A page of oracles against foreign nations is easy to read as someone else's trouble. Gaza will be deserted, Ashkelon a desolation, Ashdod's people 4"driven out at noon," and Ekron uprooted. But Zephaniah has said since chapter 1 that judgment starts at Jerusalem and spreads outward, and these oracles work like a mirror held up to Judah.
The sharpest words go to Moab and Ammon, and the charge is what they said. 8"I have heard the taunts of Moab and the revilings of the Ammonites." God has been listening. He names the sin as pride, because they taunted and boasted against the people of the LORD of hosts (verse 10). To mock the people is to mock the one who owns them. So he swears by his own life and reaches for the most famous ruin in the Bible: 9"Moab shall become like Sodom, and the Ammonites like Gomorrah."
Back in chapter 1 some in Judah swore by the LORD and also by Milcom, the god of the Ammonites (Zephaniah 1:5; 1 Kings 11:5). The judgment on Ammon lands in Judah's own oath.
Then comes the verse that names the passage. The LORD will famish all the gods of the earth, emptying them of worshipers and offerings, and the nations bow to him, each in its place. The Hebrew can be read as each from his own place. Nobody is herded to a single temple. Worship rises in Gaza and Ammon and on every shore, wherever people happen to be standing. Malachi will later say that incense will be offered to his name in every place (Malachi 1:11), and Jesus tells a Samaritan woman that the hour is coming when worship will be tied neither to this mountain nor to Jerusalem (John 4:21).
Between the judgments sits a promise that is easy to miss. The seacoast of Philistia, once the home of armies, becomes 6"meadows for shepherds and folds for flocks," and the remnant of Judah lies down in the houses of Ashkelon at evening. The conquest looks like a shepherd's evening. Behind it stands a sentence about God: 7"the LORD their God will be mindful of them and restore their fortunes." The word for mindful is also used for visiting, and God visits a small and battered remnant. The book closes on the same phrase (Zephaniah 3:20).
One verse is left: 12"You also, O Cushites, shall be slain by my sword." Zephaniah's own father was named Cushi (Zephaniah 1:1), and the book does not forget Cush. In 3:10 God speaks of worshipers coming from beyond the rivers of Cush. The nation that gets one line of judgment gets a seat among the worshipers. Luke tells of an Ethiopian official who came to Jerusalem to worship (Acts 8:27-28).
John sees where it ends: a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9). Each in its own place, at the end, is a crowd from Gaza, Moab, and Cush, worshiping together. The road to that crowd runs through a man the world taunted. Paul says that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow (Philippians 2:10).
Pride here is a sound: taunting, boasting, and mocking people who trust God because they look small. We hear ourselves in it whenever we decide that faith must be foolish because the faithful look poor, or slow, or out of date. We can hear ourselves in the other place too, among the remnant who are remembered. Small people are exactly the ones he visits.
Prayer
Father, you keep watch over the whole world and over the smallest household in it. Forgive us for judging you by how weak your people look and for the boasting we have called confidence. Thank you that the nations you humble you also invite, and that Christ was mocked so that mockers could be gathered in. Be mindful of the small and overlooked among us. In Jesus' name, amen.