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Zephaniah, Prophet of Divine Protection, Part 1, Introduction

The prophet Zephaniah was a contemporary of Jeremiah. Both prophesied in the final years prior to the Babylonian captivity of Judah. Both prophets warned of coming disaster and issued calls to repent in order to be divinely protected during those dangerous times. Yet whereas Jeremiah’s main focus was on the soon-coming capture and destruction of Jerusalem in his time, Zephaniah prophesied of the final destruction of Jerusalem in the far future.

The solution in either case was repentance, returning to God and submitting to the terms of His covenant through faith and obedience. Repentance is the timeless solution, regardless of which destruction of the city would take place. The destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 B.C. was only the first destruction. The destruction at the hands of Rome in 70 A.D. was the second. The third destruction in “the day of the Lord” is the last and will occur near the time of the second coming of Christ.

In each of these destructions, God preserves a remnant, those who are called to carry the promise of God, those whom God calls to bring restoration after the judgment. So Zephaniah’s name means “Yahweh has hidden,” or “Yahweh has treasured, concealed, or protected.”

Dating Zephaniah’s Prophecy

Zephaniah 1:1 begins,

¹ The word of the Lord which came to Zephaniah son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah.

It appears that Zephaniah was the great-great grandson of King Hezekiah of Judah, in whose reign the house of Israel had been conquered and deported (2 Kings 18:9-11). The reason for their exile is stated in the next verse, 2 Kings 18:12,

¹² because they did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed His covenant, even all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded; they would neither listen nor do it.

This was the same problem that Zephaniah faced in his day, and for this reason Judah too was in danger of suffering the same fate as the Israelites. No doubt the prophet remembered how Hezekiah’s repentance saved Jerusalem a century earlier, and he hoped that this would be repeated in his own lifetime.

The prophecy itself was recorded in the days of King Josiah, the great-grandson of Hezekiah. Note that Jeremiah began his ministry in the thirteenth year of King Josiah (Jeremiah 1:2). Hence, Jeremiah and Zephaniah were contemporaries and, no doubt, knew each other well. There had been a great revival in Judah under Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:1-7), during the ministry of the prophet Isaiah.

Josiah’s Reforms

King Josiah began to seek the Lord at the age of 16 in the eighth year of his reign (633 B.C.). In 629 B.C. He began to purge Judah of idols in his twelfth year (2 Chronicles 34:3). Jeremiah then began to prophesy the following year, perhaps to support Josiah’s reformation.

In his 18^th year (623-622 B.C.) Josiah “purged the land and the house” (temple), giving the order “to repair the house of the Lord his God” (2 Chronicles 34:8). While cleaning out the idols and debris from the temple, Hilkiah the high priest (2 Kings 22:8) discovered the lost “book of the law of the Lord given by Moses” (2 Chronicles 34:14). Most likely, this was the book of Deuteronomy.

The book of the law was read to Josiah, and his reaction shows just how ignorant he had been of the laws of God. 2 Chronicles 34:19-21 says,

¹⁹ When the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes. ²⁰ Then the king commanded Hilkiah, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, Abdon the son of Micah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying, ²¹ “Go, inquire of the Lord for me and for those who are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book which has been found; for great is the wrath of the Lord which is poured out on us because our fathers have not observed the word of the Lord, to do according to all that is written in this book.”

The king then commanded that the feast of Passover would be celebrated—probably for the first time in living memory. After all, the temple had been neglected for a long time and was in a state of ruin before Josiah ordered its restoration. In fact, 2 Chronicles 35:18 says, “There had not been celebrated a Passover like it in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet.”

Josiah’s so-called “Great Passover” occurred at the start of the 17^th Jubilee year since Israel’s Jordan crossing. (See Secrets of Time, Appendix A.)

This Jubilee Passover was sparked by the discovery of the law. In my view, of course, this is prophetic of our own time, where the law must again be “discovered” by the Church in order to bring about genuine repentance and for the Jubilee to be declared. The year 2024-2025 is the 70^th Jubilee year from the Jordan crossing.

Josiah Dies Before Judgment Arrives

These were the big events occurring during the reign of Josiah when Zephaniah began to prophesy in Judah. The prophet’s call to repentance was therefore approved by the king himself. Unfortunately, the sin of Judah had already reached the point where divine judgment was inevitable. Josiah’s reforms only postponed that judgment, because Scripture shows that God does not destroy a nation as long as it was ruled by a godly king. In fact, when the wicked king Ahab humbled himself without fully repenting, God postponed judgment upon Israel until the time of his successor (1 Kings 21:29).

Josiah was killed in battle in 609 B.C., having reigned in Jerusalem for 31 years (2 Chronicles 34:1). He lived just long enough to see the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C. The royal family, along with the remains of the Assyrian army, regrouped in Harran, where they were defeated in 610 B.C. Assyria’s collapse was complete by 605 B.C., and the Babylonians then turned west toward Jerusalem. Jerusalem capitulated in 604 B.C., beginning the long (“seven times”) tribulation period in Kingdom history.

This tribulation period was dominated by the four beast empires of Daniel 2 and 7, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome (and the “little horn” extension of Rome). Today we live at the end of this great tribulation and are witnessing the collapse of the last phase of the beast empires called Mystery Babylon in the book of Revelation. This is “the day of the Lord.”

Divine judgment is coming upon the beast system as the great “stone” hits the image on its feet, crumbling the entire system of man’s government dating back to Babylon itself (Daniel 2:45). Zephaniah’s message thus applies to us more than at any time in history. The destructions in 586 B.C. and again in 70 A.D. were just types and shadows of a greater event in our time, because it also marks the rise of the “stone” kingdom—the fifth Kingdom that will never pass away.