Zephaniah 1:7-18
23 August 2009
“In the Dark and Light of That Day”
One of
Banu’s observations (and complaints) about movies that take place in the
future, especially those of an alleged post-apocalyptic nature, is that they
tend to be too dark. They’re too
dark—not only in theme, but they’re literally
too dark. There’s not enough light to
see what’s going on!
Hollywood
would have fun with Zephaniah. Talk
about dark! There’s enough gloom and graphic
violence to make Alien and Terminator look like the Teletubbies! Of course, the Hollywood definition of
“apocalypse” seems to always focus on blood and destruction, as opposed to the
biblical sense, which is “revealing” or “uncovering.”
Americans
seem to love books and movies about the end times. There are lots of examples of this, including
the seemingly endless “Left Behind” series.
All kinds of ideas are floating around about things to come. There’s even been no small number of cults
spring up, convinced of their vision of the future.
As I
said last week, I’m doing a mini-series on three of the twelve Minor
Prophets. Last Sunday, it was Jonah.
Next week, it will be Malachi—they all have different messages. Jonah is in a class all by himself. Besides the episode with the fish, he shows
his need for anger management. Jonah
reluctantly preaches repentance to Nineveh, the enemy of his people. And when he’s successful, he’s beside himself
with rage.
With
Zephaniah, we have a man who, in many ways, comes closer to fitting the
prophetic mold—if there is such a thing.
But there is something that enables Zephaniah to stand out: it’s his focus on the day of Yahweh, the day
of the Lord. He doesn’t invent the
idea—it goes back centuries, some say as far back as the so-called holy wars of
Joshua.
The day
of the Lord came to be seen as the moment when God would intervene on behalf of
Israel, to defeat all their enemies. As
the centuries progressed, and bigger boys like the Assyrians and Babylonians
started throwing their weight around, this was a day more and more people
yearned for.
A
century before Zephaniah, in a case of “be careful what you wish for,” the
prophet Amos warns those “who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light” (5:18). Don’t be so smug, Amos says. Don’t assume that the day of the Lord will
only be bad news for your enemies. As
corrupt as you are, do you think you’ll escape untouched?
Eventually,
the day of the Lord became infused with messianic expectation. That’s one big reason why so many became
disillusioned with Jesus. They thought
he would lead them in getting rid of the biggest boys yet, the Romans. The day is now commonly linked with the
return of Christ.
However
Zephaniah isn’t thinking of the day of the Lord as some far away time. His message directly concerns his audience,
during the reign of King Josiah of Judah in the late seventh century B. C., as
the Assyrians are getting weaker and the Babylonians are getting stronger. For him, the day of Yahweh is very much about
foreign invasion.
Zephaniah
says some things that, to our ears, probably sound quite strange. Unfortunately, the Good News Bible tends to
be more a paraphrase than a translation, so these things don’t come
through. For example, in verse 8, where
the Good News Bible has the prophet criticizing leaders “and all who practice
foreign customs,” most versions have “all who dress themselves in foreign
attire,” or words to that effect.
So we can see that Zephaniah
doesn’t intend that as a fashion statement.
He isn’t imitating People
magazine with his own list of the “Best and Worst Dressed”! Elizabeth Achtemeier points out that “as a
vassal [a puppet state] of Assyria, the leaders of Judah have accommodated
their ways to those of a foreign culture…Assyria’s ways have become Judah’s
ways, and Assyria’s customs hers.”[1]
Verse 9
has something that sounds equally bizarre.
Where the Good News Bible has a promise to “punish all who worship like
pagans,” others have “all who leap over the threshold.” Again, Zephaniah isn’t interested in
auditions for “Dancing with the Stars.”
It’s about superstition concerning evil spirits who dwell in doorways
and must be avoided.
(I
wonder if that particular idea didn’t survive with the practice of carrying
brides over thresholds!)
Anyway,
with these comments, the prophet isn’t criticizing foreign ways simply because
they are foreign. The problem is that—as
it seems every generation must learn—serving God isn’t about following certain
procedures in worship.
Zephaniah
reminds the people that their God is
deeply concerned with ethics. That is,
serving their God requires that they chose between right and wrong, that how
they treat each other makes all the difference.
That’s why he gets on their case about all the “violence and fraud” (v.
9).
One of
these days, says the prophet, it’s all going to catch up with you. It’s later than you think! Verse 14 says: “The great day of the Lord is near, near and
hastening fast.” In verses 15 to 18, he
reels off a laundry list of gruesome things on the way. In medieval Europe, his description of the
Day of Yahweh came to be called dies irae,
Latin for “day of wrath.” Nobody can
accuse him of trying to sugar coat his message!
Still,
as with other prophets, Zephaniah isn’t all doom and gloom. The bad news is followed by good news. The discipline of the Lord is intended to
lead to restoration. We hear in chapter
2: “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the
land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may
be hidden on the day of the Lord’s wrath” (v. 3).
There’s
a common misperception that the wrath of God is intended as punishment. But as we saw last week in the crazy story of
Jonah, along with the whale that carried him to shore (in a less than dignified
fashion) and the plant that suddenly sprung up to give him shade, God’s wrath also is an act of grace.
“Divine
judgment,” says Dan Clendenin, “is equitable and even merciful in that, like a
loving parent, it demonstrates that God has not given up on me, that [God] is
not done with me.”[2]
With the day of the Lord,
Zephaniah and the other prophets are doing something revolutionary. One Old Testament scholar says, “For the
first time [ever], human beings dared to make hope the foundation of
their…theology. The prophets therefore
brought a futuristic turn into the thinking of following centuries.”[3] People started to believe that, while we
recall past actions of God and celebrate them in annual holidays, what God will
do in the future is even more important.
We’re so used to the idea of
hope—be it hope fulfilled or hope denied—that we often fail to understand what
a giant leap in the evolution of human thought it is. With the day of the Lord, and the messianic
dream it inspired, people began to believe that the world itself could be
transformed into something new. And not
only the world, but people themselves could be transformed.
But maybe we’ve forgotten—or
don’t even care—to have that hope. How
much are we like those poor fools in verses 12 and 13? You know, the ones “who are self-satisfied and confident, who say to themselves, ‘The
Lord never does anything, one way or the other’” (v. 12, GNB).
Of them, the NRSV says, “Their wealth shall be plundered, and
their houses laid waste. Though they
build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they
shall not drink wine from them” (v. 13).
That bit about vineyards and wine sounds like a Keuka Lake connection!
In his paraphrase called The
Message, Eugene Peterson puts his own spin on verse 12. On the day of the Lord, there’s a promise to
“punish those who are sitting it out, fat and lazy, amusing themselves and taking
it easy, Who think, ‘God doesn’t do anything, good or bad. He isn’t involved, so neither are we.’”
When confronted with the problems of the world—and even with the
ones right here locally—it’s very easy to just sit it out. It’s very easy to hide ourselves under a
mountain of trivialities and creature comforts.
I understand that very well; I constantly have to check that in
myself. That’s why it means so much for
us to actually be a help, and not a hindrance, to each other. One way to do that is to learn to be
flexible, especially in the minor details.
Those who aren’t flexible become brittle and abrasive.
As I’ve suggested, Zephaniah’s message goes from gloomy to
glorious. Hear this from chapter 3,
speaking of the day of the Lord, in the dark and light of that day. “At that time,” says the Lord, “I will change
the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the
name of the Lord and serve him with one accord” (v. 9). A fellow blogger has commented that the “command to love...will be the language all
of creation is fluent with on that Day.”[4]
Well, here are some more words of wisdom from the language of love: why put off until tomorrow what you can do today? Today is the Lord’s day; can we not show the world that God is alive in our midst?
[1] Elizabeth Achtemeier, Nahum-Malachi (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1986), 68.
[2] www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20081110JJ.shtml
[3] Klaus Koch, The Prophets: The Assyrian Period (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), 163.
[4] www.stormented.com/Stormented/Blog/Entries/2009/8/17_The_Day_of_the_Lord.html#