HelpFinder Bible - Flipbook - Page 1207
ZEPHANIAH 2
page 837
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And a great crash will sound from the hills.
Wail in sorrow, all you who live in the
market area,*
for all the merchants and traders will be
destroyed.
“I will search with lanterns in Jerusalem’s
darkest corners
to punish those who sit complacent in
their sins.
They think the Lord will do nothing to
them,
either good or bad.
So their property will be plundered,
their homes will be ransacked.
They will build new homes
but never live in them.
They will plant vineyards
but never drink wine from them.
“That terrible day of the Lord is near.
Swiftly it comes—
a day of bitter tears,
a day when even strong men will cry out.
It will be a day when the Lord’s anger is
poured out—
a day of terrible distress and anguish,
a day of ruin and desolation,
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and blackness,
a day of trumpet calls and battle cries.
Down go the walled cities
and the strongest battlements!
17
“Because you have sinned against the Lord,
I will make you grope around like the
blind.
Your blood will be poured into the dust,
and your bodies will lie rotting on the
ground.”
18
Your silver and gold will not save you
on that day of the Lord’s anger.
For the whole land will be devoured
by the fire of his jealousy.
He will make a terrifying end
of all the people on earth.*
A Call to Repentance
1 Gather together—yes, gather together,
you shameless nation.
2 Gather before judgment begins,
before your time to repent is blown
away like chaff.
Act now, before the fierce fury of the
Lord falls
and the terrible day of the Lord’s
anger begins.
3 Seek the Lord, all who are humble,
and follow his commands.
2
1:11 Or in the valley, a lower section of Jerusalem. Hebrew
reads the Maktesh. 1:18 Or the people living in the land.
2:5 Hebrew Kerethites. 2:12 Hebrew Cushites.
Seek to do what is right
and to live humbly.
Perhaps even yet the Lord will protect you—
protect you from his anger on that day of
destruction.
Judgment against Philistia
4 Gaza and Ashkelon will be abandoned,
Ashdod and Ekron torn down.
5 And what sorrow awaits you Philistines*
who live along the coast and in the land
of Canaan,
for this judgment is against you, too!
The Lord will destroy you
until not one of you is left.
6 The Philistine coast will become a
wilderness pasture,
a place of shepherd camps
and enclosures for sheep and goats.
7 The remnant of the tribe of Judah will
pasture there.
They will rest at night in the abandoned
houses in Ashkelon.
For the Lord their God will visit his people
in kindness
and restore their prosperity again.
Judgment against Moab and Ammon
8 “I have heard the taunts of the Moabites
and the insults of the Ammonites,
mocking my people
and invading their borders.
9 Now, as surely as I live,”
says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies,
the God of Israel,
“Moab and Ammon will be destroyed—
destroyed as completely as Sodom and
Gomorrah.
Their land will become a place of stinging
nettles,
salt pits, and eternal desolation.
The remnant of my people will plunder
them
and take their land.”
10
11
They will receive the wages of their pride,
for they have scoffed at the people of the
Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
The Lord will terrify them
as he destroys all the gods in the land.
Then nations around the world will worship
the Lord,
each in their own land.
Judgment against Ethiopia and Assyria
12 “You Ethiopians* will also be slaughtered
by my sword,” says the Lord.
13
And the Lord will strike the lands of the
north with his fist,
destroying the land of Assyria.
He will make its great capital, Nineveh,
a desolate wasteland,