The last verses of the previous chapter of Zephaniah contemplate the obliteration of the capital city of Assyria, Nineveh.
Much has been said in the writings of other prophets concerning the evils of the world’s biggest cosmopolitan center in that day. Through Zephaniah, God singles out the sin of self-confidence, though the rulers of Nineveh had plenty more than that for which to account. Nineveh put its trust in a natural moat, rivers that surrounded it on three sides and forced attackers to approach it from the west. Its inhabitants said to themselves, “I am, and there is no one else”, because they could not imagine anyone more powerful than they were.
But of course there was. There was always God. Nineveh fell to the Chaldeans in 612 BC, as the Hebrew prophets foretold, and it was the Lord who gave Nebuchadnezzar his victory over them.