Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Zephaniah · About this commentary
I Will Sweep Away Everything
Zephaniah 1:1-6
1 Yahweh’s word which came to Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah. · WEB
The book opens at the scale of Genesis and then narrows to a single city — and the charge there is not atheism but hedging.
The first oracle is universal and deliberately echoes the flood: man and animal, birds of the sky and fish of the sea, swept from the face of the ground. The catalogue runs the creation order of Genesis backward Genesis 1:20–27, and the phrase about cutting off man from the surface of the ground is the language of Genesis 6:7. Judgment is introduced as an unmaking.
Then verse 4 narrows without warning to Judah and Jerusalem, and the specifics are almost domestic: the remnant of Baal, the idolatrous priests, rooftop worshipers of the host of heaven.
Verse 5 names the real disease. Some swear by Yahweh and also swear by another god — not apostasy but insurance, two oaths where one was asked. Verse 6 adds those who turned back and those who never inquired at all. The sweeping begins at the temple, not at the border.
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