Day 36 – Tuesday -- The Book of Zephaniah

Day 36 – Tuesday

The Book of Zephaniah

We don’t hear many sermons from Zephaniah. It’s only 53 verses, but they pack a lot of gloom. The book’s message can be summed up rather quickly. This is from the ERV (Easy-to-Read Version)*:

The Lord says, “I will destroy everything on earth.  I will destroy all the people and all the animals. I will destroy the birds in the air and the fish in the sea. I will destroy the evil people and everything that makes them sin. I will remove all people from the earth.” This is what the Lord said (1.2-3).

The order of destruction in 1.2-3 is: people, animals, birds, fish. Which is the reverse of the creation story in Genesis where God creates: fish, birds, animals, people. So God is going to reverse creation!

The Lord is in a bad mood. It sounds like pre-Noah days. But there is an escape clause. If the Jews repent, their nation will not be destroyed; a new generation will be raised up to carry on.

The devastating picture of God’s judgment may be “prophetic exaggeration.” Jesus did this sort of thing. When he spoke of “the end” (Matt. 24.14), it sounded like the end of the world. But he was most likely speaking of what happened to Jerusalem in 70 CE when General Titus and the Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. Therefore, Zephaniah’s talk about God destroying everything may be poetic license. Sort of like a revival preacher painting the darkest picture possible in order to get people “down the aisle.”

Zephaniah was writing during the reign of King Josiah (640-609). Israel had already been conquered. Judah would fall in 586. Either Zephaniah supernaturally predicts the return of the exiles (see 3.19), or he simply imagines a hopeful future somewhere down the line, or a later editor adds those verses after the fact. He is writing at the same time as Jeremiah’s early writings.

The sins of Judah are: the worshiping of foreign gods (1.4-9) and having an unjust and abusive leadership (3.1-4). The stock phrase “the day of the Lord” is used by Zephaniah as other prophets had done.

According to Stephen Winward, artists of the medieval era show Zephaniah as a man going through the city carrying a lamp, which reflects chapter one, verse twelve:

I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those people who sit there unworried while thinking, “The Lord won’t do anything, good or bad” (CEV).

But as noted above, the small book ends with a more positive light:

The Lord has promised: Your sorrow has ended, and you can celebrate…I will lead you home (3.18, 20, CEV).

Each of the three chapters of Zephaniah contains a verb in the imperative that has relevance for us at various times: Quiet! Seek! Wait!

Be silent before the Lord God! (1.7)

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land… (2.3).

Therefore wait for me, says the Lord… (3.8).

 

If I were preaching from Zephaniah, the three verses above might be my outline.

 

Finish this: The way I seek the Lord is…

*I’m not kidding. There is a translation called The ERV.