Zephaniah is the final prophet who prophesied to “Judah alone”-the other two being Nahum and Habakkuk; Jeremiah was also a contemporary.  We can see from verse 1 that king Hezekiah was his great great grandfather, so for good reason, Zephaniah is sometimes called the royal prophet.

Judah had just suffered under two bad kings, Manasseh and Amon, and Zephaniah prophesied during the reign of good king Josiah who was, only, 8 years old when he came to the throne.  Sadly, after Josiah’s reign, the kings were to continue their slide away from God.  It is ironic that, in the time of Hezekiah, Jerusalem had been spared Assyrian exile but here, we see, one of his relatives  prophesying the city’s final downfall.

EVERYTHING SWEPT AWAY
Much of Zephaniah is about the extent of God’s judgement for He had decided that the only way forward for his kingdom was to get rid of much of the old and start again with a small remnant.  Verse two starts with a dramatic pronouncement that God was to (v2) “utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth”, starting with Judah and Jerusalem (v4).  Why was this so necessary?

Firstly, there was the dreadful worship of other gods, see verses 4, 5 and 6, and people were no longer following the Lord, not even seeking Him.  The day of the Lord was “at hand” and even the officials and kings sons would be punished but, interestingly, not the king himself.  Violence and fraud were rife (v9) and the country was just sliding further away from what God had desired for his people.  People had become complacent and, even though they recognised God wasn’t being particularly good to them, they also assumed that He would not do them any harm either (v12).  No, this was a day that was definitely near (v14), a terrible day (13-18) and, in the fire of the Lord’s passion, the whole earth would be consumed (v18).

JEHOVAH HIDES
The best they could hope for was to be “hidden” (2v3) from the Lord and it is interesting, in this context, that Zephaniah’s name means “Jehovah hides”.  There was still be hope for the humble who (v3) “do his commands, seek righteousness, seek humility”.

ENEMIES TO GOD’S KINDOM WOULD ALSO BE DEALT WITH
Judah would not suffer alone for the time of reckoning would also come for those neighbouring nations who had troubled God’s people over the years.  There were the Philistines (v4) whose land would eventually be occupied by the remnant who returned (v7).  There was Moab (v8) and Ammon (v8) who had scoffed and boasted against the people of the Lord of hosts.  There was Ethiopia (v12) in the south and, of course, Assyria in the north with its capital Nineveh (v13) which would become, thereafter, a desolation.  Nineveh was a city that had felt secure and said to itself (v15), in its pride, “I am, and there is no one else”. God would deal with it and , in our day, Nineveh is still one large area of archaeological ruins.

GOD IS PASSIONATE ABOUT HIS PEOPLE
Chapter 3 goes back to Jerusalem, the place of God’s presence, which is now called, in verse 1, the “soiled, defiled oppressing city”.  God had wanted her (v2) to listen to His voice, accept His correction, trust in Him and even draw near to Him.  The leaders had failed in their jobs and the officials were called lions and the judges wolves; the prophets were reckless and faithless and the priests profaned the sacred.  God had said “surely the city will fear me, it will accept correction” (v7) but He was wrong and things became worse.  All along, He had been working to encourage His people to turn back to Him but the opposite happened and they were even more eager to “make all their deeds corrupt” (v7).  The message from the Lord was that they should wait for Him, wait for the heat of His anger and the fire of his passion (v8).  God is, always, passionate about the future of His people.

LOOKING FORWARD TO A DIFFERENT DAY
There is always reason to God’s judgement and He may want to correct or even abandon His work and virtually start again.  God looked forward to a different day when people would call on Him and serve Him (v9).  God foresaw the time when people would come to Him from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia; in other words, beyond the known world at the time.  God would take away their shame (v11) and, instead of the proud, He would leave a humble and lowly people who would  seek refuge in him (v12).  There was a future for the remnant of Israel who would be a holy people living in security, in the land of God’s kingdom (v13).  It would be a time for singing and rejoicing because all judgements against her would be taken away and her enemies would, also, be turned away (v15).

GOD IN THE MIDST OF THEM
The Lord would be in the midst of his people, as He had always wanted to be.  The warrior God, in their midst, would give them victory (v17a) and would be enjoying the relationship with His people, rejoicing over them, renewing them in his love and exulting over them with loud singing (v17b).  The days of disaster and oppressors would be gone, the lame would be saved and the outcast gathered in.  Instead of their shame (final verse) the world would honour and praise them.

And so with God’s kingdom.  The remnant were to return after exile and from one of their descendants would come Jesus.  Jesus, our Saviour, has taken away any judgements against us and, by forgiveness, He has dealt with the shame of our sin.  His holy presence, the Holy Spirit, is now glad to be in the midst of his people.  He is renewing us in his love and rejoicing over us.  God loved his people too much to leave them in their mess.  He knew the difficulty of working with broken people in a broken world but he was able to take the tough action to exile Judah because from it would spring the hope of all the world.