Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Zephaniah 3:17
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save - What can He then not do for thee, since He is Almighty? What will He not do for thee, since “He will save?” whom then should we fear? “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Romans 8:31. But then was He especially “in the midst of” us, when God “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and Truth” John 1:14. Thenceforth He ever is in the midst of His own. He with the Father and the Holy Spirit “come unto them and make Their abode with them” John 14:23, so that they are “the temple of God. He will save,” as He saith, “My Father is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are One” John 10:29-30. Of the same time of the Christ, Isaiah saith almost in the same words; “Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees, Say to them that are of a feeble heart, Be strong, fear not, behold your God will come, He will come and save you” Isaiah 35:3-4; and of the Holy Trinity, “He will save us” Isaiah 33:22. He will rejoice, over thee with joy - Love, joy, peace in man are shadows of that which is in God, by whom they are created in man. Only in God they exist undivided, uncreated. Hence, God speaks after the manner of men, of that which truly is in God. God joyeth “with an uncreated joy” over the works of His Hands or the objects of His Love, as man joyeth over the object of “his” love. So Isaiah saith, “As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” Isaiah 62:5. As with uncreated love the Father resteth in good pleasure in His well-beloved Son, so “God is well-pleased with the sacrifices of loving deeds” Hebrews 13:16. and, “the Lord delighteth in thee” Isaiah 62:4; and, “I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in My people” Isaiah 65:19; and, “the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good” Deuteronomy 30:9. And so in a two-fold way God meeteth the longing of the heart of man. The soul, until it hath found God, is evermore seeking some love to fill it, and can find none, since the love of God Alone can content it. Then too it longeth to be loved, even as it loveth. God tells it, that every feeling and expression of human love may be found in Him, whom if any love, he only “loveth Him, because He first loved us” 1 John 4:19. Every inward and outward expression or token of love are heaped together, to express the love of Him who broodeth and as it were yearneth “over” (it is twice repeated) His own whom He loveth. Then too He loveth thee as He biddeth thee to love Him; and since the love of man cannot be like the love of the Infinite God, He here pictures His own love in the words of man’s love, to convey to his soul the oneness wherewith love unites her unto God. He here echoes in a manner the joy of the Church, to which He had called her 1 John 4:14, in words the self-same or meaning the same. We have “joy” here for “joy” there; “singing” or the unuttered unutterable jubilee of the heart, which cannot utter in words its joy and love, and joys and loves the more in its inmost depths because it cannot utter it. A shadow of the unutterable, because Infinite Love of God, and this repeated thrice; as being the eternal love of the Everblessed Trinity. This love and joy the prophet speaks of, as an exuberant joy, one which boundeth within the inmost self, and again is wholly “silent in His love,” as the deepes…
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