Reading for February 12th

 Read Zephaniah 1.2-2.3. In 1.2-2.3: The day of the Lord: Judah is judged. Though Zephaniah does include in the speech an indictment of Judah's sins (1.4-9), as is customary in prophetic judgement speeches, he emphasizes the sentence, God's punishment on Judah, and its people. In 1.2-3 This is on of the most desolate images of judgment in prophetic literature (Jer 4.23-26). In verse 4: Jerusalem, the capital city of  Judah, is singled out for further criticism in 3.1-7. with this mention of Baal, the Canaanite god who is the major rival of Judah's God (Hos 2), Zephaniah begins the indictment of Judah's crimes, focusing on its rejection of Yahweh and its worship of other gods (vv. 4-9). In verse 5: The host of the heavens are the sun, moon, planets and stars, the worship of which became widespread in Judah under Assyrian influence (2 Kings 213-5), Milcorn is the god of the Ammonites (2.8; 2 Kings 23.13). In verse 7: Zephaniah introduces the theme of the day of the Lord for God's judgment on Judah, a theme that carries this judgment speech forward to its conclusion in 2.3.God's sacrifice is not the customary animal sacrifice but God's enemies (Jer 46.10), in this case the people of Judah themselves. In verse 9: Those who leap over the threshold may be priests practicing a ritual associated with the Philistine god Dagon (1 Sam 5.5). In verse 10: The Fish Gate is located in the north wall of Jerusalem (Neh 12.39). The Second Quarter is a district in Jerusalem near the Temple complex (2 Kings 22.14). In verse 11: The Mortar is Jerusalem's business district. In verse 12: The phrase "who thicken (or rest complacently) on the dregs" may be translated: who are as undisturbed as the sediment of wine." In verse 18: While the picture of destruction in this verse appears to include the entire world, Zephaniah's concern is Judah in particular, as the preceding and following verses show. In 2.1-3: Zephaniah's judgment speech concludes with an appeal to Judah (shameless nation, v. 1) to seek the Lord and reform in order to avert disaster (Am 5.6, 14-15). Comments or Questions..