Zephaniah 2
2
Seek God
1-2So get yourselves together. Shape up!
You’re a nation without a clue about what it wants.
Do it before you’re blown away
like leaves in a windstorm,
Before God’s Judgment-anger
sweeps down on you,
Before God’s Judgment Day wrath
descends with full force.
* * *
3Seek God, all you quietly disciplined people
who live by God’s justice.
Seek God’s right ways. Seek a quiet and disciplined life.
Perhaps you’ll be hidden on the Day of God’s anger.
All Earth-Made Gods Will Blow Away
4-5Gaza is scheduled for demolition,
Ashdod will be cleaned out by high noon,
Ekron pulled out by the roots.
Doom to the seaside people,
the seafaring people from Crete!
The Word of God is bad news for you
who settled Canaan, the Philistine country:
“You’re slated for destruction—
no survivors!”
* * *
6-7The lands of the seafarers
will become pastureland,
A country for shepherds and sheep.
What’s left of the family of Judah will get it.
Day after day they’ll pasture by the sea,
and go home in the evening to Ashkelon to sleep.
Their very own God will look out for them.
He’ll make things as good as before.
* * *
8-12“I’ve heard the crude taunts of Moab,
the mockeries flung by Ammon,
The cruel talk they’ve used to put down my people,
their self-important strutting along Israel’s borders.
Therefore, as sure as I am the living God,” says
God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
Israel’s personal God,
“Moab will become a ruin like Sodom,
Ammon a ghost town like Gomorrah,
One a field of rocks, the other a sterile salt flat,
a moonscape forever.
What’s left of my people will finish them off,
will pick them clean and take over.
This is what they get for their bloated pride,
their taunts and mockeries of the people
of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
God will be seen as truly terrible—a Holy Terror.
All earth-made gods will shrivel up and blow away;
And everyone, wherever they are, far or near,
will fall to the ground and worship him.
Also you Ethiopians,
you, too, will die—I’ll see to it.”
* * *
13-15Then God will reach into the north
and destroy Assyria.
He will waste Nineveh,
leave her dry and treeless as a desert.
The ghost town of a city,
the haunt of wild animals,
Nineveh will be home to raccoons and coyotes—
they’ll bed down in its ruins.
Owls will hoot in the windows, ravens will croak in the doorways—
all that fancy woodwork now a perch for birds.
Can this be the famous Fun City
that had it made,
That boasted, “I’m the Number-One City!
I’m King of the Mountain!”
So why is the place deserted,
a lair for wild animals?
Passersby hardly give it a look;
they dismiss it with a gesture.
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Zephaniah 2: MSG
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
Zephaniah 2
2
Zephaniah 2
1¶ Search yourselves and one another, O unfriendly people;
2before the decree is executed, before the day passes as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord comes upon you, before the day of the Lord’s anger comes upon you.
3Seek ye the Lord, all ye humble of the earth, who have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek humility: it may be ye shall be kept in the day of the Lord’s anger.
4¶ For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall spoil Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up.
5Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the people of the Cherethites! the word of the Lord is against you; O Canaan, the land of the Palestinians, I will cause thee to be destroyed until there shall be no inhabitant left.
6And the sea coast shall be for dwellings and cottages for pastors, and sheepfolds.
7And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed thereupon: in the houses of Ashkelon they shall sleep for the night; for the Lord their God shall visit them and return their captives.
8¶ I have heard the reproaches of Moab, and the revilings of the sons of Ammon, by which they have dishonoured my people and magnified themselves over their border.
9Therefore as I live, said the Lord of the hosts, the God of Israel, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom and the sons of Ammon as Gomorrah, even a field of nettles and saltpits and a perpetual desolation; the remnant of my people shall spoil them, and the remnant of my Gentiles shall inherit them.
10This shall come upon them for their pride because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the Lord of the hosts.
11The Lord shall be terrible against them for he will weaken all the gods of the earth; and each one from his place shall worship him, even all the isles of the Gentiles.
12¶ Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by my sword.
13And he will stretch out his hand over the north wind and destroy Assyria and will make Nineveh a desolation and dry like a wilderness.
14And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the Gentiles; both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in her thresholds; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the gates: for her cedar work shall be uncovered.
15This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! anyone that passes by her shall hiss and wag his hand.
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The Jubilee Bible 2000 (JUB) by Ransom Press International