Zefanias 3:6

Filipino Cebuano Bible

6 Giputol ko ang mga nasud; ang ilang mga salipdanan gihimo ko nga biniyaan; ang ilang kadalanan gihimo ko nga mga gun-ob aron nga walay makaagi; ang ilang mga ciudad nangalumpag aron mawalay tawo, aron nga walay pumoyuyo.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

cut: Isaiah 10:1-34, Isaiah 15:1 - Isaiah 16:14, Isaiah 19:1-25, Isaiah 37:11-13, Isaiah 37:24-26, Isaiah 37:36, Jeremiah 25:9-11, Jeremiah 25:18-26, Nahum 2:1 - Nahum 3:19, 1 Corinthians 10:6, 1 Corinthians 10:11

towers: or, corners

Reciprocal: Deuteronomy 8:19 - I testify against Psalms 76:12 - He shall Isaiah 14:26 - General Jeremiah 2:15 - his cities Jeremiah 5:17 - they shall impoverish Ezekiel 6:6 - the cities Ezekiel 30:3 - the time Ezekiel 32:32 - General Hosea 10:9 - did Nahum 2:10 - empty Zechariah 7:14 - the land

Gill's Notes on the Bible

I have cut off the nations,.... Utterly destroyed them, as the Philistines, Moabites, Ethiopians, and Assyrians, as in the preceding chapters; all which were done before the coming of Christ in the flesh; and by which instances the Jews should have took warning, lest by their sins they should provoke the Lord to destroy their nation, city, and temple:

their towers are desolate; built on their frontiers, or on the walls of their cities, to defend them; these were demolished, and laid waste, and of no use: or, "their corners" b; towers being usually built on the angles or corners of walls. Some interpret this of their princes, nobles, and great men, who were destroyed; see Zechariah 10:4:

I made their streets waste, that none passeth by; the streets of their cities, the houses being pulled down by the enemy, the rubbish of them lay in the streets, so that there was no passing for any; and indeed, the houses being demolished, the streets were no more in form:

their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant; the houses being burnt with fire, or pulled down, and plundered of the goods and substance in them, and the people cut off by famine, pestilence, or sword; and the rest carried captive, there was scarce a man or inhabitant left; so general was the destruction.

b פנותם "anguli earum", Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius, Cocceius, Burkius.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

I have cut off the nations - God appeals to His judgments on pagan nations, not on any particular nation, as far as we know; but to past history, whether of those, of whose destruction Israel itself had been the instrument, or others. The judgments upon the nations before them were set forth to them, when they were about to enter on their inheritance, as a warning to themselves. “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things, for in all these have the nations defiled themselves, which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled; therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants. And ye, ye shall keep My statutes and My judgements and shall not commit any of these abominations - And the land shall not spue you out when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations which were before you” (Leviticus 18:24-26, Leviticus 18:28, add Leviticus 20:23). The very possession then of the land was a warning to them; the ruins, which crowned so many of its hilltops , were silent preachers to them; they lived among the memories of God’s visitations; if neglected, they were an earnest of future judgments on themselves.

Yet God’s judgments are not at one time only. Sennacherib appealed to their own knowledge, “Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly. Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed?” Isaiah 37:11, Isaiah 37:13. Hezekiah owned it as a fact which he knew: “Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their land” Isaiah 37:18. And God owns him as His instrument: “Now I have brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defensed cities into ruinous heaps” Isaiah 37:26 : and, “I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to tread them down as the mire of the streets,” and says of him, “It is in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations not a few” . The king of Babylon too he describes as “the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms. that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof” Isaiah 14:16-17. Habakkuk recently described the wide wasting by the Babylonians, and the helplessness of nations before him Habakkuk 1:14-16.

Their towers, corner towers - ^o, the most carefully fortified parts of their fortified cities, “are desolate; I made their streets waste.” The desolation is complete, within as well as without; ruin itself is hardly so desolate as the empty habitations and forsaken streets, once full of life, where

“The echoes and the empty tread

Would sound like voices from the dead.”

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 6. I have cut off the nations — Syria, Israel, and those referred to, Isaiah 36:18; Isaiah 36:20. - Newcome.