Zephaniah 2:3

Seek ye the Lord - He had exhorted sinners to penitence; he now calls the righteous to persevere and increase more and more. He bids them “seek diligently” , and that with a three-fold call, to seek Him from whom they received daily the three-fold blessing Numbers 6:23, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as he had just before threatened God’s impending judgment with the same use of the mysterious number, three. They, whom he calls, were already, by the grace of God, “meek,” and “had wrought His judgment.” Rup.: “Submitting themselves to the word of God, they had done and were doing the judgment of God, ‘judging themselves that they benot judged;’ the beginning of which judgment is, as sinners and guilty of death, to give themselves to the Cross of the Lord, that is, to be ‘baptized’ in ‘His Death and be buried with Him by Baptism into death;’ but the perfection of that judgment or righteousness is, to ‘walk in newness of life, as He rose from the dead through the glory of the Father’ Romans 6:3.”

Dionysius: “Since the meek already have God through grace as the Possessor and Dweller in their heart, how shall they seek Him but that they may have Him more fully and more perfectly, knowing Him more clearly, loving Him more ardently, cleaving to Him more inseparably, that so they may be heard by Him, not for themselves only, but for others?” It is then the same Voice as at the close of the Revelation, “the righteous, let him be still more righteous; the holy, let him be still more holy” Revelation 22:11. They are the “meek,” who are exhorted “diligently” to “seek meekness,” and they who had “wrought His judgment,” who are “diligently” to “seek Righteousness.” And since our Lord saith, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart” Matthew 11:29, He bids (Jerome) “those who imitated His meekness and did His judgment, to seek the Lord in their meekness.” Meekness and Righteousness may be His Attributes, Who is All-gentleness and All-Righteousness, the Fountain of all, wheresoever it is, in gentleness receiving penitents, and, as “the Righteous Judge, giving the crown of righteousness” to those who “love Him and keep His commandments,” yea He joineth righteousness with meekness, since without His mercy no man living could be justified in His Sight. Cyril: “God is sought by us, when, of our choice, laying aside all listlessness, we thirst after doing what pleases Him; and we shall do judgment too, when we fulfill His divine law, working out what is good unshrinkingly; and we shall gain the prize of righteousness, when crowned with glory for well-doing and running the well-reported anti blameless way of true piety to God and of love to the brethren, for ‘love is the fulfilling of the law’ Romans 13:10.”

It may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger - Rup.: “Shall these too then scarcely be ‘hid in the day of the Lord’s anger?’ Doth not the Apostle Peter say the very same? ‘If it first begin at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the Gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?’ 1 Peter 4:17. So then, although any be ‘meek,’ although he ‘have wrought the judgment’ of the Lord, let him ever suspect himself, nor think that he has ‘already attained,’ since neither can any righteous be saved, if he be judged ‘without mercy.’” Dionysius: “He saith, if ‘may’ be; not that there is any doubt that the meek and they who perseveringly seek God, shall then be saved, but, to convey how difficult it is to be saved, and how fearful and rigorous is the judgment of God.” To be hid is to be sheltered from wrath under the protection of God; as David says, “In the time of trouble He shall hide me” Psalms 27:5; and, “Thou shalt hide them (that trust in Thee) in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man; Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues” Psalms 31:20. And in Isaiah, “A Man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest” Isaiah 32:2; and, “There shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain” Isaiah 5:6.