Four commands open the passage and pile up like a shout: 14"Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel!" The book has spent nearly three chapters on wrath, and then, with no pause, comes a song. The commands rest on what God has already done: 15"The LORD has taken away the judgments against you." Zephaniah's people are asked to sing because someone else finished the work.
The reason for the song is a location: 15"The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst." The word midst has run through this chapter. In chapter 1 the day of the LORD was near, and near meant danger. The closeness that was terrible in chapter 1 is the comfort here. It is the same God at the same distance, and what has changed is that he has dealt with what stood between.
Then God himself speaks: 16"Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak." Zion was told to sing in verse 14, and in verse 17 God sings too. The Hebrew for Zion's sing aloud and for his loud singing comes from the same root. The people are invited to make the sound God is already making. Ask most people what God does when he looks at us, and sings is not the first guess.
Two pictures of love sit side by side in verse 17. One is quiet: he will quiet you by his love. The Hebrew verb can mean to be silent, which is why older English Bibles read that he will rest in his love. The other is loud: he will exult over you with loud singing. God is silent with love, and God shouts with love. Every parent knows both, the hush over a sleeping child and the whoop when the child does something wonderful. Some days we need to be quieted, and some days we need to be sung over.
He gathers his people: 19"I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth." The verb for gather is the one that opened the book, when God said he would sweep away everything from the face of the earth (Zephaniah 1:2-3). Zephaniah began with that verb as a threat and ends with it as a rescue. The lame and the outcast are the ones he counts on to fill the assembly.
The Gospels give these lines a face. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem, John writes that the crowd hailed him as the King of Israel and quotes the prophet's words, fear not, daughter of Zion, your king is coming (John 12:13-15). King of Israel is Zephaniah's own title for the LORD in 3:15. As for a God who rejoices over his people, Luke 15 gives a shepherd who lays the found sheep on his shoulders, rejoicing, and a father who runs to a son and calls for a celebration because the son was dead and is alive again (Luke 15:5, 20-24). Zephaniah said God would sing over the found. Luke shows the party.
Some of us are more at home with the first chapters of this book than with its last verses. We know how to feel the weight of wrath. It is harder to believe we are sung over. The book chose where to end, on a God who rejoices over his people and gathers the lame. If we are in Christ, that is the verdict on our lives. Let it be sung over you today, the quiet song and the loud one.
Prayer
Father, we have believed more easily in your anger than in your delight, and we have sung to you more readily than we have listened for your singing. Thank you that you are in our midst, mighty to save, rejoicing over us with gladness. Quiet us by your love where we are afraid, and sing over us where we are ashamed. Gather the lame and the outcast, and let us be among them. In Jesus' name, amen.