name, which is selected both here and in Eze 25:16 with a play upon the appellative signification, is involved in obscurity; for, as we have already observed at 1Sa 30:14, there is no valid authority for the derivation which is now current, viz., from the island of Crete (see Stark, Gaza, pp. 66 and 99ff.). דּבר יי עליכם forms an independent sentence: The word of the Lord cometh over you. The nature of that word is described in the next sentence: I will destroy thee. The name Kena‛an is used in the more limited sense of Philistia, and is chosen to indicate that Philistia is to share the lot of Canaan, and lose its inhabitants by extermination.
Verses 6-7
The tract of land thus depopulated is to be turned into “pastures (nevōth, the construct state plural of nâveh) of the excavation of shepherds,” i.e., where shepherds will make excavations or dig themselves huts under the ground as a protection from the sun. This is the simplest explanation of the variously interpreted kerōth (as an inf. of kârâh, to dig), and can be grammatically sustained. The digging of the shepherds stands for the excavations which they make. Bochart (Hieroz. i. p. 519, ed. Ros.) has already given this explanation: “Caulae s. caulis repletus erit effossionis pastorum, i.e., caulae a pastoribus effossae in cryptis subterraneis ad vitandum solis aestum.” On the other hand, the derivation from the noun kērâh, in the sense of cistern, cannot be sustained; and there is no proof of it in the fact that kârâh is applied to the digging of wells. Still less is it possible to maintain the derivation from יכר (Arab. wkr), by which Ewald would support the meaning nests for kērōth, i.e., “the small houses or carts of the shepherds.” And Hitzig's alteration of the text into כּרת = כּרים, pastures, so as to obtain the tautology “meadows of the pastures,” is perfectly unwarranted. The word chebhel is construed in Zep 2:6 as a feminine ad sensum, with a retrospective allusion to ‘erets Pelishtı̄m; whereas in Zep 2:7 it is construed, as it is everywhere else, as a masculine. Moreover, the noun chebhel, which occurs in this verse without the article, is not the subject; for, if it were, it would at least have had the article. It is rather a predicate, and the subject must be supplied from Zep 2:6 : “The Philistian tract of land by the sea will become a tract of land or possession for the remnant of the house of Judah, the portion of the people of God rescued
