Zephaniah

Name, Canonical Location, and Date of Composition

Zephaniah is the ninth of the twelve Minor Prophets in both the Masoretic Text (MT) and the Septuagint (LXX). Its superscription provides more detailed information than do those of Nahum and Habakkuk, the two books that precede it in the canon.

The superscription's four-generation genealogy links the prophet (whose name means “the Lord has hidden” or “the Lord has stored up”) with the reign of the Judean king Josiah (640–609 bce). Second Kings 22–23 lauds Josiah as one of Judah's great religious reformers; before his death in 609 bce, he removed foreign images from the Temple in Jerusalem, centralized worship practices, and established for Judah a degree of political independence from the Assyrian Empire. Resonating strongly with this narrative, Zephaniah blames Judeans for mixing worship of the Lord with the worship of other deities (1.4–5) and accuses the royal court of dressing in foreign attire (1.8–9).

While the literary setting of the book in the seventh century bce is obvious, the book may actually have been composed or at least substantially edited at a later date. The concluding promise of salvation for “daughter Jerusalem” (3.14–20), for example, reflects an exilic or postexilic perspective in its concern with the return of exiles to the city.

Contents and Interpretation

Much of Zephaniah mirrors other prophetic books. It opens with a dramatic announcement of “the day of the Lord,” a time in which God will act decisively to (re-)establish justice (Joel 1.15; 3.14; Am 5.18; Ob 15; Zech 12.4). It pairs oracles against foreign nations (cf. Isa 13–23; Jer 46–51; Ezek 25–32; Am 1.3–2.3) with oracles against Judah (cf. Isa 3; 5; Jer 1; 3; Am 2; Mic 2), accusing Judah of idolatry and injustice (cf. Isa 5.7; Jer 2.28; 11.13) and the nations of arrogance (cf. Isa 16.6; Jer 48.29; Zech 10.11). Zephaniah also ends with an announcement of salvation to “daughter Jerusalem,” similar to those found in other prophetic books (e.g., Mic 4; Zech 2; 9). Its opening chapter, however, is distinctive for its comprehensive and harrowing depiction of the devastation of the earth and its inhabitants. Through insistent repetition and allusions to the creation narratives, it delivers an all- encompassing litany of doom that remains one of the most enduring images of judgment from the Hebrew Bible.

The book's powerful language for divine judgment captivated the imagination of later interpreters. The Apocalypse of Zephaniah, a Jewish document usually dated between 100 bce and 70 ce, describes the prophet's tour of hell as well as his brief visit to heaven. The Dies irae (“day of wrath”), a thirteenth-century Christian sequence long included in the Mass for the Dead, quotes the Latin translation of Zephaniah 1.15. “Shoah,” the Hebrew word for ruin in 1.15, is now a designation for the devastation of European Jewry known as the Holocaust.

Julia M. O’Brien

¹ The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah, in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah.

²I will utterly sweep away everything

  from the face of the earth, says the Lord.

³I will sweep away humans and animals;

  I will sweep away the birds of the air

  and the fish of the sea.

I will make the wicked stumble.^a

  I will cut off humanity

  from the face of the earth, says the Lord.

⁴I will stretch out my hand against Judah,

  and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem;

and I will cut off from this place every remnant of Baal

  and the name of the idolatrous priests;^b

⁵those who bow down on the roofs

  to the host of the heavens;

those who bow down and swear to the Lord,

  but also swear by Milcom;^c

⁶those who have turned back from following the Lord,

  who have not sought the Lord or inquired of him.

⁷Be silent before the Lord God!

  For the day of the Lord is at hand;

the Lord has prepared a sacrifice,

  he has consecrated his guests.

⁸And on the day of the Lord's sacrifice

I will punish the officials and the king's sons

  and all who dress themselves in foreign attire.

⁹On that day I will punish

  all who leap over the threshold,

who fill their master's house

  with violence and fraud.

¹⁰On that day, says the Lord,

  a cry will be heard from the Fish Gate,

a wail from the Second Quarter,

  a loud crash from the hills.

¹¹The inhabitants of the Mortar wail,

  for all the traders have perished;

  all who weigh out silver are cut off.

¹²At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps,

  and I will punish the people

who rest complacently^a on their dregs,

  those who say in their hearts,

“The Lord will not do good,

  nor will he do harm.”

¹³Their wealth shall be plundered,

  and their houses laid waste.

Though they build houses,

  they shall not inhabit them;

though they plant vineyards,

  they shall not drink wine from them.

¹⁴The great day of the Lord is near,

  near and hastening fast;

the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter,

  the warrior cries aloud there.

¹⁵That day will be a day of wrath,

  a day of distress and anguish,

a day of ruin and devastation,

  a day of darkness and gloom,

a day of clouds and thick darkness,

  ¹⁶a day of trumpet blast and battle cry

against the fortified cities

  and against the lofty battlements.

¹⁷I will bring such distress upon people

  that they shall walk like the blind;

  because they have sinned against the Lord,

their blood shall be poured out like dust,

  and their flesh like dung.

¹⁸Neither their silver nor their gold

  will be able to save them

  on the day of the Lord's wrath;

in the fire of his passion

  the whole earth shall be consumed;

for a full, a terrible end

  he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.

2

Gather together, gather,

  O shameless nation,

²before you are driven away

  like the drifting chaff,^b

before there comes upon you

  the fierce anger of the Lord,

before there comes upon you

  the day of the Lord's wrath.

³Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,

  who do his commands;

seek righteousness, seek humility;

  perhaps you may be hidden

  on the day of the Lord's wrath.

⁴For Gaza shall be deserted,

  and Ashkelon shall become a desolation;

Ashdod's people shall be driven out at noon,

  and Ekron shall be uprooted.

⁵Ah, inhabitants of the seacoast,

  you nation of the Cherethites!

The word of the Lord is against you,

  O Canaan, land of the Philistines;

and I will destroy you until no inhabitant is left.

⁶And you, O seacoast, shall be pastures,

  meadows for shepherds

  and folds for flocks.

Ch 2.4-15: Places mentioned in the oracles against foreign nations.

⁷The seacoast shall become the possession

  of the remnant of the house of Judah,

  on which they shall pasture,

and in the houses of Ashkelon

  they shall lie down at evening.

For the Lord their God will be mindful of them

  and restore their fortunes.

⁸I have heard the taunts of Moab

  and the revilings of the Ammonites,

how they have taunted my people

  and made boasts against their territory.

⁹Therefore, as I live, says the Lord of hosts,

  the God of Israel,

Moab shall become like Sodom

  and the Ammonites like Gomorrah,

a land possessed by nettles and salt pits,

  and a waste forever.

The remnant of my people shall plunder them,

  and the survivors of my nation shall possess them.

¹⁰This shall be their lot in return for their pride,

  because they scoffed and boasted

against the people of the Lord of hosts.

¹¹The Lord will be terrible against them;

  he will shrivel all the gods of the earth,

and to him shall bow down,

  each in its place,

  all the coasts and islands of the nations.

¹²You also, O Ethiopians,^a

  shall be killed by my sword.

¹³And he will stretch out his hand against the north,

  and destroy Assyria;

and he will make Nineveh a desolation,

  a dry waste like the desert.

¹⁴Herds shall lie down in it,

  every wild animal;^a

the desert owl^b and the screech owl^b

  shall lodge on its capitals;

the owl^c shall hoot at the window,

  the raven^d croak on the threshold;

  for its cedar work will be laid bare.

¹⁵Is this the exultant city that lived secure,

that said to itself,

  “I am, and there is no one else”?

What a desolation it has become,

  a lair for wild animals!

Everyone who passes by it

  hisses and shakes the fist.

3

Ah, soiled, defiled,

  oppressing city!

²It has listened to no voice;

  it has accepted no correction.

It has not trusted in the Lord;

  it has not drawn near to its God.

³The officials within it

  are roaring lions;

its judges are evening wolves

  that leave nothing until the morning.

⁴Its prophets are reckless,

  faithless persons;

its priests have profaned what is sacred,

  they have done violence to the law.

⁵The Lord within it is righteous;

  he does no wrong.

Every morning he renders his judgment,

  each dawn without fail;

  but the unjust knows no shame.

⁶I have cut off nations;

their battlements are in ruins;

I have laid waste their streets

  so that no one walks in them;

their cities have been made desolate,

  without people, without inhabitants.

⁷I said, “Surely the city^e will fear me,

  it will accept correction;

it will not lose sight^f

  of all that I have brought upon it.”

But they were the more eager

  to make all their deeds corrupt.

⁸Therefore wait for me, says the Lord,

  for the day when I arise as a witness.

For my decision is to gather nations,

  to assemble kingdoms,

to pour out upon them my indignation,

  all the heat of my anger;

for in the fire of my passion

  all the earth shall be consumed.

⁹At that time I will change the speech of the peoples

  to a pure speech,

that all of them may call on the name of the Lord

  and serve him with one accord.

¹⁰From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia^g

  my suppliants, my scattered ones,

  shall bring my offering.

¹¹On that day you shall not be put to shame

  because of all the deeds by which you

have rebelled against me;

  for then I will remove from your midst

  your proudly exultant ones,

and you shall no longer be haughty

  in my holy mountain.

¹²For I will leave in the midst of you

  a people humble and lowly.

They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord—

  ¹³the remnant of Israel;

they shall do no wrong

  and utter no lies,

nor shall a deceitful tongue

  be found in their mouths.

Then they will pasture and lie down,

  and no one shall make them afraid.

¹⁴Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;

  shout, O Israel!

Rejoice and exult with all your heart,

  O daughter Jerusalem!

¹⁵The Lord has taken away the judgments against you,

  he has turned away your enemies.

The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;

  you shall fear disaster no more.

          ¹⁶On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:

Do not fear, O Zion;

  do not let your hands grow weak.

¹⁷The Lord, your God, is in your midst,

  a warrior who gives victory;

he will rejoice over you with gladness,

  he will renew you^a in his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing

  ¹⁸as on a day of festival.^b

I will remove disaster from you,^c

  so that you will not bear reproach for it.

¹⁹I will deal with all your oppressors

  at that time.

And I will save the lame

  and gather the outcast,

and I will change their shame into praise

  and renown in all the earth.

²⁰At that time I will bring you home,

  at the time when I gather you;

for I will make you renowned and praised

  among all the peoples of the earth,

when I restore your fortunes

  before your eyes, says the Lord.

1.1: Superscription. Cushi may be either a name or an ethnic designation, “Ethiopian” (see 2.12 and 3.10). If Hezekiah is the eighth-century reformer King Hezekiah (727/715–698/687 bce; 2 Kings 18–20), then Zephaniah was a member of the royal family, which may be indicated by the unusually long genealogy. Josiah (640–609 bce) was also a reformer (2 Kings 22–23), although his father Amon had sacrificed to carved images (2 Chr 33.22).

1.2–18: The coming day of the Lord. 2–3: Punishment is announced against everything on the face of the earth. The language echoes that used in the creation and flood narratives (Gen 1; 6.7; 7.4 and 8.8): everything (lit., “all”); humans (Heb “ʾadam”); face of the earth (Heb “ʾadamah”). God's announcement returns the earth to the destruction announced in Gen 6–7 and overturns the divine promise in Gen 8–9 never again to destroy the earth. 4–5: The language of cut off continues, as God charges Judah's inhabitants with combining worship of the Lord with worship of other deities such as the Canaanite god Baal, the astral deities known as the host of the heavens, and the Ammonite god Milcom. These charges, as well as the term for idolatrous priests, fit well with the accounts of Manasseh's idolatry in 2 Kings 21 and Josiah's reforms in 2 Kings 23; see also Jer 19.13; 32.29. 5: Repetition within v. 5 underscores the duplicity of the people: they bow down and swear both to the host of heaven and to Yahweh. 7–18: The day of the Lord (Joel 1.15; 3.14; Am 5.18; Ob 15; Zech 12.4). Verse 7 introduces vocabulary that will dominate this unit: day appears thirteen times through the end of the chapter. 7–13: The implications of the day for Judah. 7: Be silent, cf. Hab 2.20. Though court officials might be expected to be the guests at the Lord's sacrificial banquet, in an ironic turn they are described as the sacrifice itself. 8–13: A listing of Judah's crimes. 8–9: The linkage between those who adopt foreign attire with those who leap over the threshold, likely a non-Judean religious custom (cf. 1 Sam 5.5), connects assimilation with idolatry. 10–11: The Fish Gate (Neh 3.3; 12.39), the Second Quarter (2 Kings 22.14), and the Mortar (unidentified) likely all refer to wealthy districts in Jerusalem, where traders work. 12–13: Like the fourth-century bce Greek philosopher Diogenes who roamed Athens with a lamp seeking an honest man, the Lord will search Jerusalem with lamps to find the guilty. Because they doubt God's oversight of the world (see also Mal 2.17), their labor will not be successful (see Deut 28.30–31 and cf. Isa 65.21). 14–18: The chapter ends as it began, with attention on all the inhabitants of the earth (v. 18). As elsewhere in the prophets, the day is one of divine wrath (Isa 13.9) from which silver and gold provide no protection (Ezek 7.19). The sins of Judah lead to the destruction of all creation. 15: The term day appears six times in this verse; “Dies irae,” the Vulgate translation of day of wrath, is the title of the well-known medieval sequence for the dead; ruin translates Heb “shoʾah,” a term today used for the Holocaust. Compare Am 5.18–20.

2.1–3: Call to repentance. Although the day of the Lord is imminent, Judah's repentance may yet stave off destruction. 1: The shameless nation likely is Judah. 3: As in Joel 2.14 and Jon 3.8–9, Zephaniah underscores that some could perhaps survive if they seek righteousness (Isa 51.1).

2.4–15: Judgment on the nations. The call for Judah to repent shifts to the announcement that Judah's enemies will be destroyed. 4: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Ekron are four of the five major cities of the Philistines (Josh 13.3). Missing from the traditional list is Gath, destroyed by the Assyrians ca. 712 bce. 5: The Cherethites may be synonymous with Philistines (Ezek 25.16; 2 Sam 8.18n.), who ruled the area along the Mediterranean seacoast. 7: Remnant and restore their fortunes may reflect the situation of the Babylonian exile; see also v. 9; 3.18–20n. 8–11: Threats against Moab and the Ammonites, two of Judah's eastern neighbors, are common in prophetic literature (Jer 48–49; Ezek 25; Am 1–2), as is the use of Sodom and Gomorrah to connote total annihilation (Gen 19; Isa 1.9; 13.19; Jer 23.14; 50.4). 9: See v. 7n. 12: The brief mention of the Ethiopians (Heb “Cush,” see 1.1n) seems out of place. 13–15: Assyria, with its capital Nineveh, receives the greatest condemnation, in keeping with the book's Assyrian setting outlined in 1.1. While the translation of the animal vocabulary is difficult, the threat that a city could become the lair for wild animals was common in the ancient world (Isa 13.19–22; 24.11–15). Hisses and shakes the fist, ancient gestures of cursing (Jer 19.8; 49.17; Lam 2.15).

3.1–7: Judgment against Jerusalem. The city Jerusalem is no better than the nations previously judged. Officials, judges, prophets, and priests encompass the entire leadership of the city (Jer 6.13; 14.18). Their deceit sets in contrast the righteousness and just judgments of God. 6–7: God's punishment of the nations should have served as a warning for Judah to fear God and repent (cf. Am 4).

3.8–10: Judgment and salvation of the nations. 8: The day of the Lord, which dominated ch 1, returns; it is here described as a day of God's decision to act against the nations (Joel 3.14). 9: A more universal hope follows, in which all peoples will call on Judah's God (Isa 2; Mal 1.11; Ps 68.31). The punishment of those who built the tower of Babel (Gen 11.9) is reversed. 10: Scattered ones, Judeans who have been exiled to places such as Ethiopia (Heb “Cush”; see 1.1n.; 2.12), will join in this worldwide worship of God.

3.11–13: Salvation in Jerusalem. Focus returns to Jerusalem, for which feminine Heb forms are used. 11: At the time of salvation, God will remove the city's shame (3.19; Joel 2.26–27) and those who are haughty (Isa 2.11,12,17), highly negative terms in prophetic books. My holy mountain, Mount Zion, site of the Temple. 12–13: As in 2.7,9, this verse envisions salvation not for all of Judah but only for a remnant. The humble, those urged in 2.3 to seek righteousness, will survive. Their peaceful state will be like that of guarded sheep.

3.14–20: Salvation of daughter Jerusalem. The feminine characterization of Jerusalem expands to its depiction as a daughter, a designation of the city used throughout the prophets to underscore its vulnerability and utter dependency on God. 15–17: The presence of God as strong king and warrior means that daughter Jerusalem does not need to fear or grow weak (Zech 2.10–11; 9.9–1). 17–18: The Heb is obscure; see textual notes. 17: God the warrior will sing and rejoice, just as Jerusalem was called to do in 3.14. 3.18–20: I will remove disaster from you, contrasting with the beginning of the book, 1.2–3. Restore your fortunes, see 2.7. The deep concern for the ingathering of exiles likely reflects postexilic sentiments, indicating either that these verses were later added to a late-Assyrian-period book or that the book itself was written in the postexilic period as a retrospective look at the time of King Josiah. The language is highly reminiscent of the promises made to Jerusalem in Zech 1–2, as well those made to daughter Zion in Mic 4.6–7, which also envisions the return of the lame and outcast (the same Heb word is translated as “those who were cast off” in Mic 4.7).

^a Cn: Heb sea, and those who cause the wicked to stumble

^b Compare Gk: Heb the idolatrous priests with the priests

^c Gk Mss Syr Vg: Heb Malcam (or, their king)

^a Heb who thicken

^b Cn Compare Gk Syr: Heb before a decree is born; like chaff a day has passed away

^a Or Nubians; Heb Cushites

^a Tg Compare Gk: Heb nation

^b Meaning of Heb uncertain

^c Cn: Heb a voice

^d Gk Vg: Heb desolation

^e Heb it

^f Gk Syr: Heb its dwelling will not be cut off

^g Or Nubia; Heb Cush

^a Gk Syr: Heb he will be silent

^b Gk Syr: Meaning of Heb uncertain

^c Cn: Heb I will remove from you; they were