1:14 Zephaniah reported that this great day of the Lord was near, very near, and coming very quickly. His hearers needed to realize that it would be a day in which Yahweh would act (cf. v. 12). When it came, warriors would cry out bitterly because that day would involve fierce fighting. The first deportation of Judeans to Babylon came in 605 B.C. not many years from whenever Zephaniah must have first announced this message.
1:15-16 The prophet wanted to impress the danger his complacent hearers faced even more strongly. He described the day of the Lord as a day marked by wrath, trouble, distress, destruction, desolation, darkness, gloom, clouds, thick darkness, military trumpet, and battle cry. The fortified cities of Judah would face invasion, and the high corner towers of their walls would come under siege.
1:17 The Lord would distress His people so severely that they would grope around as though they were blind. He would do this because they had sinned against Him (cf. Deut. 28:28-29). Their precious blood would lie all over the ground like common dust, and their dead flesh would lie in the streets like putrid, decaying dung.
1:18 The Judeans would not be able to buy themselves out of their trouble when the Lord poured forth His wrath (cf. Ezek. 7:19). He would devour the whole earth with the fire of His jealous rage, jealousy provoked by His people's preference for various forms of idolatry (vv. 4-6). He would destroy completely and terribly all the inhabitants of the earth (cf. vv. 2-3; cf. Joel 2:1-11).
The comprehensive nature of this judgment suggests that at this point the prophet's perspective again lifted to what we now see will be the eschatological fulfillment of this prophecy. The Babylonian invasion only previewed it. Another possibility is that we should understand "all the earth"as referring only to the Promised Land. However, other descriptions of the worldwide extent of God's eventual judgment of sin and sinners in this book and others makes this interpretation unattractive.
