The Twelve Minor Prophets: Zephaniah
Dr. James Smith
Zephaniah
30 October 2005
A few weeks ago, a long time member and greeter of our church, Adele Kotkins passed along a joke to me that was meant to be shared last week.
It concerned a time, when another pastor was preaching on the Old Testament minor prophets and he called out to the congregation, “And what shall we do with Habakkuk?”
A kind and well meaning Christian man in the back of the sanctuary replied, “we still have a seat available for him here in the back row, pastor!”
Last week, as you know, one of our elders, Kurtis McCathern, was gracious enough to preach on Habakkuk for me on short notice, since I was called out of town to perform a family funeral in Michigan.
And as we now come to the Book of Zephaniah, it would seem that we have yet another Old Testament prophet that is largely unknown to Christians today.
And as far as many believers are concerned, he might just as well be some guy with a strange name sitting in the back row of any church.
But, the Book of Zephaniah contains some significant material that is easily overlooked by casual observation.
Zephaniah, which means “God protects” or “God treasures” is unusual since it gives a 4 generation genealogy instead of the customary one or two.
His father’s name, “Cushi,” is significant because it suggests black African heritage. Cush as you may remember, was a area in the upper Nile region inhabited by black African peoples, later known as Nubians.
While hardly understood today, this powerful people exercised a considerable influence upon the history and imaginations of both Egypt and Israel.
In fact, if we trace Zephaniah’s genealogy back, we will note the name “Hezekiah.” This is very likely the same Hezekiah who was king of Judah during the time when the Assyrians were besieging the city of Jerusalem as well as devastating the land.
During that period of time, Judah relied on Egypt as an ally and Egypt at the time was ruled by the 25th dynasty, which was Cushite in origin.
Interaction between the Kingdom of Judah and the Cushite dynasty in Egypt was common and it is not unlikely that there was an exchange of ideas and officials.
And so it seems that Zephaniah had royal Judean as well as Cushite blood and as a person of mixed ancestry was called by God to proclaim his message to late 7th century Judah.
But if there is a dominant theme and a single-minded purpose of this unique prophet, it is his message of the “coming day of the Lord.”
Originally, the “day of the Lord” was used by the prophets to indicate a day of God’s judgment upon those who were afflicting His people.
It was a theme that the people loved to hear because it meant that God had had enough of others picking on His chosen ones and would now “come out swinging.”
This began to change, as we have found, with the earlier prophetic ministry of Amos. Amos helped to turn this beloved notion of God as a divine warrior, who marched out to destroy the enemies of his people, on its head.
He, as well as later prophets such as Zephaniah, said that God’s people were being unfaithful to their covenants with God and that God as a divine warrior would turn his vengence upon his own people because of their consistent lack of faithfulness.
Idolatry, syncretism (or the mixing of different religious faiths) and the adoption of foreign dress and customs would be met with divine destruction.
And so the oracles that God gave to the prophet were sentences of judgment handed down from the heavenly court where God was the judge and Zephaniah was a court-room official.
To add to this, Zephaniah does not only seem to be a prophet with royal connections but he seems highly attuned to temple ritual.
One can imagine him standing by the temple preaching his oracles as sermons during a major pilgrimage festival such as the Feast of Tabernacles, when he declared much to the shock and horror of the people that “God would sweep the world clean.”
And after getting the people’s attention, moving into even more startling imagery of the “day of the Lord” where we are reminded in 1:7-9, “sinners are the sacrifice and the executors of God’s wrath are the invited guests.”
The repetition of the words, “the day of the Lord” must have painfully hit the people as well as the leaders of Judah like “a ton of bricks.”
As a child, my mother would sometimes refer to the end of the world as “doomsday.” I didn’t exactly know what that meant but I knew that it was frightening and not something to be looked forward to.
It was only later as a Christian that I also came to understand that “the day of the Lord” was also a day of fulfillment and hope for the believer.
Indeed, if the Book of Zephaniah is best known for anything, it is that the prophet provides for us one of the most enduring of all Biblical portrayals of the judgment day.
It is one that has all the terrifying imagery of combat; darkness, battle cries, screams as well as gloom.
As Zephaniah proclaims in 1:15-16, “That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry.”
This solemn repetition through the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, probably led to composition of the famous medieval hymn “Dies irae” or “day of wrath by Thomas of Celano.
And this emphasis on day of final judgment found its way into the funeral liturgy for the burial of the dead and was forever memorialized as “doomsday,” which was my first image of the end of the world as a child.
Zephaniah teaches us a number of things in his book, but let me briefly highlight only two.
The first is that when we as Christians think of Christ’s second coming or “the day of the Lord,” we like to think of it as some sort of wonderful time. Zephaniah reminds us that it will also be an awful time of judgment and that for many, it will literally be “doomsday.”
Secondly, Zephaniah accusations that God’s people have failed to demonstrate love to one another continues to sting us today. Far too often, we as Christians assume too easily that the opposite of love is hate.
Zephaniah tells us that it is not hate, but rather a kind of careless indifference and detached apathy. Such indifference and apathy naturally spell the end of our relationships; both with God as well as other people.
The day of the Lord graphically reminds us that God does love and care for us and that He will continue to actively work to make sure that there is a future relationship between Himself and people, between the Creator and the created and that this will happen even if it has to “get messy” before we get the message.
Let’s Pray
