Zephaniah - Introduction

Bibliography

Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah, David W Baker, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, IVP (1988)

Another little foray into the Old Testament. The first verse in the book tells us about all that we really know about Zephaniah. He was a descendant of Hezekiah, one of the good kings of Judah, and he operated in the time of the reign of Josiah, another of the good kings. Hezekiah had introduced various religious reforms, and had seen off the Assyrians with divine intervention. However, there was never any deep rooted change in the nation. As soon as Hezekiah had gone, the next kings, Manasseh and Amon brought back the detestable practices that Hezekiah had swept away. Josiah did bring in more reforms and acted against pagan practices. Given the nature of Zephaniah’s prophecy it could be argued that he must have given his message in the early stages of Josiah’s reign, before the reforms took hold. However, this is by no means certain, as it is possible that pagan worship persisted in parts of the nation, despite official policy.

Zephaniah was probably contemporary with Nahum, Habakkuk and Jeremiah. His name means “the Lord hides” or “the Lord protects”.

The message of Zephaniah has one overriding theme and that is “the day of the Lord”, and he focuses with equal weight on two aspects of this Day. One is the judgement on Judah and the other nations, and the other is the blessing of Judah, of God’s people. Blessing and judgement are part of the gospel as well. Whenever we focus on just one of these we are going astray. Nowadays the common error is just to talk about the blessings of the gospel, totally neglecting the aspect of judgement. It is only when we look at both together that we start to see the full riches of the gospel.