Day 211: Zephaniah 1-3 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Hey Bible nerds, this is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by ARMA. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Family, welcome to day 211. We are in the book of Zephaniah today. And Zephaniah is so short, we can study Zephaniah in one day. So we're gonna tackle Zephaniah chapters 1, 2, and 3. Just three chapters in the entire book of Zephaniah. If you've already done the reading, then you're probably maybe confused. Maybe. Zephaniah isn't like the clearest, easiest book to understand in the world. But my job is to give you context, to give you nerdy nuggets, and I'll always leave you with a timeless truth. So if you have done the reading, I hope that the content that I share sheds some light on what you read. If you have not done the reading, pause the video, stop the audio, go do the reading. You want to make sure that you actually have context for the context clues and the nerdy nuggets and the timeless truth. So go read the book of Zephaniah. It won't take you longer than 10 or 15 minutes to read the entire book. And with that said, let's dive in. First thing I want to help us with is context. And unlike a lot of books, even unlike the book that we studied yesterday, unlike Nahum, there is actually a lot of context that Zephaniah actually provides for us. And so I actually want to go through that context because the context, surprise, surprise, really helps to bring the content to life. So there's a genealogy right up at the top of the book of Zephaniah. And knowing who Zephaniah is, is actually something that really, really helps with context. So chapter one, verse one, here's what it says. The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah. That's the mic drop moment right there, Hezekiah. So that means that Zephaniah is a part of the royal family. He looks like he is the great, great grandson of one of the most famous kings in Judah, King Hezekiah. Hezekiah was a righteous king. He actually, on the scorecard that we get in Kings and Chronicles, he doesn't just get good, he gets very good. So Hezekiah was a very, very good king.

Tons of reform happened under Hezekiah's rule. And so this is Hezekiah's great, great grandson. And the king at this time is actually Hezekiah's grandson. OK, so Hezekiah's grandson is the king and the king is a man by the name of Josiah. OK, so Josiah is the king, Zephaniah is the prophet. Zephaniah is prophesying while Josiah is the king, which means they are related. They are cousins of some sort. And that means that Zephaniah has access to the royal court. So this was also true in the book of Isaiah. I don't know if you remember way back at the beginning of the book of Isaiah. I actually told you that Isaiah was a part of the royal family. So the reason he's just like walking into the palace, talking to the king, is because he is in the royal lineage. He's got royal blood running through his veins. OK, so same is true with Zephaniah. Now, here's what we need to know about the time period, is that Josiah is actually leading a ton of reform. Now, all of this reform can be found if you go to 2 Kings 22, verse 8 or 2 Chronicles 34, verse 14 to 15. The book of the law or the book of the Torah had gone missing, had been lost. OK, and they find it. We know the second Kings chapter 22. You can actually go there together. I'll go there as well. I'll just start reading in verse one. Actually, Josiah was eight years old when he became king. He reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. OK, here's another bit of nerdy context that you probably need. So Hezekiah is king, Hezekiah is a righteous king. Then he has a son. That son is wicked, only reigns for two years.

And then Josiah is going to reign and he's going to start his reign at the age of eight and he's going to take, he's going to follow in his grandfather's footsteps, not his father's footsteps. His grandfather's righteous, his father is not. And so Hezekiah is going to actually create a pathway for his grandson to follow in his footsteps. His grandson. going to be righteous. All right. Verse two, he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning his side to the right or the left. The 18th year of his reign, King Josiah sent the secretary, Shaphin, son of Azaliah, the son of Meshulam, to the temple of the Lord. He said, go up to Hilkiah. Okay. I'm actually going to skip down to verse 11. When the King heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, go and inquire the Lord for me and for the people and for all of Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord's anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the words of this book. They have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us. Now, most scholars believe that what is found here is the book of Deuteronomy. Okay. The book of Deuteronomy is actually the law in terms of the contractual agreement that makes Israel the nation, both Israel and Judah as a whole, that makes Israel as a whole, the vassal, and that makes Yahweh the suzerain. Okay. Deuteronomy is literally in the format of a suzerain vassal treaty. And so, they find Deuteronomy. It's been lost. They find it in the temple and Josiah immediately starts reforming things. Now, let's give a little bit of history. Okay. Because the reason that Josiah is able to start reform is because Assyria is losing power. So, because Assyria is losing power, Josiah is able to actually get people to stop worshiping Assyrian gods. So, when you're a vassal, you have to worship the gods of your suzerain. Okay. There's no choice. So, if Assyria shows up and finds out, oh, you've torn down all the images of our gods. You have removed all the temples of our gods. Then, Assyria has the right to invade Judah, capture Jerusalem, and go to war with Judah. So, Josiah's act of reform is actually an act of rebellion against Assyria. What Josiah is saying is that we serve one god, and that god is Yahweh. And it's not just that he's our god, but that he's our suzerain, and we're his vassal. Okay. So, Josiah, and what makes it just like even

cooler is that he's eight years old when he starts to reign. All right. And so, this is not like an old man who's just like going up against the Assyrian empire. It's a young guy. He's not eight when the reform starts to happen, but he's eight years old when he starts to reign. And so, of course, he's on the younger side of things when reform begins to start. Now, that is the context of the book of Zephaniah. And that context is actually very, very, very helpful because Josiah is leading revival and reform. Religious revival, religious reform that has political implications. Okay. And the reason that Josiah is able to lead spiritual revival and spiritual reform is because politically the Assyrian empire has gotten weaker and weaker and weaker. It is in this context that Zephaniah begins to prophesy. Let's just start at Zephaniah 1. We're going to skip the genealogy. Verse 2, I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth, declares the Lord. I will sweep away both man and beast. I will sweep away the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea and the aisles that cause the wicked to stumble. When I destroy all mankind on the face of the earth, declares the Lord. I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all who live in Jerusalem. I will destroy every remnant of Baal worship in this place. The very names of the idolatrous priests, those who bow down on the roofs to worship the starry host, those who bow down and swear by the Lord, but also swear by Molech, those who turn back from following the Lord and neither seek the Lord nor acquire of him. Wow. Here's what Zephaniah is saying. Josiah, I see your reform. I'm so proud of you for the spiritual revival, but brother is not enough. Judah is still going to get judged. Jerusalem is still going to get destroyed. And once you realize that Zephaniah is actually prophesying during the reign of one of the most righteous kings that's ever sat on the throne of Jerusalem, you begin to realize, oh, God's already made up his mind that the southern kingdom of Judah is going into captivity. Now, one of the things that I'm going to reiterate for all of the books following Isaiah is that the prophets, we have placed the prophets in chronological order in this. Bible reading plan, but Isaiah stretches so much of the timeline that every time we hit a book after Isaiah, we're actually going back to like the beginning of the book of Isaiah. So it's the books on this Bible reading planner in chronological order, but not necessarily where the books end. So Isaiah is going to end 200 years after it started. And so Zephaniah is in chronological order after Nahum and after Isaiah, but we got to kind of go back in time a bit based on where we ended Isaiah. I hope that makes sense. Okay. So we're going back in time and actually I can give you

exact dates for like how far back in time are we going? There are two big clues as to the date that the book of Zephaniah was written. We actually have an exact date for when Zephaniah is written and it's 622 BC because that is the year that the book of the law is actually found. The book of the Torah is found. Now, let me make one slight correction. Okay. Remember how I said that Zephaniah is the great, great grandson of Hezekiah. But then I said that Josiah is the grandson. Actually, I missed a generation, my bad. They're both in the same exact generation. So after Hezekiah, the king, we get a king by the name of Manasseh. And after Manasseh, we get Ammon or Amon. And then after Amon, we get Josiah. Okay. So on Zephaniah's side, we get Hezekiah, then Amariah, then Cushi, then Zephaniah. Okay. So they're both in the same generation. Okay. So I made it seem like one was four generations removed and one was three generations removed from Hezekiah, but they are actually both four generations removed from Hezekiah and they are cousins. Okay. Zephaniah and Josiah are cousins. So Josiah is one of the best kings that ever sits on the throne. He leads tons of reform. He leads a spiritual revival. And you may be thinking to yourself, so what did it amount to? Well, it amounted to exile being put off for one more generation. Okay. That's the best that Yahweh is going to do. Okay. So they are not attacked and destroyed by the Babylonians in Josiah's generation. It gets put off for one more generation. And just so that you have even more context, Josiah leads the entire nation of Judah to massive revival, armed with the knowledge of what they had done wrong. Josiah attempts to bring Judah back in line with the Torah, the covenant. He destroyed the high places in both Judah and what used to be Israel, including the shrines that Jeroboam had set up in Bethel. He also reinstated all the festivals, which hadn't been properly observed for centuries. This revival elevated Josiah to the greatest king Judah had had since David and his reign effectively put off exile for an entire generation. So Zephaniah as a prophet and a cousin to the king, it is thought that Zephaniah actively supported Josiah in his reforms. But, you know, don't shoot the messenger. I'm so happy that we're doing all this revival and reform, but Zephaniah is going to prophesy and it's going to be really clear. Exile is still coming. So that's the context. Let me give you three quick nerdy nuggets. Okay. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble, or you can go to a books a million or

Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. Number one, when Zephaniah opens, Zephaniah chapter one, if you're familiar with Genesis, you know that God brings creation from chaos to order. That's what's happening in the book of Genesis. Well, the moment Zephaniah opens, Zephaniah is prophesying that creation is going to go from order to chaos. Which means, if you were around when we went through the flood, the flood was not God actively destroying the earth, but removing himself from the earth and letting creation do what it naturally does, which is fall back into chaos. So, unless God sustains order, order can't be sustained by itself. And so, what we see in Zephaniah 1 is a reversal of creation. Key words here, face of the earth. That term is straight out of the book of Genesis. Both man and beast, beast, definitely a Genesis word. Birds in the sky, definitely a Genesis word. Fish in the sea, definitely a Genesis term. Next, all mankind, face of the earth again. And then we're going to get starry hosts in verse 5. So, all of this language is not just, hey, I'm going to destroy Jerusalem, but I'm going to destroy all of creation. And that kind of hyperbole is what we would call apocalyptic language. So, we're going to have a sprinkling of apocalyptic language right here in the book of Zephaniah. All right, let me give you one more nerdy nugget. We're going to have a theme that we explored a lot, okay? Especially as we went through the book of Isaiah, we explored this theme of the old Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem, okay?

So, as we get to the end of chapter 1, it's going to be very, very clear that God is going to destroy Jerusalem, okay? That he's not just talking about the whole of creation, but that Jerusalem is a microcosm of God's creation. And so, God is going to destroy Jerusalem. It says this, verse 12, At that time, I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dreads, who think the Lord will do nothing either good or bad. Their wealth will be plundered, their houses demolished. Though they build houses, they will not live in them. Though they plant vineyards, they will not drink from the wine. Okay, now here's another just interesting tidbit about Zephaniah is that in this opening sequence, the Babylonians are not mentioned. Zephaniah is prophesying that the Babylonian army is going to come destroy Jerusalem, but the Babylonians are not mentioned because God wants to make it clear, although I'm using the Babylonian army, it is me. I am the one that is coming to judge you. And so, we get verse 14, The great day of the Lord is near, near and coming quickly. The cry on the day of the Lord is bitter. The mighty warrior shouts his battle cry. So God wants to make it very clear. I'm the mighty warrior. Yes, I'm using the Babylonians, but we don't even need to mention them. They are not even an important detail here. Okay, it is me. And the Babylonians are simply my instrument to discipline you. They are my correcting rod.

Okay, they're my rod of punishment. Okay, so the Babylonians are going to get referred to as my ax, my rod. Okay, no different than my pencil. This apple pencil is just simply an instrument. God says, we don't even need to name the Babylonians because I don't want you to be angry at the Babylonians. I actually want you to know it is me. I am the God of justice. I am going to destroy you for all of your idolatry. And Josiah's reforms are only going to push this off for one more generation. I will relent. I'll give you one more generation, but disaster is coming. Okay, judgment is coming. Okay, next nerdy nugget is that we're going to get the remnant talked about. The remnant is an idea that honestly, we've seen all throughout the prophet that although God is going to bring judgment, there's always going to be a righteous remnant, not the populace, not the masses, but there's always going to be a remnant. And what does God do with that remnant? He gathers that righteous remnant, and he recreates the new Jerusalem with that righteous remnant. Okay, I was the youth group, the name of my youth group when I was a teenager was called the remnant. And so whenever I see remnant in the Bible, and I mean, it was funny because prior to our youth pastor, the youth ministry was like seven, 800 kids. And then our youth pastor came in and prophesied like, yeah, we're going to rename this youth group, the remnant. And nobody was excited that Sunday because everybody was like, remnants are small, bro.

The youth group used to be like seven, 800 kids. And he prophesied, it was right. I mean, there was about 40 of us, man. The youth group went from like seven, 800 kids to 40 kids. But boy, we knew the word and we were deep and we knew each other. And I'm not advocating for small church over big church or small youth groups over big youth groups. But God just want to wrap. your mind around the remnant. The remnant is the what's remaining, okay? Think about punishment as almost like a streamer. So God is eliminating everything, everyone who's wicked, and everyone who's an idol worshiper, and then everything that's kept behind, everything that the streamer takes or holds on to, is actually the stuff that you want. That's the remnant. That's the thing that's remaining. So this theme of he's going to rebuild a new Jerusalem with his remnant, this is a theme that's all throughout the prophets. Last thing I want to like just draw your attention to, chapter 3, verse 17. I just personally love this. Actually, two more things, okay? 317, it says, well, let's start at 14. It says, Sing, daughter Zion. Shout aloud, Israel. Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, daughter Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away your punishment. He has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you. Never again will you fear any harm. On that day, they will say to Jerusalem, do not fear, Zion. Do not let your hands hang limp. So now, verse 17 is the one I love. The Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior, okay? The same mighty warrior who had to punish you, that same mighty warrior is with you, and here's what I love. He will take great delight in you. In his love, he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. This is one of the only passages in the Bible that talks about God singing, and I just love the picture of God singing, right? God, Yahweh, our Father in heaven, the first person in the Trinity singing is just not an image that I think a lot of us have in our minds, okay? And so, Zephaniah chapter 3, verse 17 talks about God still being a mighty warrior. He's still the same mighty warrior from chapter 1, but now that punishment has done its job, he's going to sing. He's going to rejoice. All right, I know I said I was going to give you two things, but I'm just going to lead into

our timeless truth. Here's our timeless truth for the day, and you can actually see this in Zephaniah chapter 3. You can go to verse 8, and then verse 9. Verse 8 says this, Therefore, wait for me, declares the Lord. For the day I will stand up to testify, I've decided to assemble the nations, to gather the kingdoms, and to pour out my wrath on them, all my fierce anger. The whole world will be consumed by the fire of my jealous anger. So, we get the fire of the Lord in verse 8, and then verse 9. Then I will purify the lips of the people, and all of them that call on the name of the Lord and serve him shoulder to shoulder. So, you see the transition from verse 8 to verse 9, okay? The fire of my jealous anger is what? To purify the lips of my people. So, God's fire is not there just to burn and consume and punish. His fire is there as a purifying fire. We're going to get the same concept in a lot of the prophetic books, that like when you put fire to gold or silver, it burns away the infirmities. The dross comes to the top. You can take it away, and what you have left is pure gold and pure silver, because God's fire is a refining fire. It's a refiner's fire. It burns up everything in us that should not be there, and that is a timeless truth. That's not just true for these people in this context. That's true for us today. You can see the fire of suffering or persecution or hard seasons as something that God sent to hurt you or to harm you or to rebuke you or to punish you, or you could see it as, God, you're burning up everything I don't need, and everything that remains is going to be the remnant, and I can rebuild everything in my life with the remnant that remains. Anything that can be burned will get burned, and everything that remains is actually the stuff that's been purified by you. Here's the thing that I love about the timeless truth for today, and here's what I've grown to love or I've grown to see about Zephaniah. Zephaniah balances the justice of God and the love of God perfectly. I mean, he's the mighty warrior who punishes, and he's going to promise punishment in the form of the Babylonians, but he's also the God who sings over us. He's the mighty warrior who sings. So, our job is not to create caricatures of God, but to learn the character of God, and when we learn the character of God, we're able to hold his justice and his love in tension with one another, and we're able to see that the fire that burns is actually the fire that purifies, and that's our timeless truth for the day. I hope that helps you to love. God and understand God on a deeper level. Tomorrow, we've got the book of Habakkuk. Everybody loves Habakkuk. We'll spend one day in the book of Habakkuk. It's going to be great. If you're on a streak, I'm so proud of you. I love you. Thank you for spending time with me

as we break down the Bible together. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Can't wait to go through Habakkuk with you. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department Podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.