The book opens with the longest family tree any prophet is given. Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah. The last name is Hezekiah, probably the king who tore down the high places and trusted the LORD when Assyria stood at the gate. Then the text names King Josiah, whose grandfather Manasseh had set up altars to the host of heaven in the courts of the LORD's own house. Zephaniah came from a faithful family and preached to a nation that had stopped being one.
Then the LORD speaks, and he begins wide. 2"I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth." The Hebrew verb sounds three times in two verses, and the sweeping order is telling. Man, beast, birds, fish. It is the days of creation read backward. What God assembled in Genesis he names here in the order he would take it apart.
Then the circle closes. 4"I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem." An audience will gladly hear an oracle about the whole earth. What follows is a short list of the people Judah had among them, and it reads like a slide from bold to quiet. Some worship Baal openly, along with the priests who serve him. Some climb onto their roofs to bow to the host of the heavens, worshiping out of sight of the neighbors, under the same sun and moon and stars the great empires around them consulted.
The next group should stop us: 5"those who bow down and swear to the LORD and yet swear by Milcom." Milcom was the god of Ammon, a second name added to the oath, in case. Whoever swears both ways has decided the LORD is not enough.
The list ends with the most ordinary people of all. 6"Those who have turned back from following the LORD, who do not seek the LORD or inquire of him." Their sin is an absence, days that pass with no asking of the LORD at all. God puts them on the same list as the priests of Baal, and at the bottom stands a person who prays about nothing because the day seems to be going fine.
That verb will return. Near the end of the book God uses it once more, "I will gather those of you who mourn" (Zephaniah 3:18). The word that sweeps away at the beginning gathers home at the end.
The hardest sentence in the passage is about cutting off. The Bible uses that language of one more person. Isaiah says of the Servant that he was "cut off out of the land of the living" (Isaiah 53:8), and Daniel says an anointed one will be cut off (Daniel 9:26). Jesus was the one man who swore by no other name. "My food is to do the will of him who sent me" (John 4:34), he said, and "No one can serve two masters" (Matthew 6:24). Then he was cut off anyway, in the place of everyone who had sworn two ways at once, so that the ones who deserved sweeping could be gathered instead.
So the question these verses put to a comfortable person is small and specific. Whom else do we swear by? Where do we bow on the roof, out of sight, to whatever we count on for the rain, the money, the health, the peace, while still saying his name at the table? And on the quiet days, when nothing is wrong, when did we last ask him anything? He is a jealous God, and the jealousy is a love that wants its people back.
Prayer
Father, we swear to you and then keep a second oath in reserve, and we have called it prudence. Forgive the roofs where we have bowed out of sight, and the ordinary days when we did not think to ask you anything. Thank you that Christ served one master and was cut off in place of every divided heart of ours. Gather us and do not sweep us away. In Jesus' name, amen.