Biblical Theology XXXII: Zephaniah

The book of Zephaniah records a prophecy given to the prophet during the reign of Josiah between 641–609 B.C.  It is structured on a similar pattern with other prophetic books: God will judge the world by first judging His visible covenant community (1:1–2:3); the judgment of the rest of the world will follow (2:4–3:8); and then God will restore His visible covenant community, which will be made up of a remnant from His people and the nations that remain after His judgment (3:9–20).

Theology: God’s wrath is upon His own creation because it does not bring Him glory by worshiping Him as He made it to do. His wrath, therefore, is upon His own covenant community that also does not worship Him by giving Him glory, but rather worships other gods, created things, and governments. 

His judgment begins with His visible covenant community, as is commonly stated in the prophets.  It then spans out from there into all nations. His judgment is  described as a reversal of creation, even reversing the order in which things are made in Genesis 1, and describing their total destruction with the language of the flood in Genesis, creating an inclusion around the judgment of creation text in 1:2–3. He starts with His own covenant community who did not fulfill their role as priests who point the world toward the worship of YHWH, but rather were conformed to the world and were corrupted together with them.

The day of the Lord plays a prominent role, as in other books, as a day in which God will pour out His wrath upon the wicked world and all creation as a great purging event that will end the corruption in the world once and for all by removing all chaos and chaotic agents from it.

Instead of preserving His covenant community that has many wicked people in it, and preserving the rest of the world that is also filled with wicked people, God will remove them all in judgment and purify the creation by only letting the righteous remnant, both from Judah and the nations, dwell in it.

Ethics: There is an antinomian spirit present among the people. The nation is viewed as filled with darkness rather than being a light because of this spirit. In 1:12, God states: “At that time I will search through Jerusalem with lamps. I will punish those who are apathetic about their sin,

those who think to themselves, ‘The Lord neither rewards nor punishes.”

Great judgment will come upon them. They must realize their vulnerable position in God’s judgment (e.g., 1:18–2:1, His judgment is a fire and they are like straw) and must repent during the brief time they have left to do so. The righteous are also challenged to keep worshiping Him in obedience so that they are not destroyed by the judgment (2:3).

The nations who mocked and oppressed the righteous of His people will perish in His judgment. Only the repentant righteous within them will survive it and give praise to God (3:8–9), along with the repentant remnant of Judah (3:11–13). Hence, the creation to come will consist of those who are righteous and repent of their sins, and worship YHWH. 

This vision of God’s completion of His creation both through the forgiveness of sins of the repentant and through the violent act of judging the unrepentant that create chaos in finality leads to His praise and fills His people with joy (3:14–20).  God removes chaos from creation by removing it from within His people and removing chaotic agents, i.e., the unrepentant wicked, from that creation. 

Hence, He removes evil from the world once and for all by these two means, i.e., His justice and His love. The skepticism of the antinomians who do what they please because God has not judged the whole world immediately is, therefore, misplaced. As God judged Judah almost immediately after Josiah’s reign (i.e., a microcosmic down payment of the larger judgment to come), He will judge the world in due time, and the message of the prophet is that the reader will want to assess whether he is in the group that will live on in the creation or the group that is removed from it.