Zephaniah2chapter 2

at the noon day: Four of the five Philistine cities are named, Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, the same list Amos gives at 1:6-8 with Gath already fallen from the roster by this period, which the bench takes as evidence the city had lost its standing well before Zephaniah wrote. Driving out Ashdod at the noon day pictures a conquest so swift and so certain that the city falls in daylight, without need of a night assault, the ordinary hour of rest turned into the hour of ruin. Ekron rooted up finishes the four with an agricultural figure, a plant pulled out by its root rather than merely cut back, matching the totality the chapter claims for each city in turn.

the nation of the Cherethites!: Cherethites is a name for the Philistines the bench connects to Crete, David's own bodyguard the Cherethites and Pelethites carrying the same word, and calling the land Canaan alongside Philistines widens the judgment to the whole coastal strip by its older, pre-Philistine name. The oracle turns at verse 7 from destruction to inheritance, the same coast becoming dwellings for shepherds and folds for flocks that the remnant of Judah will feed upon and lie down in come evening, judgment on one people making room for the return of another. For the Lord their God shall visit them, and turn away their captivity closes the reversal, the land emptied of its old inhabitants filled again with the people it belonged to by promise.

the revilings of the children of Ammon: Moab and Ammon, Lot's own descendants and Israel's oldest relatives among the nations, are judged for reproach and reviling rather than for the violence charged against Philistia, a sin of the mouth and the proud heart magnified against Israel's border rather than an invading army. Verse 9's sentence names them Sodom and Gomorrah, breeding nettles and saltpits in a perpetual desolation, the same cities whose destruction Moab and Ammon themselves descend from at Genesis 19, the bench reading the judgment as fitting its own ancestry. The residue and remnant of my people shall spoil them and possess them turns Moab and Ammon's own land over to the surviving Judahites, the same reversal already given the Philistine coast.

he will famish all the gods of the earth: Famishing the gods of the earth pictures the pagan deities starved of the worship and sacrifice that sustained their cults, an image the bench reads as judgment falling on the idols themselves rather than only on their worshippers. Every one from his place widens the horizon past Philistia, Moab, Ammon and Cush to the isles of the heathen generally, a scattered worship of the true God replacing the scattered altars of the false ones without yet naming one central sanctuary. Malachi 1:11's my name shall be great among the Gentiles carries the same universal note later in the Twelve, and the bench sets the two verses beside each other as the shared theme it is.

ye shall be slain by my sword: The oracle against Ethiopia, or Cush, is the briefest in the chapter, a single verse where the other nations receive several, and the bench reads the brevity as pointing past Cush itself to the power actually in view. Cush ruled Egypt as its twenty fifth dynasty in this period, so a sword against Ethiopia is read by several of the older writers as a sword reaching Egypt through her ruling house, a single verse standing for an empire. The verse also prepares the book's own turn toward Cush as a place of worshippers in 3:10, judgment on the nation not closing the door on individuals within it.

and destroy Assyria: The oracle against Assyria answers Nahum's whole book in a stanza, Nineveh made a desolation and dry like a wilderness, the city that could not be starved by siege pictured instead as ground with no water left in it at all. Flocks and beasts of the nations lying down among cormorant and bittern in the ruined lintels turn the palace's own carved cedar work into a habitat for creatures rather than kings, and the bench reads the picture as literal fulfillment once Nineveh's mounds lay abandoned for centuries. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly names Nineveh's own pride in its own words, I am, and there is none beside me, the identical boast Isaiah puts in Babylon's mouth at 47:8, one empire's arrogance quoted back at its ruin.