Zephaniah 1:3

1:3 “I will destroy people and animals;

I will destroy the birds in the sky

and the fish in the sea.

(The idolatrous images of these creatures will be destroyed along with evil people.) ¹ 

I will remove ²  humanity from the face of the earth,” says the Lord.

Zephaniah 1:14

1:14 The Lord’s great day of judgment ³  is almost here;

it is approaching very rapidly!

There will be a bitter sound on the Lord’s day of judgment;

at that time warriors will cry out in battle. ⁴ 

Zephaniah 3:6

The Lord’s Judgment will Purify

3:6 “I destroyed ⁵  nations;

their walled cities ⁶  are in ruins.

I turned their streets into ruins;

no one passes through them.

Their cities are desolate; ⁷ 

no one lives there. ⁸ 

Zephaniah 3:4

3:4 Her prophets are proud; ⁹ 

they are deceitful men.

Her priests defile what is holy; ¹⁰ 

they break God’s laws. ¹¹ 

Zephaniah 1:17

1:17 I will bring distress on the people ¹² 

and they will stumble ¹³  like blind men,

for they have sinned against the Lord.

Their blood will be poured out like dirt;

their flesh ¹⁴  will be scattered ¹⁵  like manure.

[1:3]  ¹ tn Heb “And the stumbling blocks [or, “ruins”] with the evil”; or “the things that make the evil stumble.” The line does not appear in the original form of the LXX; it may be a later scribal addition. The present translation assumes the “stumbling blocks” are idolatrous images of animals, birds, and fish. See J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (OTL), 167, and Adele Berlin, Zephaniah (AB), 73-74.

[1:3]  ² tn Heb “cut off.”

[1:14]  ³ tn Heb “The great day of the Lord.” The words “of judgment” are supplied in the translation here and later in this verse for clarity. See the note on the expression “day of judgment” in v. 7.

[1:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “the sound of the day of the Lord, bitter [is] one crying out there, a warrior.” The present translation does four things: (1) It takes מַר (mar, “bitter”) with what precedes (contrary to the accentuation of the MT). (2) It understands the participle צָרַח (tsarakh, “cry out in battle”) as verbal with “warrior” as its subject. (3) It takes שָׁם (sham, “there”) in a temporal sense, meaning “then, at that time.” (4) It understands “warrior” as collective.

[3:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “cut off.”

[3:6]  ⁶ tn Heb “corner towers”; NEB, NRSV “battlements.”

[3:6]  ⁷ tn This Hebrew verb (צָדָה, tsadah) occurs only here in the OT, but its meaning is established from the context and from an Aramaic cognate.

[3:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “so that there is no man, without inhabitant.”

[3:4]  ⁷ sn Applied to prophets, the word פֹּחֲזִים (pokhazim, “proud”) probably refers to their audacity in passing off their own words as genuine prophecies from the Lord (see Jer 23:32).

[3:4]  ⁸ tn Or “defile the temple.”

[3:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “they treat violently [the] law.”

[1:17]  ⁹ tn “The people” refers to mankind in general (see vv. 2-3) or more specifically to the residents of Judah (see vv. 4-13).

[1:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “walk.”

[1:17]  ¹¹ tn Some take the referent of “flesh” to be more specific here; cf. NEB (“bowels”), NAB (“brains”), NIV (“entrails”).

[1:17]  ¹² tn The words “will be scattered” are supplied in the translation for clarity based on the parallelism with “will be poured out” in the previous line.