Seek Humility, and Perhaps Be Hidden
1 Gather yourselves together, yes, gather together, you nation that has no shame, 2 before the appointed time when the day passes as the chaff, before the fierce anger of Yahweh comes on you, before the day of Yahweh’s anger comes on you. 3 Seek Yahweh, all you humble of the land, who have kept his ordinances. Seek righteousness. Seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the day of Yahweh’s anger.
The one door out of chapter 1 is opened here, and it is deliberately not a guarantee.
Gather yourselves, before the day comes. The urgency is in the triple before — before the appointed time, before the fierce anger, before the day of Yahweh's anger — a man calling to a crowd with something already in motion behind him.
Verse 3 turns to a particular group: the humble of the land — anav H6035, the poor and bowed-down rather than the merely modest — who have kept his ordinances. They are told to seek three things: Yahweh, righteousness, and humility. The last is striking, since it is addressed to people already named humble. What is asked is not the acquisition of a virtue but the continued choosing of it.
Then the promise, and its wording is the honest heart of the book: it may be that you will be hidden — sathar H5641 — in the day of Yahweh's anger. Not certainly. The refusal to make shelter automatic is what keeps the offer from becoming a transaction, and the same book will end by making the outcome certain for the remnant it describes.
settled What this mark means