Zephaniah 1:7

Be silent before the Lord God, ¹  for the Lord’s day of judgment ²  is almost here. ³  The Lord has prepared a sacrificial meal; ⁴  he has ritually purified ⁵  his guests.

1Sa 2:9,10; 1Sa 16:5; 1Sa 20:26; Job 40:4,5; Ps 46:10; Ps 76:8,9; Pr 9:1-6; Isa 2:12; Isa 6:5; Isa 13:6; Isa 34:6; Jer 46:10; Eze 7:7,10; Eze 39:17-20; Joe 2:1,2,11,31; Am 5:18-20; Am 6:10; Hab 2:20; Zep 1:14; Zec 2:13; Mal 4:1; Mt 22:4; Lu 14:16,17; Ro 3:19; Ro 9:20; Php 4:5; Col 1:12; 2Pe 3:10-12; Re 19:17,18

¹ tn Heb “Lord Lord.” The phrase אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה (adonai yÿhvih) is customarily rendered by Jewish tradition as “Lord God.”

² tn Heb “the day of the Lord.”

sn The origin of the concept of “the day of the Lord” is uncertain. It may have originated in the ancient Near Eastern idea of the sovereign’s day of conquest, where a king would boast that he had concluded an entire military campaign in a single day (see D. Stuart, “The Sovereign’s Day of Conquest,” BASOR 221 [1976]: 159-64). In the OT the expression is applied to several acts of divine judgment, some historical and others still future (see A. J. Everson, “The Days of Yahweh,” JBL 93 [1974]: 329-37). In the OT the phrase first appears in Amos (assuming that Amos predates Joel and Obadiah), where it seems to refer to a belief on the part of the northern kingdom that God would intervene on Israel’s behalf and judge the nation’s enemies. Amos affirms that the Lord’s day of judgment is indeed approaching, but he declares that it will be a day of disaster, not deliverance, for Israel. Here in Zephaniah, the “day of the Lord” includes God’s coming judgment of Judah, as well as a more universal outpouring of divine anger.

³ tn Or “near.”

⁴ tn Heb “a sacrifice.” This same word also occurs in the following verse.

sn Because a sacrificial meal presupposes the slaughter of animals, it is used here as a metaphor of the bloody judgment to come.

⁵ tn Or “consecrated” (ASV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).