Zephaniah begins the end of the Book of the XII, so the eschatological themes in Zephaniah take on greater importance. Up to this point in the Minor Prophets, we saw a cycle of destruction. Then, in the last book, Habakkuk questioned why the Lord would allow such a cycle. The Lord answered him there briefly,…
Category: Zephaniah
The Lord selects his people, the humble: Zephaniah 2
The Lord’s people will triumph—but who are the Lord’s people? They are those who accept the Lord’s mercy in humility. As opposed to those in 1:12-13 who believe that the Lord can neither do good nor evil, these humble ones understand that their survival proves the Lord’s mercy. They are “martyrs” or witnesses that the…
How do the people reject the Lord?: Zephaniah 1
Zephaniah, like the other prophets among the 12, asserts the Lord as the entire system of the universe. He is, as I always tell our class, the bad and the good, the storm and the shelter from the storm (from Nahum 1). The first chapter of this book presents Zephaniah as a brash insider, a…