Zephaniah 1:10
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On that day,” declares the LORD, “a cry will go up from the Fish Gate, a wail from the Second District, and a loud crashing from the hills.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
Even the usurers will not escape the judgment. Zep 1:10. "And it will come to pass in that day, is the saying of Jehovah, voice of the cry from the fish-gate, and howling from the lower city, and great destruction from the hills. Zep 1:11. Howl, inhabitants of the mortar, for all the people of Canaan are destroyed; cut off are all that are laden with silver." In order to express the thought that the judgment will not spare any one class of the population, Zephaniah depicts the lamentation which will arise from all parts of the city. קול צעקה, voice of the cry, i.e., a loud cry of anguish will arise or resound. The fish-gate (according to Neh 3:3; Neh 12:39; cf. Ch2 33:14) was in the eastern portion of the wall which bounded the lower city on the north side (for further details on this point, see at Neh 3:3). המּשׁנה (= העיר משׁנה, Neh 11:9), the second part or district of the city, is the lower city upon the hill Acra (see at Kg2 22:14). Shebher, fragor, does not mean a cry of murder, but the breaking to pieces of what now exists, not merely the crashing fall of the buildings, like za‛ăqath shebher in Isa 15:5, the cry uttered at the threatening danger of utter destruction. In order to heighten the terrors of the judgment, there is added to the crying and howling of the men the tumult caused by the conquest of the city. "From the hills," i.e., "not from Zion and Moriah," but from the ills surrounding the lower city, viz., Bezetha, Gareb (Jer 31:39), and others. For Zion, the citadel of Jerusalem, is evidently thought of as the place where the howling of the men and the noise of the devastation, caused by the enemy pressing in from the north and north-west, are heard. Hammakhtēsh, the mortar (Pro 27:22), which is the name given in Jdg 15:19 to a hollow place in a rock,…
Open source ↗After the title of the book (Zep 1:1) here is, I. A threatening of the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem, an utter destruction, by the Chaldeans (Zep 1:2-4). II. A charge against them for their gross sin, which provoked God to bring that destruction upon them (Zep 1:5, Zep 1:6); and so he goes on in the rest of the chapter, setting both the judgments before them, that they might prevent them or prepare for them, and the sins that destroy them, that they might judge themselves, and justify God in what was brought upon them. 1. They must hold their peace because they had greatly sinned (Zep 1:7-9). But, 2, They shall howl because the trouble will be great. The day of the Lord is near, and it will be a terrible day (Zep 1:10-18). Such fair and timely warning as this did God give to the Jews of the approaching captivity; but they hardened their neck, which made their destruction remediless.
Open source ↗1:10 The Fish Gate was in the northern section of Jerusalem (Neh 12:39).
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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After this, Manasseh rebuilt the outer wall of the City of David from west of Gihon in the valley to the entrance of the Fish Gate, and he brought it around the hill of Ophel and heightened it considerably. He also stationed military commanders in all the fortified cities of Judah.
“In that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “the songs of the temple will turn to wailing. Many will be the corpses, strewn in silence everywhere!”
So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went and spoke to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, the keeper of the wardrobe. She lived in Jerusalem, in the Second District.
The Fish Gate was rebuilt by the sons of Hassenaah. They laid its beams and installed its doors, bolts, and bars.
Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David. This was the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion (that is, the City of David).
So the LORD saved Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem from the hands of King Sennacherib of Assyria and all the others, and He gave them rest on every side.
And on the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year, the city was breached.
For I hear a cry like a woman in labor, a cry of anguish like one bearing her first child— the cry of the Daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands to say, “Woe is me, for my soul faints before the murderers!”
We all growl like bears and moan like doves. We hope for justice, but find none, for salvation, but it is far from us.