Zephaniah 1

Habakkuk 3 Zephaniah 2

Zephaniah 1 Contemporary English Version (CEV)

1 I am Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, the grandson of Gedaliah, the great-grandson of Amariah, and the great-great-grandson of Hezekiah.^[a]

When Josiah son of Amon was king of Judah,^[b] the Lord gave me this message.

Judgment on Judah

²I, the Lord, now promise
to destroy everything
    on this earth—
³people and animals,
    birds and fish.
Everyone who is evil
    will crash to the ground,^[c]
and I will wipe out
    the entire human race.
⁴I will reach out to punish
    Judah and Jerusalem—
nothing will remain
    of the god Baal;^[d]
nothing will be remembered
    of his pagan priests.
⁵Not a trace will be found
of those who worship stars
    from their rooftops,
or bow down to the god Milcom,^[e]
while claiming loyalty
    to me, the Lord.
⁶Nothing will remain of anyone
who has turned away
    and rejected me.

⁷Be silent! I am the Lord God,
    and the time is near.
I am preparing
to sacrifice my people
    and to invite my guests.
⁸On that day I will punish
national leaders
    and sons of the king,
along with all who follow
    foreign customs.^[f]
⁹I will punish worshipers
    of pagan gods^[g]
and cruel palace officials
    who abuse their power.

¹⁰I, the Lord, promise
    that on that day
noisy crying will be heard
from Fish Gate, New Town,
    and Upper Hills.
¹¹Everyone in Lower Hollow^[h]
    will mourn loudly,
because merchants
and money changers
    will be wiped out.
¹²I’ll search Jerusalem with lamps
    and punish those people
who sit there unworried
    while thinking,
“The Lord won’t do anything,
    good or bad.”
¹³Their possessions will be taken,
    their homes left in ruins.
They won’t get to live
    in the houses they build,
or drink wine from the grapes
    in their own vineyards.

A Terrible Day

¹⁴The great day of the Lord
    is coming soon, very soon.
On that terrible day,
fearsome shouts of warriors
    will be heard everywhere.
¹⁵It will be a time of anger—
    of trouble and torment,
of disaster and destruction,
    of darkness and despair,
of storm clouds and shadows,
¹⁶of trumpet calls
    and battle cries
against fortified cities
    and mighty fortresses.

¹⁷The Lord warns everyone
    who has sinned against him,
“I’ll strike you blind!
Then your blood and your insides
    will gush out like vomit.
¹⁸Not even your silver or gold
can save you on that day
    when I, the Lord, am angry.
My anger will flare up
    like a furious fire
scorching the earth
    and everyone on it.”

Footnotes:

1.1 Hezekiah: Ruled 716-687 B.C.
1.1 Josiah. . . king of Judah: Ruled 640-609 B.C.
1.3 Everyone. . . ground: One possible meaning for the difficult Hebrew text.
1.4 Baal: A Caananite fertility god.
1.5 Milcom: An Ammonite fertility god.
1.8 follow foreign customs: Hebrew “wear foreign clothes.”
1.9 worshipers. . . gods: The Hebrew text has “all who jump over the threshold,” which was a Philistine religious practice (see 1 Samuel 5.5).
1.10,11 Fish Gate, New Town, and Upper Hills. . . Lower Hollow: Names for different sections of Jerusalem: Fish Gate was probably the main gate on the north side of the city; New Town was a newer section; Upper Hills may have been a suburb north of the city; Lower Hollow was probably on the southern edge of town.