Zephaniah challenged a child king, Josiah, as he grew toward adulthood, to avert God’s planned destruction by returning to God’s plan with God’s people. Thus, political disaster might be averted, and joy restored. Zephaniah’s words seem to have had some effect. In the same way, the infant king Jesus came to avert the spiritual disaster that loomed over us all, transforming destruction into eternal joy. His words are eternal.
Small-town newspapers used to be a great place to find a five-generation photo. There’d be an infant, a mom, her mom, and her mom and her mom, all arrayed on a couch in the living room. Great-great-grandma would be beaming, as would everyone else — except maybe the infant, who wasn’t quite sure what all the fuss was about.
There aren’t as many small-town newspapers as there used to be, so now these photos are often displayed on social media, and it seems to be happening more than ever, because people are living longer.
This kind of living genealogy, with a family history arrayed on a couch together, provides a great opportunity for storytelling and story listening. Who we are, and why we are the way we are, is determined by our environment and our personal choices, but also by good old-fashioned family connections, whether DNA is involved or not.
People didn’t live nearly as long in biblical times. As a result, they married younger, had children younger, and grew to adulthood quicker. So, it’s unlikely there were many five-generation family reunions in biblical times. But we have a five-generation photo of sorts at the opening of the book of the prophet Zephaniah: “The word of the LORD that came to Zephaniah son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah ....”1
Now typically these thumbnail biblical genealogies go back one generation — Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, Isaiah son of Amoz, Joel son of Pethuel, Hosea son of Beeri, and so on. So why is it important to include five generations in the opening of this prophet’s book?
Perhaps there are two reasons. The first name listed in his ancestry, that of the prophet’s father, may not even be a name, but the place where he came from. Cushi means “a person from Cush,” the African nation directly south of Egypt. Zephaniah wants us to know he is a mixed-race prophet sent to prophesy not just to one nation, for good or ill, but to the entire world.
But maybe, in an attempt to answer those who questioned Zephaniah’s ancestry, this genealogy goes back to the fifth generation so that it is crystal clear that the prophet is also descended in a direct line from a king, Hezekiah, who was one of the rare reforming kings celebrated in the biblical books of Kings. And Zephaniah would also be addressing a king who would in time become a reformer as well.
So, what’s the connection?
An even better question might be, what does the prophet Zephaniah, who does not seem to directly look ahead to a coming Messiah, have to do with the Advent of Jesus of Nazareth?
Well, while Isaiah may have prophesied that “...a little child shall lead them,”2 a scripture we believe points to Jesus, Zephaniah prophesied to an actual child-king — Josiah. That child-king was only 8 years old when he ascended to the throne in 640 B.C. Although Josiah would later take an interest in the historical faith of his ancestors, he did not begin to radically reform the nation in a return to the worship of the Lord, the God of Israel, until 622 B.C.
Therefore, Zephaniah prophesied with harsh words and good purpose to get the attention of the child-king and the people.
I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the LORD. I will sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.I will make the wicked stumble I will cut off humanity from the face of the earth, says the LORD.3
The prophet describes utter destruction to the entire earth. Indeed, by connecting the list from humans to animals to birds to fish, he is, in effect, undoing the great act of creation in Genesis.
In Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us, the author imagines what the world would look like if all humans suddenly disappeared. Most of us have seen how neglected roads, abandoned barns, even mighty buildings, quickly turn to rubble, torn apart by the grasses that sprout through the cracks in the concrete, collapsing on themselves. Zephaniah also pictures nature taking over after the destruction that follows their degradation causes God’s wrath to be unleashed on all humans:
Herds shall lie down in it, every wild animal of the earth;the desert owl and the screech owl shall lodge on its capitals;the owl shall hoot at the window, the raven croak on the threshold, for its cedar work will be laid bare.4
You would guess none of this if all you knew of the prophet was the passage read aloud earlier in our service today. But what a change! The passage we read earlier is a song of joy. It’s about the end of condemnation and a day of festival. But how do we get there?
Zechariah goes on to name places and peoples. He starts with Judah, but he also includes Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, the Cherethites, Canaan, the Ammonites, Moab, Assyria and the people of Cush. He denounces the worship of Baal, the practice of child sacrifice, and the insults hurled against God’s people.5
If they can listen to the words of warning about the coming day of wrath described in Zephaniah 3:8, the people will be granted a great gift — a pure speech. When the prophet proclaims, “At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech....”6 it is a great gift, because child sacrifice will no longer be called worship or pleasing to a god. Instead, people will again speak the truth, “... that all of them may call on the name of the LORD and serve him with one accord.”7
Indeed, that is hinted at by Zephaniah’s name, “Zaphon is Yah.” Zaphon was the name of one of the gods of their neighbors, and the prophet’s name suggests there is one true God, and the false gods of the idols were pointing to that God all along.
In the story of the Tower of Babel, the pride that led the people of the world to build a tower that would assault heaven led to the sundering of their speech, so that suddenly none could understand the other. But if they — and we — fail to take seriously this warning from the prophet the glorious gift of speech can be taken away.
That was then; this is now!
But could we really lose the power of clear speech as in Genesis? The essayist George Orwell wrote during the Second World War that the Nazis had perverted language, to the point that the words no longer meant what they meant, and he maintained that such could happen in any language. After the war, he demonstrated perverted language in his novel 1984, in which Big Brother, the despotic ruler of England and Europe, was supported by the slogans “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength.” In spite of the fact we live in an era of Google Translate and Duolingo, words can lose their meaning if we insist on speaking nonsense.
In the passage of Zephaniah read this morning, the good news is that if reforms take place, God will commute the sentence. He depicts a festival, as God is revealed as “a warrior who gives victory” and has come not only to overthrow the oppressors, but “will save the lame and gather the outcast, and...will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.”8
In Zephaniah’s time the child king grew into an adult who reformed the faith, in part through the rediscovery of the scriptures when the temple was being cleaned up and rededicated.
And in this time of Advent, we celebrate the coming of the Infant King, Jesus of Nazareth, who came, in his words, to fulfill the words of Isaiah:
The spirit of the LORD GOD is upon me because the LORD has anointed me;he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted,to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners,to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor....9
This new king Jesus, grown from infant to adult, would also champion the outcast and the lame, comfort the comfortless and turn the world upside down with the Sermon on the Mount.
Just as the sentence of doom proclaimed by Zephaniah was commuted to joy and celebration, so too God has commuted our sentence, for though we all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God, we with all of creation are redeemed.
And that is indeed the Good News we so desperately need in this season of diminishing light and hope. Zephaniah challenged a child king Josiah, as he grew towards adulthood, to avert God’s planned destruction and restore joy by returning to God’s plan with God’s people. In a similar way, the infant king Jesus came to avert the spiritual disaster that loomed over us all, transforming destruction into eternal joy.
1 Zephaniah 1:1.
2 Isaiah 11:6.
3 Zephaniah 1:2-3.
4 Zephaniah 2:14.
5 See Zephaniah 2.
6 Zephaniah 3:9.
7 Ibid.
8 Zephaniah 3:17,19.
9 Isaiah 61:1-2; See also Luke 4:16-19.
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