A. THE PROPHET
Our knowledge of Zephaniah, which is scanty, is confined to the information given in the prophecy bearing his name. Three other men in the Old Testament had the same name, which means “Jehovah hides.” There is, however, a unique feature in the brief biographical sketch in 1:1. The genealogy is traced back through four generations, to Hezekiah. Since such a family tree is quite rare, most students are agreed that this is King Hezekiah and that therefore Zephaniah was of royal lineage. There are also other evidences of this noble descent: the prophet was a citizen of Jerusalem (1:4); he shows little preoccupation with the poor; he does not hesitate to denounce the royal family or household, although he spares the king himself.1
One problem is the fact that the superscription of the book dates Zephaniah's preaching in Josiah's reign, who was himself a descendant of Hezekiah but only the fourth removed, while Zephaniah was the fifth removed. This is usually countered by observing that the custom of marrying very young could make this difference in generations.
Zephaniah's work was during Josiah's reign but the question still remains as to which part of this period. Josiah's rulership is divided into two eras: one before the discovery of the code of Deuteronomy in 621 B.C.; the other, following that time. The contents of the book point to the former part. Thus Zephaniah probably preached between 638 B.C. and 621 B.C.
This makes the prophet a contemporary of Jeremiah and a predecessor of Nahum and Habakkuk. He is placed after them in the canon because he “had the last word. While Nahum and Habakkuk were almost wholly absorbed with the epoch that is closing, he had a vision of the future.”2
Zephaniah is not nearly as original as some of the other prophets. He seems to have been greatly influenced by Isaiah, who was in a comparable situation so far as position in the court and relationship to royalty were concerned. It may be that Zephaniah was a counsellor to Josiah. Yet when the book of the law was discovered, the king turned to Huldah, the prophetess, rather than to Zephaniah (II Kings 22:8-20). There is also some evidence of the influence of the eighth-century prophet Amos in the preaching of Zephaniah.
Zephaniah's message, like that of most of the prophets, is shaped by the situation in which he lived. Consequently we must give careful consideration to his times.
B. THE POLITICAL SITUATION
In Judah, the long reign of Manasseh was marked by spiritual darkness. There was no lifting of the pall under the short reign of his son, Amon, who managed to keep the throne for only two years.
The Assyrian power was beginning to totter even during its greatest expansion under Ashurbanipal. The last appearances of Assyria in Palestine were in 655 and 647 B.C., and even then Ashurbanipal did not attempt to reconquer Egypt, which had earlier revolted. Upon the death of Ashurbanipal in 626 B.C., things began to develop rapidly; and in 612 B.C., Nineveh lay in ruins under the combined attack of the Medes and Babylonians. (Cf. Introduction to Nahum.)
During this period of weakened Assyrian domination, Egypt's power was rising and she was able to establish a stronghold in western Asia at the fortress of Carchemish until dislodged by the Babylonians in 605 B.C. The Babylonians at that time established themselves as the world power.
Another significant factor in forming Zephaniah's preaching was the rise to prominence of barbaric hordes in the north known as Scythians. These were fierce, bloodthirsty tribes, “black and pregnant with destructions.” They came from the Caucasian region, pouring down across Asia into Palestine and to the doors of Egypt. This invasion is recorded by Herodotus, the Greek historian. They were not dependent upon infantry and chariots, but were cavalrymen and rushed headlong into conquest as had no others before them. According to Herodotus, the Egyptian Pharaoh succeeded in buying them off, so they stopped short of overrunning the kingdom of the Nile and returned to their homeland as swiftly as they had come.
They had probably followed the Assyrian warpaths in the plains and thus Judah in her hill country apparently escaped the brunt of their attack. But the clanger threw the populace into dismay.
C. THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION
Corresponding to the political dangers without were ethical declensions within the Hebrew nation. The prophet saw these to be correlated circumstances. Under Manasseh, the true religion of Jehovah had been suppressed and the king had advocated an adulterated religion which incorporated Assyrian customs and worship. According to II Kings 21:6, Manasseh practiced human sacrifice of his own children, erected shrines to “the hosts of heaven” (astral deities of the Assyrians) in the Lord's house, and revived soothsaying, divination and traffic with the dead.
When Zephaniah came on the scene, this influence was still predominant. King Josiah early began to serve the Lord, but it was not until 621 B.C. that his reforms took on large proportions. Therefore the prophet would have been crying out against the continuation of the spiritual blight from Manasseh's evil influence. Graham describes the utterances of Zephaniah as being those of “a member of the opposition party, a record of the emotions and judgments of a puritan, himself of royal birth, who had thrown in his lot with the opponents of the then dominant elements in his own house.”3
D. THE NATURE OF THE BOOK
The characteristic phrase and chief emphasis of the book is “the day of the Lord.” This was not new, for it had been frequently used by the prophets. At the time of Amos the idea of the day of the Lord was in frequent use (Amos 5:18). It was a popular conception that God would appear in the near future and confer some great victory upon His people. Therefore they desired and cried out for the day of the Lord. Amos transformed this concept from a kind of automatic bestowal of blessing into a day of ethical import. What this day would be, he said, depended upon their moral condition. It would be a day when Jehovah would manifest himself against sin, whether in His own people or among foreign nations. “Amos thus transformed a popular idea; and the prophets used the expression in this transformed sense to denote the day on which Jehovah is conceived as manifesting Himself in His fullness, striking down wrong and illusion and human pride, and giving the final victory to righteousness and truth.”4
Zephaniah probably draws directly from Isaiah for his inspiration (cf. Isa. 2:12 ff.) and conceives of the “day” under the imagery of war and invasion. This is due to the fact that its near approach was suggested to him by the irruption of the Scythian hordes into Asia.
Zephaniah makes his own modification in the concept of the day of the Lord. To the earlier prophets, it was a crisis hi the world which was a definite point in history. But its events are “natural” even if tumultuous—and afterwards history continues to flow on. Zephaniah, however, sees it as a terminal event, with the manifestation of supernatural intervention. G. A. Smith's classic interpretation is apropos: “In short, with Zephaniah the Day of the Lord tends to become the Last Day. His book is the first tinging of prophecy with apocalypse: that is the moment which it supplies in the history of Israel's religion.”5
Outline
II. The Threat of World Judgment, 1:2—3:7
A. Description of the Judgment, 1:2-18
B. Judgment on the Nations, 2:1—3:7
III. A Word to the Faithful, 3:8-13
B. A Purified Worship, 3: 9b-10