God begins with an object lesson that failed. 6"I have cut off nations; their battlements are in ruins." Then he says what he hoped it would do: 7"Surely you will fear me; you will accept correction." The ruin of other nations was meant as a warning shot. God was teaching Jerusalem with somebody else's wreckage so that she would never need her own. The answer comes in one line: 7"all the more they were eager to make all their deeds corrupt." The Hebrew behind eager means they rose early. God's justice comes morning by morning (Zephaniah 3:5), and the people rise early too, to corrupt everything they do.
So the line turns: 8"Therefore wait for me," declares the LORD. Who is addressed? The crowd that rose early to corrupt will not wait for anything. The word belongs to the humble of the land whom 2:3 told to seek the LORD. Waiting is what remains for people who cannot fix the city.
Then comes the small word for, and everything swings on it. God says 9"I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech." After the fire, what is left is a language. The Bible's earlier story about the speech of the peoples is Babel, where God confused their language and scattered them (Genesis 11:1-9). Here he gathers them and puts one clean sound in their mouths, the name of the LORD. The phrase translated with one accord is literally with one shoulder, a team under one yoke. The peoples who once built for their own name end by calling on his. At Pentecost the crowd heard the mighty works of God in their own languages, and Peter told them that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Acts 2:21).
Then Zephaniah turns to the people inside the city. The word midst, or within, runs through this chapter and tracks who occupies the center of Jerusalem. In 3:3 the officials within her are roaring lions. In 3:5 the LORD within her is righteous. In 3:11 the proud are removed from your midst, and in 3:12 God leaves in her midst a humble and lowly people. Twice more, in 3:15 and 3:17, the LORD himself is in your midst. The city's center is always occupied by someone, and God is deciding by whom.
The people he keeps are drawn in three small strokes: a humble and lowly people, a refuge in the name of the LORD, and mouths with no lies and no deceitful tongue (verse 13). The list holds nothing impressive. Earlier the humble were told to seek humility (Zephaniah 2:3), and here humility is what God leaves standing after the fire. The last line is a picture of sheep: 13"they shall graze and lie down, and none shall make them afraid." It is the shepherd's evening promised on the Philistine coast (Zephaniah 2:7).
Jesus says he is gentle and lowly in heart (Matthew 11:29), and he opens the Sermon on the Mount with the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3). The remnant carries the King's own character. He is also the shepherd who says no one will snatch his sheep out of his hand (John 10:28), and the promise that none shall make them afraid finds its guarantor there.
We watch consequences fall on other people all the time: a friend's marriage, a neighbor's health, a company that came apart. God says in verse 7 that he meant such things as instruction. Which of the ruins we have seen lately did we walk past? What sits at the center of our own house?
Prayer
Father, you have taught us with other people's ruins, and we have gone on as before. Forgive us for rising early to the wrong things. Thank you that you keep a people, that you take the proud out of the middle and leave the lowly who run to your name. Clean our lips, and take out of the center of our lives whatever should not be there. In Jesus' name, amen.