HEBREW WORD STUDY – YOUR LEES – קפא   Qop Pei Aleph   

Zephaniah 1:12:  “And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and punish the men who are settled on their lees, they will say in their heart that the Lord will not do good neither will He do evil.”

Does God really need to search out sinners?  I mean surely God knows everything, He does not have to call the angels together and choose a special prosecutor to investigate and try to dig up clues as to whether a person sins or not.  The word search in the Hebrew is chafah which is in a Piel (intensive) form so it is more than just a search, it is an investigation putting it under a magnifying glass or microscope. He is searching with lamps.   The idea, of course, is that light uncovers darkness.  God shines his light on the darkness.   He will then punish the men who are settled on their lees.  Are you settled on your lees?  Hope I’m not.  Lees is from the root word in Hebrew kafa’ which means to condense or to curdle.  It is often applied to letting wine sour.  Some translations render this phrase settled on their lees as complacent or stagnant in their sins. It is interesting the word for search is not the common Hebrew word for search masa, but it is the word chafah.  I believe God chose this word to imply a play on the words chafah (search) and kafa lees or sour wine. Both sound the same when spoken and it would suggest the idea of searching for sins which are just not apparent to someone.

You see the history behind this verse is that the people of Jerusalem worshipped the god Dionysius along with Jehovah.  Dionysius was the god of wine and pleasure.  The Greeks called this god Bacchus.  The faith of the people of Jerusalem involved what anthropologist call syncretism, i.e., they combining of various religions into one.  For instance, in Haiti, there are Catholic priests who are also Voodoo priests.  In the United States, we tend to worship the god Dionysius with our Christian faith. We do not call it Dionysius we call it Christian rock concerts in our church or the church hosting a Super Bowl party.  The idea is that people are going to attend rock concerts or drunken Super Bowl parties anyways, let’s at least put it into a Christian context in a church and put Christian sounding words in the music. Then rather than serving beer and junk food and betting money you serve sugary drinks and junk food and make more appropriately Christian type bets like those who chose the losing team get to clean up afterward. It is not to say that this is sinful in every case. Where it becomes a Dionysius is when a person actually worships rock music or the Super Bowl and we accommodate them with a chance to worship their god and God Himself. We would call this act of combining worldly pleasures, something the ancients called the worship of Dionysius with our worship of God, syncretism.  

This is why God needs a lamp to search out the sins as they are not so obvious.  In fact, the people of Jerusalem were so blind to their incorporating the Hedonistic practices of Dionysius into their worship, that they felt they were really worshipping God. They were living in darkness until God shined his lamp upon their Hedonistic practices and they could see it for what it was.

The prophet Zephaniah wrote this passage around 630 B.C   Around 325 BC, about three hundred years later there was a philosopher named Diogenes of Sinope who turned Cynicism into a philosophy.  Diogenes sounds suspiciously like Dionysius but I will let historians decide if he chose to take this name because of its similarity to Dionysius.  

Diogenes lived in a barrel, in abject poverty and let people give him food and alms.  He did this to show that even the most giving people are really giving for selfish reasons but will not admit it.   Even Alexander the Great paid a visit to Diogenes and gave him a very prosperous offer. Diogenes told Alexander to his face that he only made the offer for a selfish reason.  As a philosopher, it would not have been unusual for Diogenes to have studied Hebrew philosophy or Scripture.  Many Greeks were fascinated by Hebrew philosophy.  It is very possible that this is the reason that Diogenes took a lit lamp in the daytime and walked around Athens. When anyone asked him why he was carrying a lamp in the daytime he would reply that he was searching for an honest man.  In other words, Diogenes believed that everyone had a selfish motive for any good that he would do. Diogenes was searching for a man who would at least admit his motives were selfish based.  No one would.

The fact is, God did not need a lamp or light to find the sins of His people, he needed it to shine on the people so they could see their own sin which they could not even recognize because it was so intertwined with their faith.  Is it wrong to shorten a worship service by an hour so Christians can fellowship around a Super Bowl game?   How should I know?  I do not know the hearts of these people. Like Diogenes, I am just walking around with a lamp looking for an honest Christian. But, only God can shine the light on one’s heart to help them see if their motives are Dionysius or Godly.

So next time that offering plate passes by asking God to shine his light on you  so you can see if you’re  dropping that envelop in the plate because you are truly expressing your love to God  or you just don’t want that usher and the person sitting next to you think you are some sort of Christian cheapskate.