The book of Zephaniah is easily overlooked and—I contend—misunderstood. It is only three chapters long, buried in a few pages of the so-called Minor (!) Prophets. many portions of the Prophets are read in the synagogue on Sabbath and festivals, but not Zephaniah.
The book begins, prophetically enough, with a notice of Zephaniah’s prophetic identity:
The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah, in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah.
(Zephaniah 1:1)
This is the only instance in prophetic literature in which someone’s ancestry is traced back four generations. This might be because he is a possible descendant of King Hezekiah of Judah (727–697 B.C.E.). The book tells us that Zephaniah received his call as a prophet during the time of King Josiah (640–609 B.C.E.).
Both Hezekiah and Josiah are famous for the religious reforms they implemented, which centralized worship in Jerusalem and banned pagan influence. (Apparently, Hezekiah’s reform didn’t take too well, for Josiah, more than half a century later, raised many of the same issues.)
The rest of Zephaniah’s short book is pure prophecy. No narrative of events, no temple hymns. Just prophecy.
But I believe the book has been wrongly understood as a prediction of the so-called Day of the Lord, the redemption that will come at the end of time, or, in 036scholarly terminology, eschatology. The phrase appears 16 times in the Hebrew Bible, including three times in Zephaniah (Zephaniah 1:7 and twice in 1:14; see also Zephaniah 1:18, 2:2, 3).
From a careful text-critical study of the text of Zephaniah, I think it can be shown, however, that the prophet is calling on Israel to repent in the here and now.
The claim that Zephaniah is describing eschatological salvation is based on the view that the book was heavily edited in the post-Exilic period to point to a time beyond human history when God would act to redeem Israel and the world at large. It is argued that the text reflects the three-part structure of a typical prophetic book:1 (1) the prophet calls for punishment against Jerusalem or Israel (Zephaniah 1:2–2:3); (2) he predicts the punishments that will be meted out to the nations of the world (Zephaniah 2:4–3:8); and (3) he portrays the eschatological redemption of Israel and the nations (Zephaniah 3:9–20). Despite its surface appeal, I believe this interpretation is erroneous.
One of the timbers from which this interpretation is constructed, for example, is what is argued to be the relationship between Zephaniah’s text and the account of the Genesis Flood, in which all humanity, except for Noah and his family, and all living creatures are destroyed. At the very outset, the prophet declares:
I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the Lord.
I will sweep away the humans and animals;
I will sweep away the birds of the airand the fish of the sea.
I will make the wicked stumble.
I will cut off humanity from the face of the earth, says the Lord.
(Zephaniah 1:2–3)
The allegedly related passage is Genesis 6:7: “So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’”
This parallel suggests to many that the text of Zephaniah is dependent upon Genesis 6:7.
The Genesis passage is generally considered part of the authorial strand that scholars call P, for Priestly Code, often dated to the post-Exilic period (fourth to third century B.C.E.). Partially on the basis of this alleged dependency, it is argued, Zephaniah must be interpreted in light of conditions at this time, rather than conditions at the time of King Josiah in the seventh century B.C.E.
However, Genesis 6:7 is hardly a part of the final Priestly layer of the Pentateuch; it is generally identified as part of J, an earlier authorial strand of the Pentateuch dating to the tenth to ninth century B.C.E.2
Moreover, a detailed examination of the two passages demonstrates that Zephaniah is hardly dependent on Genesis. Zephaniah 1:2–3 includes human beings, animals, birds and fish in its scenario, whereas Genesis 6:7 includes human beings, animals, creeping things and birds. Although there is considerable overlap, the appearance of fish in the Zephaniah list and creeping things in the Genesis list indicates that Zephaniah is not textually dependent on Genesis. It merely portrays the destruction of all life from the three major areas of creation, that is, the ground, air and water.
Instead of reflecting an apocalyptic vision, Zephaniah is indicting the people of Israel in his day for failing to observe God’s commands. Zephaniah is echoing the very common ancient Israelite belief that people’s actions had a direct effect on the land of Israel at large; if the people were righteous, creation was at peace, but if people were wicked, creation itself was compromised. Such notions are articulated throughout the covenant blessings of Deuteronomy 28–30 and Leviticus 26, where even the sky and the earth play a role in seeing to the welfare or punishment of the people, depending on whether or not they observe God’s commands. This scenario also appears elsewhere in other early prophets (Hosea 4:3, Micah 1:2–7; Isaiah 1:2–3, 24:1–23; Jeremiah 4:22–26; and others). These scenarios are hardly eschatological; they merely employ mythological language concerning creation to illustrate their points in relation to the very real human situations that they address.3
Immediately after this passage, in Zephaniah 1:4–6, the prophet turns to naming those he condemns: the remnant of Baal, the idolatrous priests, those who worship the host of heaven on the rooftops, etc. This text is not concerned with eschatology; it is concerned with the realities of Zephaniah’s seventh-century B.C.E. world, in which King Josiah sought to eliminate apostasy against God in Jerusalem and Judah.
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We cannot survey here all the reasons why Zephaniah’s message is not eschatological.a A few more will have to suffice.
The oracles concerning the nations in Zephaniah 2:4–3:8 contain only the Philistines, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Ethiopians and the Assyrians. This hardly represents an eschatological gathering of all the nations of the earth. A closer examination of the nations Zephaniah does mention reveals that each of these nations was of special concern to the court of King Josiah. After the Assyrians conquered Israel in 721 B.C.E. (and soon thereafter Philistia), many Israelites were exiled to Philistia. One such Philistine center was Ekron, where exiled Israelites were put to work in the olive oil industry established there, which 038supported the needs of the Assyrian Empire for this staple food item.4 Josiah wanted his people back.
Ammon and Moab sat astride the Trans-Jordanian Israelite territories of Gad, Manasseh and Reuben. They had been taken from Israel by the Arameans, Moabites and Assyrians during the ninth-eighth centuries B.C.E.
The defeat of Ethiopia by the Saite Egyptian dynasty in the early seventh century signaled change in Egypt and potentially the end of Assyrian power there that would point to Josiah’s opportunity to restore Judean independence. And of course, Assyria was the ancient oppressor that had denied Judah independence for nearly a century before—that is, until the time of King Josiah.5
The rest of chapter 3 (3:9–20, the end of the book) portrays a scenario of restoration in which the nations will call upon the name of God, scattered exiles will bring their offerings to God, and Jerusalem herself, portrayed as Bat Zion (the “daughter of Zion”), will be delivered, restored and renowned among all the peoples of the earth.
Although the nations are mentioned in this passage, the focus is on the restoration of Jerusalem-Bat Zion. The role of the nations is to facilitate the return of the remnant of Israel to Zion, where God will rejoice over Zion, remove oppressors from her, gather her lame and outcast, and bring her home.
Some may argue that this section envisions the eschatological redemption of Israel at the end of time. I do not think so. It is important to understand the context of the personification of Jerusalem as Bat Zion in this passage. The so-called “marriage metaphor,” in which Israel or Jerusalem is portrayed as God’s bride is quite common in prophetic literature.6 Hosea 1–3, for example, employs it. Israel was a bride in the wilderness, but found other lovers upon coming to 039the land.b Jeremiah 2 portrays a similar ideal relationship between the bride Israel and God in the wilderness that was later disrupted. Ezekiel 16 likewise portrays Israel as God’s adulterous bride in the wilderness. Isaiah 49–54 (so-called Second Isaiah) depicts a more positive image of Jerusalem or Bat Zion as God’s once divorced bride, who is now to be restored at the end of the Babylonian Exile.
In each of these cases, the presentation of Israel or Jerusalem as God’s bride does not point to eschatological concerns; rather it functions as a metaphor to portray Israel’s or Jerusalem’s relationship with God at a particular point in history. Hosea charges Israel with abandoning God by its alliance with Assyria and Egypt. In Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Israel suffers invasion from Babylon (and before that Assyria) because it has abandoned God. Isaiah claims that the restoration of the Babylonian exiles to Jerusalem means that God’s marriage with Bat Zion is intact once again.
I’d like to end with a close reading of a text to illustrate how important a careful reading is to understanding the biblical message. At the end of the prophet Zephaniah’s short book (3:14–17), the prophet tells us that God has annulled the judgment against Israel, that God is in Israel’s midst and that the people need fear disaster no more. There then follows a sentence that is particularly difficult to understand—the last sentence of Zephaniah 3:17. The critical Hebrew verb of the sentence is yaḥarish, which can mean “he will be silent” or “he will plow.” The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), which is cited throughout this article, tells us in a footnote that the Hebrew means “He will be silent.” Apparently the translators realized this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. So they looked at ancient translations that vary from the standard Hebrew or Masoretic Text (MT). Both the Greek Septuagint (abbreviated LXX) and the Syriac (known as the Peshitta) have a slightly different text. Instead of yaḥarish, they have yaḥadish—only one letter is different, d for r. In Hebrew these two letters ר (resh) and ד (dalet) look almost alike 040and could easily be mistaken for one another by a scribe who isn’t looking too carefully. So the NRSV translators have adopted this reading from the Septuagint and Peshitta (with a dalet) and have rendered the sentence “He [God] will renew you in his love,” which must have seemed to make better sense to the translators.
The translators of the New Jewish Publication Society version also had trouble making sense of this sentence. They frankly note in a footnote that the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain, but that by emending the text, it could read “renew his love.”
However, other ancient texts read yaḥarish, among them the Aramaic Targum, the Latin Vulgate and, perhaps most significantly, a text found in a cave a few miles south of where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. In a cave in the Wadi Murabba’at, a Minor Prophets scroll from the second century C.E. was found in which the passage we are considering contains the r, not the d.7 These ancient authorities indicate that the Hebrew text that has come down to us is correct—the letter should be r, not d.
But how, then, do we translate the passage? “He will be silent” has no meaning in the context of the sentence.
As we previously noted, yaḥarish can also mean “He [God] will plow.” This may not seem to make much sense either until you realize that the verb “to plow” is often employed metaphorically in ancient Near Eastern literatures and in the Bible to express a sexual relationship. What many may consider a gross sexual metaphor is used to proclaim Israel once more as the bride of God.
In biblical texts, the term “plow” often also appears as a metaphorical expression for moral behavior (“you have plowed wickedness, you have reaped injustice” [Hosea 10:13; compare Hosea 10:11; Job 4:8; Psalm 129:3]). More relevant for our purposes is Judges 14:18: When Samson accuses the Philistines of having discovered the meaning of his riddle by consorting with his wife and learning from her the secret of Samson’s strength, he tells the Philistines, “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.”8 The sexual metaphor is obvious.
Ancient Mesopotamian literature likewise provides ample illustration of the metaphorical use of the verb, “to plow.” The Sumerian Love Songs of the late third to early second millennium B.C.E.,9 for example, portray the goddess Inanna’s search for a lover to “plow” her nakedness: “My uncultivated land, the one left fallow in the steppe, my field of ducks, where the ducks teem, my high field which is well watered, my own nakedness, a well-watered rising mound—I the maiden—who will plow it? My nakedness, the wet and well-watered ground—I, the young lady—who will station there an ox?”10 The song provides the answer in the next lines, “You lady, may the king plow it for you. May Dumuzi, the king, plow it for you.”11
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Plowing also serves as a similar metaphor in the Babylonian Harab (“Plow”) myth,12 which portrays the creation of the sea:
Harab, in the first beginnings, took Earth to wife, to found a family and exercise lordship his heart urged him: ‘We will cut furrows in the wasteland of the country!’ By plowing with their soil-breaking plow they caused the Sea to be created, the furrows by themselves gave birth to Sumuqan.
There are other examples, but those cited here make the point: The Hebrew reading of Zephaniah 3:17, “he will plow in his love,” accurately uses the metaphor of sexual relations to express the restoration of the relationship between God the “husband” and Bat Zion-Jerusalem the “bride.”
Needless to say, such a portrayal is hardly eschatological when read in the context of Josiah’s restoration; it is merely a metaphor to express Jerusalem’s restoration following a century of Assyrian hegemony.
The book of Zephaniah is easily overlooked and—I contend—misunderstood. It is only three chapters long, buried in a few pages of the so-called Minor (!) Prophets. many portions of the Prophets are read in the synagogue on Sabbath and festivals, but not Zephaniah. The book begins, prophetically enough, with a notice of Zephaniah’s prophetic identity: The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah, in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah. (Zephaniah 1:1) This is the only instance in prophetic literature in which […]
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That it is thought to be typical is also a common scholarly error. I do not believe this tripartite pattern is to be found in the other major prophetic books. But that is too large a topic to be treated here. See my recently published Zephaniah: A Commentary, ed. Paul Hanson, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).
2.
See Antony F. Campbell and Mark A. O’Brien, Sources of the Pentateuch: Texts, Introductions, Annotations (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), pp. 95–96.
3.
This interpretation is underscored by Zephaniah’s inclusion in his list of those who will be destroyed by God, “those who cause the wicked to stumble” (and not simply “the wicked” as the NRSV, quoted here, has it).
The text is a difficult one. The Hebrew word wehamakshelot, “and those who cause (the wicked) to stumble,” is formulated as a feminine participle. The feminine formulation is not well understood; perhaps the prophet condemns a class of women, for example, cultic prostitutes, who have played some role in the matter. Because of the difficulties with the term, many interpreters have sought to emend the text to something that appears to make more sense in the context, for example, “and I will make the wicked stumble,” or the like (so NRSV).
The Greek Septuagint and the Old Latin text of Zephaniah 1:3 simply eliminate the phrase altogether. Many scholars therefore conclude that the phrase is a gloss that was only introduced into the text at a much later time. Such a decision would therefore eliminate the focus on the wicked in this passage and leave it as a general portrayal of the destruction of creation. This of course lends itself easily to an eschatological scenario that calls for the end of all creation.
But the phrase does appear in the Syriac Peshitta, the Aramaic Targum and the Latin Vulgate. The Peshitta and the Vulgate are particularly noteworthy since both are dependent in part on the Septuagint. Also there is plenty of room to include this passage in a lacuna of the Naḥal Hever Greek manuscript of the Twelve Prophets found in the Judean Desert.
Based upon the readings of these manuscripts, we must conclude that the phrase is in fact original to Zephaniah and that it expresses not an eschatological scenario of the end of creation, but a typical use of mythological language concerning the state of creation to focus the prophet’s concerns with those very real human parties who are to be condemned.
While Zephaniah 3:1–8 condemns Jerusalem, this is actually a continuation of the condemnation of Assyria that focuses on its capital, Nineveh.
6.
For discussion of the marriage metaphor in prophetic literature, see now Gerlinde Baumann, Love and Violence: Marriage as Metaphor for the Relationship Between YHWH and Israel in the Prophetic Books (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2003).
7.
See Pierre Benoit, Jozef T. Milik, and Roland de Vaux, Les Grottes de Murabb’at, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 2 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961).
8.
For treatment of this passage, see Tammi J. Schneider, Judges, Berit Olam (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2000), p. 211.
9.
See Yitzchak Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian Literature, Bar Ilan Studies in Near Eastern Language and Culture (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 90–92, 232. I am indebted to Dr. Wayne Horowitz, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for references to the Sumerian Love Songs and the Harab myth noted.
10.
Text from Sefati, Love Songs, Dumuzi-Inanna Song/Tablet P, side ii, lines 22–28.
11.
Text from Sefati, Love Songs, Dumuzi-Inanna Song/Tablet P, side ii, lines 29–30.
12.
See Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harab Myth, Sources from the Ancient Near East 2:101 (Malibu: Undena, 1984) p. 7; see also Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1998), pp. 145–146.
