Zephaniah: The Day of Wrath, and the Humble

At a Glance

Who wrote it: Zephaniah, whose family tree goes back four generations to a man named Hezekiah, perhaps the king. His father’s name was Cushi.

When: In the reign of King Josiah, about 640 to 609 BC.

Where it fits: Zephaniah spoke under King Josiah, the years told in 2 Kings 22 and 23, a generation before Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC. Many scholars think he spoke before Josiah’s reform of 622 BC.

Where I quote it: Never.

If you only read three chapters: It has three. Read Zephaniah 1 and 3.

Words to Know

Day of the LORD — the day God comes to judge. Zephaniah describes it more fiercely than anyone.

The humble — in Hebrew anawim, the poor and lowly who depend on God.

Remnant — those who are left after the disaster.

The Book in Brief

Zephaniah is a short book of prophecy in three chapters, spoken to Judah and Jerusalem. Its first line traces the prophet’s family back four generations and places him in the reign of King Josiah. It tells nothing else about his life.

Chapter 1 announces the day of the LORD. God will sweep away everything from the earth, and above all will punish Jerusalem: those who worship Baal and the stars, the court that copies foreign ways, the merchants, and the comfortable who think God will do nothing. The day is near, a day of wrath and darkness.

Chapter 2 calls the humble to seek the LORD. Then it turns to the nations around Judah: the Philistines on the coast, Moab and Ammon to the east, Cush in the far south, and Assyria and its capital, Nineveh, in the north.

Chapter 3 turns back to Jerusalem, a city that will not listen, with rulers like lions and wolves. Then the tone changes. God promises to purify the speech of the peoples, to leave a humble and poor people in the city, and to gather the scattered. The book ends with a song of joy, and God rejoicing over his people.

Zephaniah’s first chapter is the most frightening description of the day of the LORD in the scriptures.

That day is a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness (Zephaniah 1:15).

In the Latin Bible, the first words of that verse are Dies irae, dies illa, “the day of wrath, that day.” In the 1200s, a hymn was written that begins with them, the Dies Irae. It was sung at funerals for centuries. Mozart and Verdi set it in their Requiems.¹ Its old chant melody turns up in film scores, including Star Wars and The Shining, whenever a composer wants you to feel doom coming.

All of that began with a prophet in Jerusalem in the reign of King Josiah.

The comfortable

Who is the day of wrath for? Zephaniah tells you.

I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are settled on their dregs, who say in their heart, “The LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil” (Zephaniah 1:12).

These are not atheists. They would never say God does not exist. They have simply decided God does not matter. God will not help, God will not hurt, so they can do as they like. Wine left too long on its dregs goes thick and stale. So had they.

Their wealth will become a plunder, and their houses a desolation. Yes, they will build houses, but won’t inhabit them (Zephaniah 1:13).

And the rulers: Her princes within her are roaring lions. Her judges are evening wolves. They leave nothing until the next day (Zephaniah 3:3).

Go deeperZephaniah and King Josiah’s reform

Zephaniah’s first chapter names the gods Jerusalem was worshiping. It speaks of the remnant of Baal, of the idolatrous and pagan priests, of those who worship the army of the sky on the housetops, and of those who swear by Malcam (Zephaniah 1:4–5). Malcam is probably Milcom, the god of the Ammonites. Zephaniah also goes after the royal court: the princes, the king’s sons, and all those who are clothed with foreign clothing (Zephaniah 1:8).

Now read 2 Kings 23. In the eighteenth year of his reign, 622 BC, King Josiah set out to clear all of this from the land. He burned the things made for Baal, for the Asherah, and for all the army of the sky. He got rid of the idolatrous priests. He tore down the altars that earlier kings had built on a roof, and he defiled the old shrine for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon (2 Kings 23:4–5, 12–13). The Hebrew word for those idolatrous priests appears only three times in the scriptures, and two of them are here and in Zephaniah.²

The reform began, 2 Kings says, when a scroll of the law was found in the Temple during repairs (2 Kings 22:8). Since the early 1800s, many scholars have thought that scroll was an early form of Deuteronomy.³

Because Zephaniah describes the very worship Josiah removed, many scholars think he spoke before 622. Josiah had become king at eight years old (2 Kings 22:1), and Zephaniah condemns the princes and the king’s sons but never the king. Others answer that a reform ordered from the palace rarely reaches every house and rooftop, so he could have spoken after it. A few think the book took its final form much later.³ Either way, the prophet and the king lived in the same city, in the same years, and fought the same things.

Seek humility

Then Zephaniah turns to a different group.

Seek the LORD, all you humble of the land, who have kept his ordinances. Seek righteousness. Seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the LORD’s anger (Zephaniah 2:3).

The humble of the land. In Hebrew, the anawim, the poor and lowly. The day of wrath is for the complacent and the powerful. The humble are told to keep seeking.

And at the end, God says who will be left: I will leave among you an afflicted and poor people, and they will take refuge in the LORD’s name (Zephaniah 3:12).

The people God keeps are the poor.

When I began my sermon on the mountain, I said, Blessed are the poor in spirit … Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:3, 5). Zephaniah had already said who would be left standing.

Purified lips

Zephaniah also has a promise that undoes the tower of Babel: For then I will purify the lips of the peoples, that they may all call on the LORD’s name, to serve him shoulder to shoulder (Zephaniah 3:9).

At Babel, God scattered the nations by confusing their language. Many readers hear the reverse here: God gathers them by purifying their lips, their speech. At Pentecost, my followers spoke and people from every nation heard them in their own language (Acts 2:5–11).

Go deeperA prophet called the son of Cushi

Zephaniah’s family tree is the longest given in the heading of any prophetic book. It goes back four generations, to a man named Hezekiah (Zephaniah 1:1). It does not call him king. But the name is the same as King Hezekiah’s, and the dates can fit, so readers since the Middle Ages have argued over whether the prophet was the king’s great-great-grandson.⁴

Why give four generations? One answer is that the list stops when it reaches someone famous. Another answer starts from the first name in it. Zephaniah’s father is called Cushi, and in Hebrew that means a Cushite. Cush was the land south of Egypt, along the Nile, in what is now Sudan. Many Bibles, like the one I quote, call it Ethiopia. In the century before Zephaniah, kings from Cush ruled Egypt itself, and one of them, Tirhakah, marched out against the Assyrians in Hezekiah’s day (2 Kings 19:9). Isaiah warned the small nations who hoped Cush and Egypt would save them from Assyria (Isaiah 20:5–6).⁵

So some scholars think Zephaniah’s father had Cushite, that is African, roots, and that the long family tree was there to show that the prophet was still a true son of Judah.⁶ Others answer that Cushi was simply a name. A Judean official in Jeremiah’s time had a great-grandfather named Cushi too (Jeremiah 36:14), and nobody calls him a foreigner. The book itself does not say.

What the book does say is striking. Zephaniah threatens the Cushites with the sword like the other nations (Zephaniah 2:12). But near the end he looks south again, to the far edge of the world he knew: From beyond the rivers of Cush, my worshipers, even the daughter of my dispersed people, will bring my offering (Zephaniah 3:10).

God sings

And then the book ends in a way you would never expect from its first chapter.

The LORD, your God, is among you, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with joy. He will calm you in his love. He will rejoice over you with singing (Zephaniah 3:17).

God, singing. Over the people.

I will save those who are lame, and gather those who were driven away. I will give them praise and honor, whose shame has been in all the earth (Zephaniah 3:19).

The book that gave the world the Dies Irae ends with God singing over the lame and those who were driven away.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Zephaniah 1:12, then Zephaniah 3:11–13.

You will find: who the day of wrath is for, and who will be left.

Then read Zephaniah 3:17–19.

The Short Version

• Zephaniah’s “day of wrath” gave the world the hymn Dies Irae.
• The wrath falls on the complacent, who think God will do neither good nor evil, and on rulers like wolves.
• The humble of the land are told to keep seeking. The remnant God keeps is afflicted and poor.
• It promises to purify the lips of the peoples, which many read as the reverse of Babel.
• It ends with God singing over the lame and those who were driven away.