Another Bible Commentary: Zephaniah

Zephaniah preached from about 640 to 612 BC; this book is a message from around 622 BC. Zephaniah and Jeremiah spoke to King Josiah about reform. Josiah came to the throne at age 8, and he started his notable reforms at age 18.

1:1 Zephaniah was the great-great grandson of a righteous king.

1:2-3 Wow, the fish lived through Noah’s flood. Looking at the order things are leaving, this is meant to make us think of a reversal of the order of Creation. As we saw in Genesis 19:4,14 “all” can have a remnant as an exception, so God does not contradict Himself when He speaks of saving people in the rest of the book, such as in the similar Isaiah 24. See also Jeremiah 4:23-31, which uses similar poetic imagery to talk about Babylon coming to destroy Judah.

1:4 “idolatrous priests” The prophets had problems with the religious and political leadership in Jerusalem and pronounced their doom. Likewise, Jesus had problems with the religious and political leadership in Jerusalem; He pronounced their doom, too, in parables (Matthew 22:7), in the Olivet Discourse, etc. He’s easy to misread without a background in the prophets. Good for you for studying. Thanks for reading this far.

1:7 “Be silent” like Habakkuk 2:20. The Day of the LORD is whenever He visits to judge or to save. Siege warfare lasted for months or even years. Only truly mighty warrior kings could boast of winning in a day. “The LORD has prepared a sacrifice; He has consecrated those He has invited” sounds a lot like Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22.

1:8 “princes” Bad shepherds. Those in “foreign clothes” were Assyrian collaborators and sound a lot like the guy who was wearing the wrong outfit in Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22.

1:9 “threshold” See 1 Samuel 5:5.

1:10 “cry…wailing” like the weeping and gnashing of teeth in Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22.

1:11 The word for “merchants” is the same as the word for “Canaanites”, providing connotations, because of the well-known trading activities of the Phoenicians, who are Canaanites who escaped genocide.

1:12 “complacent” These were people that thought He wouldn’t act against Jerusalem in 586 BC, as we’ll see as we keep reading the rest of the verse. This isn’t a phrase to take out of context to motivate underperforming Christians. See Romans 5:1.

1:13 like Deuteronomy 28:30.

1:14-15 The Day of the Lord: Jeremiah 30:5-7, Ezekiel 30:1-4, Isaiah 2:11-12, Joel 2:1-2, Joel 2:31, Malachi 4:5, etc. The Day of the Lord is whenever He visits to punish or to save. This language for a notable event is similar to Isaiah 9:4 “the day of Midian”; there are a lot of people focused on one big Day of the Lord in the eschatological sense of it being the end of man’s “day”, but He’s had plenty of notable days involving floods, burning sulfur, etc. The “anguish” and “darkness” in Zephaniah 1:15 sound a lot like elements of Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22.

1:17 “blind” See Deuteronomy 28:28-29 and Matthew 22:13.

1:18 “silver…gold…save them” like in 2 Kings 23:35 and 2 Chronicles 16:1-10. Regarding the destruction of the world with fire and the end of those who live on the earth, see 2 Peter 3:7,10 and Revelation 20:11 through Revelation 21:1. Also, remember that Christians meet Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) before any of that.

Zephaniah 2 has the same sort of proclamations of doom for neighboring nations that we’ve seen throughout the prophets.

2:11 like Isaiah 2:2-4, Isaiah 66, and Jeremiah 3:17.

3:4 like Jeremiah 7:21 (polluted the sanctuary with improper ritual practices), Jeremiah 8:8 (scribal shenanigans), and Ezekiel 22:26 (both).

3:8 The same idea of an assembly of nations we’ve seen in Ezekiel 38, Joel 3:2, and Micah 4 happens in Revelation 20:7-9 and meets the fire (see also 2 Peter 3:10) from Deuteronomy 32:22.

3:9 “purify the lips” for holiness to serve as in Isaiah 6, since He saves people from every tribe, tongue, and nation (Revelation 7:9). A case could be made for a reversal of the curse of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9, Acts 2:1-11).

3:11 “arrogant boasters” The political and religious leadership addressed earlier in Zephaniah.

3:12 See Matthew 5:5.

3:13 “eat and lie down…no one…afraid” Peace and safety.

3:17 He lives in you, so this applies to you. He takes great delight in you, He will not rebuke you, and He’s so happy about you that He sings.

3:18 This may be more like, “I will gather you who mourn the loss of the festivals; you will be disgraced (by the exile) no more.”

3:20 “gather…bring you home” like a Good Shepherd, as promised in Deuteronomy 30.

The next group of prophets were active after the Exile.

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