Zephaniah opens with a warning to Judah that the LORD will cut off “the remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarims with the priests.” The Chemarims, as the KJV spells it, were evidently priests connected with false worship, and the verse treats them as part of what is to be removed along with Baal. The name is rare, and the other verses Nave’s lists with it deal with altars and idol priests at Bethel, in 2 Kings 23 and Hosea 10, without using the word. The clearest place to read is Zephaniah 1:4.
3 verses
Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove.
The inhabitants of Samaria shall fear because of the calves of Bethaven: for the people thereof shall mourn over it, and the priests thereof that rejoiced on it, for the glory thereof, because it is departed from it.
I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarims with the priests;
Matthew George Easton, 1897
Black, (Zeph. 1:4; rendered “idolatrous priests” in 2 Kings 23:5, and “priests” in Hos. 10:5). Some derive this word from the Assyrian Kamaru, meaning “to throw down,” and interpret it as describing the idolatrous priests who prostrate themselves before the idols. Others regard it as meaning “those who go about in black,” or “ascetics.”