isa. 12:6; Ezek. 48:35. Zephaniah must not be understood to be denying the reality of the Messianic king. It is hardly possible that any prophet con­ceived of Jehovah’s direct presence except in the Shekinah glory which had already been seen on Tabernacle and Temple  (Exod. 40:34; I King 8:10f). Any more tangle presence implied a human representative, but not to mention him snowed how perfectly he would represent Jehovah instead of obscuring Him as the earlier judges and kings had done.