Mining the Minors: Zephaniah (5)

Buried amidst all the specific prophesied judgments of Zephaniah 2 is this more general statement: “The Lord will … famish all the gods of the earth, and to him shall bow down, each in its place, all the lands of the nations.”

We should never forget as we read the scriptures that the rise and fall of nations, past and present, is not merely the product of the ingenuity of human generals or the whims of the kings of the earth. Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin are not the people calling the shots. Behind the scenes lie the principalities and powers, the “gods ['ĕlōhîm] of the earth”. In pitting nation against nation, God is displaying his superiority to and sovereignty over every spirit being in the universe, no matter how powerful or influential. He promises to “famish” or starve them, diminishing their glory and demonstrating their relative insignificance.

The rest of the chapter is the evidence that backs up this statement.

Zephaniah 2:1-3 — An Appeal to Judah

“Gather together, yes, gather, O shameless nation, before the decree takes effect — before the day passes away like chaff — before there comes upon you the burning anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the anger of the Lord. Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his just commands; seek righteousness; seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord.”

Before laying out the various ways in which the burning anger of the Lord would make itself manifest in the nations around Judah, Zephaniah appeals to his “shameless” nation to repent. There is no sense that the Lord’s judgment might miraculously be averted at this late stage, but there remains the possibility that the humble of the land, the remnant, might be “hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord”, and protected from the judgment that would invariably fall on the nation more generally.

In the book of Jeremiah, the word of the Lord comes to his scribe Baruch, a righteous man in Judah complaining of his sorrows. God replies to him, “Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up — that is, the whole land. And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not, for behold, I am bringing disaster upon all flesh, declares the Lord. But I will give you your life as a prize of war in all places to which you may go.”

Baruch was one of those hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord. If that is all the righteous can expect in times of distress, it is still something. It shows that God does not judge the righteous with the wicked.

Zephaniah 2:4-15 — The Nations Judged

“For Gaza shall be deserted, and Ashkelon shall become a desolation; Ashdod’s people shall be driven out at noon, and Ekron shall be uprooted.

Woe to you inhabitants of the seacoast, you nation of the Cherethites! The word of the Lord is against you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines; and I will destroy you until no inhabitant is left. And you, O seacoast, shall be pastures, with meadows for shepherds and folds for flocks. The seacoast shall become the possession of the remnant of the house of Judah, on which they shall graze, and in the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down at evening. For the Lord their God will be mindful of them and restore their fortunes.

‘I have heard the taunts of Moab and the revilings of the Ammonites, how they have taunted my people and made boasts against their territory. Therefore, as I live,’ declares the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Moab shall become like Sodom, and the Ammonites like Gomorrah, a land possessed by nettles and salt pits, and a waste forever. The remnant of my people shall plunder them, and the survivors of my nation shall possess them.’ This shall be their lot in return for their pride, because they taunted and boasted against the people of the Lord of hosts. The Lord will be awesome against them; for he will famish all the gods of the earth, and to him shall bow down, each in its place, all the lands of the nations.

You also, O Cushites, shall be slain by my sword.

And he will stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria, and he will make Nineveh a desolation, a dry waste like the desert. Herds shall lie down in her midst, all kinds of beasts; even the owl and the hedgehog shall lodge in her capitals; a voice shall hoot in the window; devastation will be on the threshold; for her cedar work will be laid bare. This is the exultant city that lived securely, that said in her heart, ‘I am, and there is no one else.’ What a desolation she has become, a lair for wild beasts! Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist.”

We may note the absence of Egypt, Tyre, Edom and Syria, among others, from this list. That is not to say those nations would escape God’s scrutiny and judgment, but that it would occur at different times and places. Other prophets address the fate of these kingdoms. Zephaniah’s prophecy concentrates on the fate of four groups of foreign nations located close to home.

The Philistines (v4-7)

Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Ekron were four of the five largest Philistine cities. In fact, all the proper names in verses 4 through 7 are associated with the same coastal territory west and south of Jerusalem, between Judah and the Mediterranean Sea. Perhaps the least familiar name on this list is that of the Cherethites, best known as a group of elite mercenaries who served as bodyguards to King David, but who were ethnically Philistine. David probably earned their loyalty when on the run from Saul and sojourning among the Philistines. However, four hundred years had passed since David’s time, and the kings of Judah had given the Cherethites little reason to remain affiliated with Judah. We do not read about them after David’s reign until this reference in Zephaniah.

Generally speaking, the Philistines were tribal and fractious. Historians think it unlikely they even considered themselves a nation. The umbrella name “Philistine” was given to them by other nations. Philistines probably identified themselves more with the cities in which they dwelt than as any kind of larger ethnic entity. Unlike Israel, they left no written records. Apart from the Old Testament, what we know about their history comes from references in Egyptian and Assyrian literature.

The Philistines disappear from written history after the 6th century B.C. Nebuchadnezzar II and his Babylonian armies conquered the entire region, laying waste to Ashkelon and other cities, just as prophesied by Zephaniah. Those Philistines who survived were absorbed into the Babylonian Empire like the peoples of the other conquered nations of their day. Maps of Judea from the period beginning in 500 BC (after Judah’s return from captivity) through its conquest by Rome are rare and inconsistent, but those that exist generally show Judean territory extending all the way to the Mediterranean coast where the Philistines had once lived. So then, the seacoast became the possession of the remnant of the house of Judah, just as the Lord promised.

Moab and Ammon (v8-11)

Where the sins of the Philistines are not documented, those of Moab and Ammon are: they mocked and boasted against the people of God.

Moab lay directly east of Judah in what is now Morocco. The “taunts of Moab” is probably a reference to 2 Kings 24, where Jehoiakim of Judah rebelled briefly against Nebuchadnezzar, and bands of Moabites and Ammonites rose up against them, presumably allied with Babylon, taking advantage of a weakened neighbor. Moab disappears from the historical record during the ascendancy of the Persian Empire. The last known ruler of Moab was in 633 BC. Several tribes from northern Arabia overran the former Moabite territory. These Arabs became allies of Ammon by the time of Nehemiah.

Ammon bordered Moab on the north and the former kingdom of Israel on the west, south of ancient Syria in modern day Jordan. Ammon continued to pose problems for Israel into the time of Nehemiah, but Judas Maccabeus dealt Ammon a crushing defeat during the intertestamental period. Alexander the Great finally conquered Ammon in 334 BC, and it was later renamed Philadelphia. Though Ammon ceased to exist as a nation, ethnic Ammonites are still mentioned in ancient literature as recently as the 2nd century AD.

Though both Moab and Ammon ceased to exist as national entities thousands of years ago, there is some indication in other prophets that these nations will not be receive their full comeuppance until the earthly reign of Messiah, suggesting their descendants may still be around today.

Cush (v12)

The name Cush or Kush refers to territory in the south of modern Egypt and into the Sudan, sometimes also identified with Midian. This was a powerful ethnic bloc that controlled Egypt during the 8th century BC and lasted as a nation into the 6th century AD. Unlike Ammon, Moab and Philistia, the Lord does not say Cush will cease to exist, but rather that Cushites will be “slain by my sword”. That word could be said to have been fulfilled during many periods of history. Isaiah predicts Cush will survive into the millennial reign of Christ, and Cushites will bring him gifts.

Assyria (v13-15)

Our studies in Jonah and Nahum provided a great deal of information about the wickedness of the Assyrian Empire and its capital Nineveh that I will not recycle here. Nebuchadnezzar  destroyed Nineveh in 612 BC, fulfilling the word of God in these verses.

Fulfillment and Open Questions

As always with our studies of prophecy, secular sources are of limited help in locating the exact fulfillment of all God’s promises. New discoveries occur every decade, and the opinions of scholarship about the reliability of various scriptures have had to be revised repeatedly.

Concerning the judgment of the nations in Zephaniah, the Christian can be sure God has done or will yet do all that he has promised, not because we can point to a realization of every word uttered by the prophet somewhere in the modern writings of secular historians, but because time and time again, the Lord has proved himself trustworthy. There is no reason to expect him to behave any differently concerning the things he has said here.

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Oldtidens_Israel_&_Judea.svg: FinnWikiNoderivative work: Richardprins, CC BY-SA 3.0.