Zephaniah 2

¹Gather, gather yourselves together,[#This oracle is a classic description of the day of the Lord as an overwhelming disaster, concluding with a call for repentance and reform. : Judah.]

O nation without shame!

²Before you are driven away,

like chaff that disappears;

Before there comes upon you

the blazing anger of the Lord ;

Before there comes upon you

the day of the Lord ’s anger.

³Seek the Lord ,

all you humble of the land,

who have observed his law;

Seek justice,

seek humility;

Perhaps you will be sheltered

on the day of the Lord ’s anger.

⁴For Gaza shall be forsaken,

and Ashkelon shall be a waste,

Ashdod they shall drive out at midday,

and Ekron shall be uprooted.

⁵Ah! You who dwell by the seacoast,

the nation of Cherethites,

the word of the Lord is against you!

O Canaan, land of the Philistines,

I will leave you to perish without an inhabitant!

⁶You shall become fields for shepherds,

and folds for flocks.

⁷The seacoast shall belong

to the remnant of the house of Judah;

by the sea they shall pasture.

In the houses of Ashkelon

they shall lie down in the evening.

For the Lord their God will take care of them,

and bring about their restoration.

⁸I have heard the taunts uttered by Moab,

and the insults of the Ammonites,

When they taunted my people

and made boasts against their territory.

⁹Therefore, as I live—

oracle of the Lord of hosts—

the God of Israel,

Moab shall become like Sodom,

the Ammonites like Gomorrah:

A field of weeds,

a salt pit,

a waste forever.

The remnant of my people shall plunder them,

the survivors of my nation dispossess them.

¹⁰This will be the recompense for their pride,

because they taunted and boasted against

the people of the Lord of hosts.

¹¹The Lord shall inspire them with terror

when he makes all the gods of earth waste away;

Then the distant shores of the nations,

each from its own place,

shall bow down to him.

¹²You too, O Cushites,[#: the Ethiopians, who had ruled Egypt a generation before Zephaniah’s career.]

shall be slain by the sword of the Lord .

¹³He will stretch out his hand against the north,

to destroy Assyria;

He will make Nineveh a waste,

dry as the desert.

¹⁴In her midst flocks shall lie down,

all the wild life of the hollows;

The screech owl and the desert owl

shall roost in her columns;

The owl shall hoot from the window,

the raven croak from the doorway.

¹⁵Is this the exultant city[#: Nineveh. : gestures of derision.]

that dwelt secure,

That told itself,

“I and there is no one else”?

How it has become a waste,

a lair for wild animals!

Those who pass by it

hiss, and shake their fists!