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During Zephaniah’s ministry, God was speaking loudly through the prophets. There were at least five biblical prophets in the seventh century BCE who all sounded identical alarms. Zephaniah’s career overlapped with the prophet Jeremiah since both ministered during the reign of King Josiah. Slightly before Zephaniah and Jeremiah, Nahum had prophesied Assyria’s ruin, and Habakkuk had envisioned the rise of the Babylonians. It was during Josiah’s reign that a priest had rediscovered the Book of the Law during renovations at the First Temple. Hulda, a prophetess in Jerusalem, authenticated the book and warned King Josiah that God was soon going to discipline all those who had forsaken the covenant (2 Kings 22:3-13; 2 Chron. 34:14-21). The prophets warned that Judah was living on the precipice of disaster.
Since the context clues in Zephaniah link his oracles to the early part of Josiah’s reign, before the king tried to purge the nation of paganism, Jeremiah most likely dates a bit after Zephaniah. According to the book of Jeremiah, he first received the word of the Lord in the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign, approximately during the middle of Josiah’s campaign of reforms (Jer. 1:2).
Still, Zephaniah’s descriptions of Judah’s failures correspond exactly with Jeremiah’s complaints. The people of Judah were committing the same sins of idolatry, injustice, and immorality that had led to Israel’s judgment a century earlier. With all the prophets delivering the same warning message, it is shocking that most of Judah still believed that Jerusalem, God’s chosen city, was impenetrable to the attack of outsiders. Most realized the seriousness of the situation and the truth of the prophets only after the Babylonians had surrounded the city.
Time to repent
Zephaniah followed the common prophetic formula of announcing judgment and then calling for repentance. He exhorted the people: “Gather together, gather, O Shameless nation, before you are driven away, like the drifting chaff, before there comes upon you the fierce anger of the Lord” (2:1). The call was for Judah to gather and repent as a nation, urgently seeking God’s forgiveness. They were called a shameless “nation” with the Hebrew word, goy. Zephaniah used the word goy as a derogatory term since it referred to foreign nations outside of the covenant.
The book’s first chapter was written with a divine voice that rebuked the people for abandoning the Lord. In the second chapter, Zephaniah, in his own voice, urged them to “seek the Lord” (2:3). The prophet was trying to motivate the people to pursue righteousness and humility (2:3). He cautioned that obedience and repentance might not save them from the coming judgment day. It was not within his domain as a messenger to promise that God would relent. All he could suggest is that “perhaps” it was not too late to influence the outcome.
In Zephaniah 1, God was speaking, and destruction seemed certain. Only in the prophet’s voice did the oracle propose an alternative to being swept away from the earth. Besides the tentative nature of his offer, the proposal was a wonderful motivator to prompt a change of behavior. If the prophet was using basic negotiation strategies, it appears that survival was the carrot and annihilation was the stick.
As the story of Jonah illustrates, nations under threat of judgment had been given time to change their ways and therefore to change Yahweh’s mind. Zephaniah’s compulsion to offer a glimmer of hope suits his name, which, in Hebrew, means “Yahweh has protected.”
Zephaniah addressed all the “humble of the land” (2:3). He seems to exclude the elite that he had addressed earlier as those in “foreign clothing” (1:8). The elite placed more faith in their silver and gold than in the God of their forefathers (1:18). Reconciling themselves to God meant stopping their habits of conforming to the world and instead following the ways of the righteous.
Oracles against the nations
Zephaniah added color to the universal declarations of judgment by delivering specific oracles targeting five nations. Zephaniah’s oracles against the nations were much less comprehensive than those of Amos (1:3-2:16), but their purpose was the same. By preaching retribution for Judah’s enemies first, the listeners would have found themselves in agreement with the prophet about the necessity of judgment. Yahweh could not allow the nations to continue their wicked path. Lured into agreement, Zephaniah’s audience had to concede that his final proclamation of judgment, which he was directing at his own people, was just. They were also headed for divine judgment because of their wickedness, which matched that of the nations.
Zephaniah’s selection of nations seems arbitrary, but he was showing the totality of the coming judgment by selecting nations from all four of the cardinal directions. Philistia was west of Judah, while Moab and Ammon were to the east, Cush to the south, and Assyria to the north.
Philistia
Zephaniah predicted coming desolation for four Philistine cities: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Ekron (2:4). He omitted Gath, perhaps because the Arameans had already destroyed it. During the United Monarchy, the Philistines had been the most irritating of Israel’s enemies. King David defeated the Philistines, but he never quite eradicated their threat.
We do not know what specific military campaign Zephaniah was envisioning in his prediction of Philistia’s fall. Most likely Zephaniah was forecasting the Babylonian invasion of Philistia under King Nebuchadnezzar II between 604-598 BCE. Zephaniah is the one prophet who refused to name the pagan empire responsible for delivering God’s punishment. Jeremiah and Habakkuk were explicit that Babylonia would deliver God’s judgment. The Babylonian campaign in Philistia eradicated the Philistines from written records. Adding insult to injury, Yahweh referred to the “land of the Philistines” (2:5) as Canaan, the historical name of the area before the Philistines had ever occupied the coast.
Ammon and Moab
Zephaniah’s next oracle addressed two nations in Transjordan: Ammon and Moab. Amos also included Ammon and Moab in his Oracles Against the Nations (1:3, 2:3). Isaiah and Jeremiah had the two nations on their watch list as well (Isa. 15-16; Jer. 48), but only Zephaniah linked the fates of Ammon and Moab together.
The Israelites had a long history with the Ammonites and Moabites, fraught with strife. Because both nations were Judah’s extended kin, as descendants of Lot, Abraham’s nephew, they had a protected status during Joshua’s conquest. God had instructed the Israelites to leave Moab alone (Deut. 2:9), for he had allotted them their land. King Balak of Moab had not felt the same allegiance of kinship. When the Israelites passed through his territory on their way to Canaan, he hired the seer Balaam to curse them (Num. 22-23).
Kinship was not enough to maintain peace between the Israelites and Ammonites, either. When King David sent envoys to convey his condolences for the death of the Ammonite king, the action was mistaken as a threat, and bloody conflict broke out between the nations (2 Sam. 10).
Zephaniah’s oracle accused Ammon and Moab of taunting Judah and building up pride in their own strength. Zephaniah did not explain the background behind his accusation, but it likely stemmed from the reality that Ammon and Moab had survived Assyria’s military campaigns. They had poked at Judah’s insecurity about the destruction and exile of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
The origin story of both the Ammonites and Moabites is that they descended from the incestuous relationship between Lot and his two daughters after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:36-38). Zephaniah’s declaration that the fate of each nation shall be like Sodom and Gomorrah (2:9) was an ironic callback to their origin, complete with a reference to “salt pits.”
The oracle includes a restoration promise to Judah. With the destruction of Ammon and Moab, Judah would inherit their empty lands, taking possession of the full territory promised to Abraham’s descendants (Gen. 13:14-15). These passages suggest that Yahweh’s sweeping judgments would finish what Joshua had started in the early days of conquest.
Cush
Zephaniah’s inclusion of Cush is odd, considering that they were the most distant and least known of the nations listed. If the other prophets provide a template for oracles against the nations, one would expect the inclusion of Edom, a more immediate neighbor, or Egypt, a historical menace to Israel. Cush’s inclusion in Zephaniah’s writing may indicate the far-reaching scope of Yahweh’s power on the day of the Lord.
Cush is modern-day Ethiopia, or Nubia in antiquity. Around the early seventh century BCE, Nubia’s king took power in southern Egypt. But in 663 BCE, Assyria attacked and overtook Thebes, the most prosperous city in Egypt. This devastating loss effectively ended Cushite rule in Egypt.
Though the Cushite kingdom ended in military defeat at the hands of Assyria, their future conquerors, alluded to in Zephaniah, were unnamed. Instead, Zephaniah gave the credit of their destruction to Yahweh alone: “You also, O Cushites, shall be killed by my sword” (2:12). The prophet did not give a rationale for Cush’s punishment. He did not accuse Cush of pride, like Assyria, or of insulting Judah, like Ammon and Moab, nor was Judah promised to occupy the lands of Cush. However, Cush was one of the faraway places from which the exiles would return (3:10).
Assyria
Finally, Zephaniah set his sights on Assyria. No good seventh-century prophet would leave out this oppressive, vile empire to the north. Assyria was already weakening and nearing its end when Zephaniah wrote his oracle.
Like Nahum, Zephaniah predicted the fall of the city of Nineveh (2:13). This is the only historical event referenced in Zephaniah. The once magnificent city would become a “dry waste like the desert” (2:13). Nineveh was famous for its elaborate water systems, and its position on the bank of the Tigris River made water seem like an endless resource. However, on the day of her destruction, the water-rich city would transform into an arid desert. When referring to Philistia, Ammon, and Moab, Zephaniah predicted the remnant of Judah would take possession of their lands, but Assyria was not part of the covenanted land, so in her case, the animals would lay claim to her ruins. “Every wild animal of the earth” would find the opportunity to rest in the city’s quiet, empty ruins (2:14).
Three times in Zephaniah’s oracles against the nations, the prophet unexpectedly inserted a message of hope (2:7,9,11). His prophecies did not promise that reforms would cancel the impending disintegration of Judah, but he did promise the salvation of a remnant. His oracle against Philistia included this message of hope for Judah:
The 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 (2:7).
Some scholars read nationalist ideas into the passage. Believing Josiah was an expansionist king, they read a threat to Philistia, Moab, and Ammon into Zephaniah’s message of hope for Judah. However, if Zephaniah was giving Josiah a prophecy about Judah’s borders expanding into neighboring territory, that would change the message of the prophetic text entirely, and that is not what happened.
There is no data that supports a campaign of expansion for Josiah, whether archaeologically or historically, and it is not in the biblical text, either. Instead, Zephaniah’s abrupt message of hope echoes the future fulfillment of multiple prophetic promises of the remnant. When Yahweh said that one day Judah would occupy Philistia’s abandoned fields and homes, he was reaffirming his commitment to the original covenant promises.
The remnant would not have it easy, as the book of Lamentations makes clear. The Babylonian attack pressed their lives to near ruin. After returning from decades of exile, they would slowly rebuild and eke out a living amidst the wreckage of Judah. There was no assurance for the survival of the righteous, or even for the swift punishment of the wicked. Justice on earth can never be so clear, but with the words of the prophets fresh in their ears, the remnant’s adversity produced righteousness, and their brokenness fostered humility. Zephaniah paints a beautiful picture of the regathering:
Seek 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 (2:3).