Zephaniah 1:14-15
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.
That day will be a day of wrath—
a day of distress and anguish,
a day of trouble and ruin,
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and blackness —
Our tender sensibilities draw back from the harshness of these words. How can The Day of the Lord, the God of love, be depicted in this language? Many of us turn away from passages like this one.
Let’s try to imagine a different world, the world of the ancient near East in the seventh century BC. The leaders and the people of both the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah had forsaken the teachings of God. They had adopted the worship and ways of the cultures in which they were immersed. They had given up the worship of Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, for the gods of the people among whom they lived. Even their kings had set up worship to these foreign gods on all the high places. We read that some of the people even worshiped the local gods and Yahweh together, in the temple. They adopted behaviors which were part of the worship of these gods: offering as sacrifices both adults and children, and participating in sexual fertility rites, as well as behaviors condoned by the culture: their kings and others with power and wealth exploited those people they regarded as other or less than. Recall that a central feature of early Jewish teachings was right relationship of people with each other, with specific instructions to care for widows and orphans, the poor, strangers and foreigners.
The Northern Kingdom of Israel, with its ten tribes, was destroyed in around 722 BC, its people dispersed throughout the region, and whatever remained of their culture and religion obliterated. Knowing this, it seems the remaining two tribes that made up the Southern Kingdom of Judah would repent and turn back to following God and his laws. They did not.
So, this was the world that Zephaniah grew up in. How can such a one even hear the word of the Lord? Yet, into this time of idolatry and sinfulness the Lord spoke and Zephaniah heard! We don’t have any record of his inner response, but I imagine that he had long been appalled and sickened by the degeneration and wickedness he saw around him. He understood God’s anger with these people who turned their backs and hearts away from him, even though he sent prophets to wake them up to how far they had strayed from the paths of righteousness he wanted for them. They did not listen, or in their listening they did not take the prophets’ words to heart. Throughout the Old Testament, we read that people did not think God would see what they did, or if he did see, that he would act.
More than any other prophet in the Old Testament, Zephaniah used the phrase The Day of the Lord. And this was to be a day of setting things right. God would come in wrath, sparing nothing and no-one, because they refused to turn and be healed, which was always and ever the chief desire of God’s heart.
What do we hear in these words today? Do the powerful and wealthy among us care for the least of these? We no longer have kings, but do powerful people in government work to prevent the exploitation of those less powerful and to provide for their welfare? Is serving others their motivation, or is it self-aggrandizement and holding on to the secular power they enjoy? And what about us?
Hard questions. Do we believe that God sees? That God will act?
-Elise Hansard
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