Wednesday 24th April
Read Zephaniah 2:3-4
“Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
you who do what he commands.
Seek righteousness, seek humility;
perhaps you will be sheltered
on the day of the Lord’s anger.
4 Gaza will be abandoned
and Ashkelon left in ruins.
At midday Ashdod will be emptied
and Ekron uprooted.” (NIVUK)
The translation we use is missing a ‘for’ at the beginning of verse four. It suggests that there is a link between the glimmer of hope held out to those who humble themselves and seek shelter from and with the Lord and the certain destruction of the Palestine cities. It is easy to be fatigued with the constant predictions of doom directed at the nations around Judah at the Lord’s hand. It is hard work to understand why they were pronounced then and why we need to read of them now.
The sequence of cities is unique, and traces a line drawing ever closer to Jerusalem, suggesting that the day of the Lord is approaching and drawing nearer every moment. The certainty of it is captured in the destruction of Philistine cities. The poetry of these verses is lost in translation. In Hebrew there is alliteration and assonance and nuance that likely draws on the comparison of the cities with women – a common enough poetic device that we are familiar with as ‘daughter Zion’. These Philistine cities face various fates, all of which, if applied to women are horrific. Abandonment, ruination, barrenness and separation. The poetry would not be lost on the original audience and the question it poses is what next for ‘daughter Zion’?
The only place to seek shelter, given the ruination of these economically linked cities, is in the very arms of the judge. Which is why we need to read these words and study them all these many centuries later. That truth, when grasped, is a truth that saves.
