Little is known of Zephaniah, the author of this book. He was probably a contemporary of Jeremiah, and could have been one of the early tutors of King Josiah. His prophesy mainly concerns the effects of the Hebrew’s ‘evil’ behavior. 

1. Zephaniah speaks for God and warns of coming destruction, saying ‘I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth’. He condemns Judah for its idolatrous priests and polytheism, saying ‘I will punish the king’s sons and all those who wear foreign clothes.’ Zephaniah says that the ‘great day of the Lord is near’, and it will bring wrath, distress, anguish, trouble, ruin, darkness, and gloom. For their sin the peoples’ ‘blood will be poured out like dust, and their entrails like filth’. God will bring a ‘sudden end’ for ‘all who live on earth’. Yet more violent revenge fantasies and failed prophesies.

2. Zephaniah implores the nation to gather together and obey God so that they may be ‘sheltered’ from the ‘Lord’s anger’. Zephaniah, channeling God, says that He will also destroy the Philistines, the Moabites, and the Ammonites, because they have insulted and threatened ‘my people’. God continues by saying that the Cushites will be ‘slain by the sword’, and the Assyrians will be annihilated.

3. Zephaniah says that Jerusalem will be punished for her corruption, and ‘the world will be consumed by my jealous anger’. Then (how could anyone be left) God will ‘purify the lips of the people’, who will come together and worship and bring offerings. God will remove all fear and shame, gather the exiles, and ‘quiet you with his love’.

Terrifying things will happen if you fail to obey the jealous, nasty God of the Old Testament. Zephaniah says that the ‘great day of the Lord’ brings wrath, distress, anguish, trouble, ruin, darkness, and gloom. Then he says that the peoples’ ‘blood will be poured out like dust, and their entrails like filth’. Then he ends by saying God will ‘quiet you with his love. Sickening and pathological passive-aggressive nonsense.

Back to Habakkuk. Forward to Haggai.