Book of Zephaniah - Why IT Was Written

Why It Was Written

There are two possible reasons for the creation of the book of Zephaniah. Either way, the primary purpose of the book’s composition was to alter the behaviour (particularly religious behaviour) of the author’s contemporary Jerusalemites.

If the book of Zephaniah was largely composed during the monarchic period, the author of the book of Zephaniah attempts to accomplish this change in behaviour through the threat of future calamity for “those who have turned back from following the Lord, / who have not sought the Lord or inquired of him” (1:6). The author conceives of a date in the future – the ‘great day of the Lord’ – when the Lord will judge all the people of the earth. This coming judgment will affect all of the nations, including the author’s own nation of Judah where God is understood to reside. The threats made against Jerusalem, however, are much more specific than the oracles concerning foreign nations. This strengthened the belief that the Israelites, who understood themselves to be God’s chosen people, were even more culpable than other peoples for not living up to God’s statutes because they were to be a ‘light unto the nations’. The book concludes by extending a promise of deliverance to the remnant of Israel which remains. The fulfilment of this prophecy is commonly understood to have taken place when Judah was captured by the nation of Babylon and many of its inhabitants were exiled in an event known as the Babylonian captivity.

If the book gained most of its present form in post-monarchic period, then the author likely intended to draw upon an understanding of the Babylonian captivity as a punishment from the Lord, urging his own contemporaries not to repeat the mistakes of the past. It is not known whether the religious syncretism, alluded to in chapter one (as in verse 5), was a significant issue in post-exilic Judah.