The Book of Zephaniah Study No.2
2. ORACLES OF JUDGEMENTS AGAINST THE NATIONS (2:4-15)
On the international scene Judah’s political future was far from secure. Judah was surrounded on all sides by their implacable enemy neighbours with Philistia to the west. Today it is located in Gaza, the home of Hamas and the PA and a hot bed of vitriolic militancy towards Israel and the Jews. Assyria was to the north. Today it would be located in what is now northern Iraq and south eastern Turkey. To the east were Moab, Ammon and Edom to the west. Today Moab would be located in central Jordan and next to it was Ammon which today is northern Jordan and Edom today is located in south western Jordan, between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. According to the statistics from 2023 Jordan has a population of more than 11.1 million inhabitants. Jordanians are the citizens of Jordan. Around 94% of Jordanians are Arabs and Muslims.
Today these geographical regions are the Arab hot bed of Anti-Semitism and enemies of Israel especially in light of the current situation in Gaza. Edom borders Jordan and sweeps down into Saudi Arabia, the home of the Islamic world. Now we do know from the Word of God that all the nations of the world are going to come against Israel and we see this already fermenting globally as nation after nation turns against Israel, something God has ordained (Ezekiel 38:4; 39:2) (Joel 3:1-3) (Zechariah 14:2).
He will do this for two reasons. Firstly, to bring His Covenant people back to Himself and to a meeting with the Messiah (Zechariah 12:10-13:1) and secondly, to show the nations His awesome supernatural power and who is really king of the whole universe, THE KING OF ALL KINGS AND THE LORD OF LORDS, and as the one who raises up kings and their empires and pulls them down, and the one who will utterly destroy these armies of the nations. The nations mentioned in Ezekiel 38:1-1-6 are all Islamic nations today, and the armies of these nations will go down in wholesale lots into the pit of Hades. Ezekiel names them and they are all Islamic nations and geographical regions today (Ezekiel 32:17-32).
Exposition
a) A Judgement against Philistia (2:4-7)
(Vs.4) “Gaza will be abandoned and Ashkelon left in ruins. At midday Ashdod will be emptied and Ekron uprooted.”
The Philistines were Israel’s ancient enemies who constantly harassed the Israelites and often perpetrated violence against the Jews. They were not originally Arab decent or of Middle-Eastern origin. The Philistines originated as an immigrant group from the Aegean that settled in Canaan in 1175 BC during the collapse of the Late Bronze Age. In the Bible, the Philistines were regarded by the Israelites as an uncircumcised people with advanced technology and a formidable military (Judges 14:3; 1 Samuel 13:19–20; Exodus 13:17). The Philistines frequently encroached on Israelite territory, which led to some battles, including the famous clash between David, the Israelite, and Goliath, the Philistine (1 Samuel 17). They were condemned for being idol worshipers (1 Samuel 5:1–5) and soothsayers (Isaiah 2:6). In short, the Philistines are portrayed as a nation under occult power who worshipped the demon deity Dagon.
They lived in the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza, the heartland of ancient Philistia on the Mediterranean Sea’s south eastern shore. Today in Gaza Hamas are engaged in a war with Israel. The same principality in the unseen spiritual realm that ruled over the ancient Philistines is now ruling over the PA and Hamas today and compelling them to kill the Jews. It is a demonic spirit at work behind the scenes of the conflict that wants to see the eradication of Israel as a nation.
Satan hates the Jews because the Saviour of the World, and the one who has defeated Satan forever, is Jewish and the people of Israel the nation through which the Messiah our Lord Jesus came into the world to crush Satan’s head and to bring forth a people both Jew and Gentile who would belong to God through a saving faith in the Messiah, a people who did not belong to Satan any longer (Genesis 3:15) (1 John 3:8) (Hebrews 2:14-15) (Colossians 1:13; 2:13-15) (Romans 11:17-18) (Ephesians 2:11-22).
Satan also hates the spiritual offspring of the Women Israel, being the Body of Messiah spiritually grafted into Israel, because they obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus (Revelation 12:17). Satan then is goading Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in Gaza to exterminate the Jewish people, and this hatred is being fuelled by Iran. The ancient conflict between the Israelites with the Philistines has surfaced again and once again Israel is at war with Gaza, not with the ancient philistines of course, but with those with the same demonically controlled mindset to destroy Israel that resided in the ancient Philistines. The nations that are calling for a permanent cease fire are in reality siding with Satan who wants to destroy every Jew on the planet, and Hamas is just one of Satan’s cronies among the nations that are also coming against Israel. Historically the Philistines disappeared after its cities were conquered by the Assyrian Empire in the late eighth century BC.
Now just as these five ancient cities in Gaza were overthrown so will the cities of Gaza hosting Hamas ultimately be overthrown by God’s power and that by the armies of Israel who will fight side by side with their Commander in Chief the Messiah our Lord Jesus when He returns. Judah will also fight at Jerusalem (Isaiah 11:14) (Zechariah 14:14). Once the dust of battle settles, Gaza will be abandoned, left in ruins, emptied and uprooted! Let’s continue…
(Vs.5-7) “Woe to you who live by the sea, O Kerethite people; the Word of the LORD is against you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines. “I will destroy you, and none will be left.” The land by the sea, where the Kerethites dwell, will be a place for shepherds and sheep pens. It will belong to the remnant of the house of Judah; there they will find pasture. In the evening they will lie down in the houses of Ashkelon. The LORD their God will care for them; He will restore their fortunes.”
Prophetically, while the LORD will wipe out those in Gaza who have oppressed Israel He will not destroy the land because it is part of the Land of Israel God bequeathed to them as an everlasting possession by an unbreakable blood covenant He made with Abraham Isaac and with Jacob, and with their offspring the Jewish nation (Genesis 15:17-19; 16:7-8; 35:12). In the Millennial Messianic Kingdom Gaza will be a place of peace, tranquillity and with shepherds and sheep grazing on the hillsides and a place of contentment, where all past violence will no longer be remembered. The faithful remnant of the redeemed Israel of God will live at ease in their homes in Gaza and even throughout all of Israel without fear, as God will care for them, and they will lie down through the tranquil hours of the night to sleep in peace and safety and in that day no one will make them ever afraid again.
As God says through the prophet Jeremiah; “Then I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock from all the lands to which I have banished them, and I will return them to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them, who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or dismayed, nor will any go missing, declares the LORD. Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He will reign wisely as King and will administer justice and righteousness in the land” (Jeremiah 23:3-5). What a glorious future for the Jewish people after the Messiah has returned to reign from Jerusalem over the surviving nations of the whole world! Now we see the prophecy concerning Moab and Ammon.
b) A Judgement against Moab and Ammon (2:8-11)
(Vs.8) “I have heard the insults of Moab and the taunts of the Ammonites, who insulted My people and made threats against their land.”
It is one thing to fight an enemy that is attacking a nation at the gates of their city, but something else when the enemy are ensconced within the walls of that city. Though the Israelites were related to the Moabites and Ammonites through Lot, a nephew of Abraham, their relations had always been bitter (Numbers 22:2-24:25) (Deuteronomy 23:3-6) (Judges 3:12-30) (1 Samuel 11) (2 Samuel 8:2; 10: 1-19). The policy of Moab and Ammon was to ridicule Judah by scoffing at her precarious situation. When Judah needed political and military support against the Assyrians, Moab and Ammon did not come to Judah’s rescue, but were content to protect their own delicate situation. Their concern for self-preservation and offensive relations with Judah are the object of this oracle concerning their hostility against Judah. God heard the insults of these two people groups aligned together in their antagonistic tirade against Judah and He did not like it, and so He would deal with them severely. God calls Judah His people and the Land of Israel their land!
Today we see the same hostility against the Jews happening at the behest of many militant Islamic Arabs living in Israel especially in light of the situation in Gaza. Many Arabs living in the very heart of Israel in Judea and Samaria are becoming increasingly hostile towards the Jewish settlements and many Arabs actually support Hamas. The fact that the politicians of the nations are also threatening to establish a Palestinian State are in fact making veiled threats towards the Israeli Government under “Bibi” Benjamin Netanyahu, who is staunchly resisting these demands and overtures by foreign politicians, who have no right to tell any sovereign nation in its own right, with its own capital, what they can do and what they cannot do, which is what America, the UN and the EU are doing.
These politicians are actually making threats against Israel just like the Moabites and the Ammonites did in Biblical times. While there seems to be some relationship between the Israeli government with Jordan the larger picture is that Islam is at war with Israel and with the western nations. The conflict in Gaza Israel is having with Hamas and with Hezbollah in the north is not in reality about Jerusalem but about Islam’s global Jihad against those nations that will not submit to Islamic ideology and Sharia Law. The ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood is shaping the mindset of militant Islam globally. It seems only Israel sees this bigger picture.
It is an irony that the Arabs did have their own State or homeland in the Transjordan courtesy of the British Empire for over 20 years and no one said anything! Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War 1, the Allied powers established the British mandate of Palestine (a name invented by the Romans) over the southern Levant region, In 1923 Great Britain allowed the Hashemite dynasty to administer the portion of the mandate east of the Jordan River, called Transjordan, and granted it full independence in 1946. The land west of the Jordan River remained under direct mandatory administration until 1948, when the British mandate of Palestine was terminated.
In 1948 the nation of Israel was reborn after almost 2,000 years of exile, something that had been prophesied by the prophet Isaiah. As we read; “Before she was in labour, she gave birth; before she was in pain, she delivered a boy. 8Who has heard of such as this? Who has seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be delivered in an instant? Yet as soon as Zion was in labour, she gave birth to her children. Shall I bring a baby to the point of birth and not deliver it?” says the LORD. “Or will I who deliver close the womb?” says your God” (Isaiah 66:7-9). And then we read…
(Vs.9) “Therefore, as surely as I live,” declares the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, “surely Moab will become like Sodom, the Ammonites like Gomorrah—a place of weeds and salt pits, a wasteland forever. The remnant of my people will plunder them; the survivors of My nation will inherit their land.”
Prophetically northern, central and southern Jordan will become a wasteland of weeds and salt pits and a wasteland forever, never to be revived. The remnant of Israel will fight the Islamic Arab contingents and utterly plunder and decimate them under their Commander in Chief the Messiah, whose power flowing through his Jewish remnant will not only devastate Jordan, but will take the fight into Saudi Arabia, to fight and to conquer the armies of Islam. It will be a blood bath on Islam for the way they have treated God’s people and we see this described in detail in Isaiah Chapters 34:5-17 and Chapter 63:1-6. This is also described in Revelation Chapter 14:17-20.
Israel will possess Jordan, but it will be a wasteland never to be cultivated, a sign to all that it does not pay to mess with the purposes of God nor His people or with the land He has bequeathed to the people of Israel. And so we read the sentencing pronounced by God the righteous judge of all men, upon Jordan with its militant Arab agitators against Israel will see their land become a desolate uninhabitable wasteland of salt and weeds in the same way Sodom and Gomorrah ended up after they had been destroyed by fire! Jordan will come under the jurisdiction of the Jews. As for Islam it will no longer exist. Now let’s read on…
(Vs.10-11) “This is what they will get in return for their pride, for insulting and mocking the people of the LORD Almighty. The LORD will be awesome to them when He destroys all the gods of the land. The nations on every shore will worship Him, every one in its own land.”
These last verses of this oracle against Ammon (northern Jordan) Moab (central Jordan and against Edom (southern Jordan) span out into the judgement of all the nations that have come against Israel and all the idols of this world’s pleasures and pursuits that people have worshipped. After the dust of battle settles the surviving nations will worship the Messiah even in their own homelands.
In that day we are told in the prophet Isaiah that “In the last days the mountain of the house of the LORD will be established as the chief (kingdom) of the mountains (kingdoms); it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. And many peoples will come and say: “Come; let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways so that we may walk in His paths.” For the law (Torah) will go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. Then He will judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war.
c) A Judgement against Cush (2:12)
(Vs.12) “You too, O Cushites, will be slain by My sword.”
The ancient geographical region of Cush covers much of modern-day Sudan. Some think it is Ethiopia but Sudan is implied. In Ezekiel we see Cush among the other nations mentioned in the Ezekiel chapter 38 invasion of Israel that is fast approaching as we see more and more Muslim nations turning against Israel today. The Arab nations cannot be trusted. Islam will always show subservience when it is in their own interests to do so until they have the upper hand and then they strike out with the deadly speed of a poisonous adder! You cannot make peace with Islam. It is the ideology of the sword and the subjugation of the infidel which comprise the whole of the western democracies today. Here the oracle is very precise when it states that the Sudanese militants will be slain in wholesale lots by the sharp sword of command coming out of the mouth of the Messiah when He comes again to judge the nations that have oppressed and persecuted His people with the sword.
In the Book of Revelation the apostle John writes concerning the return of the Messiah our Lord Jesus; And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19: 11-16).
The same powerful word coming out of His mouth as God the eternal Son that brought the universe into being at His command it will be the same command that destroys the rebellious armies of the nations arrayed against Him and His covenant people. The Armies of heaven will go forth at His command and strike down His enemies! The nations that have attacked Israel and persecuted Israel’s spiritual offspring the faithful Body of Messiah will be stuck down and cast into the winepress of God’s wrath. God’s Word attests to this final victory of the Messiah our Lord Jesus on His return to earth. The winepress of His wrath is mentioned in other passages of God’s Word all describing this one and the same end-time event! (Isaiah 63:1-6) (Joel 3:12-13) (Revelation 14:17-20).
We are also told in God’s Word that the man of sin will be destroyed by the direct Word of the Messiah coming out of His mouth and slain instantly (2 Thessalonians 2:8). As for the Islamic armies of Sudan under the war banner of the Islamic man of sin, they too will be incinerated alive on the mountains of Israel, along with all of the Islamic armies and those of other non-Islamic nations that have attacked Israel. Those nations living ‘in safety’ looking on at these events, and not going to Israel’s aid, will themselves not escape the fiery holocaust that will descend upon a Messiah hating, Messiah rejecting world! (Ezekiel 38:22; 39:4-6)
As the prophet Malachi declares; “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble; the day is coming when I will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of Hosts. “Not a root or branch will be left to them.” “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and leap like calves from the stall” (Malachi 4:1-2). The righteous who are living by faith in the Messiah will escape this fiery judgement of God upon the rebellious and wicked nations. The blood of the Messiah and by faith in His blood that has justified, redeemed, cleansed and sanctified them before God the Father, will never experience this wrath, having been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise for the day of their ultimate redemption out of this present evil age. When God sees the blood sprinkled on the door posts of their hearts He will pass over them as He passed over the Hebrews in Egypt sheltering under the blood of the lamb from the destroying angel! (Exodus 12:13) (Romans 5:9) (1 Thessalonians 1:10; 5:9). Sudan, today a haven and enclave of Islamic jihad minded Muslims will perish! Let’s continue…
d) A Judgement against Assyria (2:13-15)
(Vs.13-15) “He will stretch out His hand against the north and destroy Assyria, leaving Nineveh utterly desolate and dry as the desert. Flocks and herds will lie down there, creatures of every kind. The desert owl and the screech owl will roost on her columns. Their calls will echo through the windows, rubble will be in the doorways, the beams of cedar will be exposed. This is the carefree city that lived in safety. She said to herself, “I am, and there is none besides me.” What a ruin she has become, a lair for wild beasts! All who pass by her scoff and shake their fists.”
Assyria became the centre of one of the great empires of the ancient Middle East. It was located in what is now northern Iraq and south eastern Turkey. Relations between Assyria and Judah went back more than a hundred years prior to the time of Zephaniah. Isaiah had predicted the victory of Assyria over the eastern Mediterranean region. By Zephaniah’s time the northern kingdom of Israel with its capital in Samaria had been conquered by the Assyrians and the Israelites by and large had been exiled. Sennacherib had invaded Judah in 701 BC and Hezekiah had been forced to pay tribute. Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh spent time in Babylon as part of a reform programme to assure his loyalties to Assyria (2 Chronicles: 33:11).
King Josiah of Judah, the grandson of Messiah, had to decide where his loyalties lay. He could have avoided political problems by pleasing Assyria, which had been the dominant power for over a century. Due to the length of Assyria’s rule, the extent of its military power, and its proximity to Jerusalem, Assyrian influence on Israel’s politics, culture and religion was persuasive. It was difficult for the people living in Jerusalem and Judah in the time of Zephaniah to realize how close Assyria was to its demise at the hands of the Babylonian Empire that was on the rise. The oracle against Assyria was a message of doom. The Great Assyrian power would come to nothing as all global empires come to nothing. God sees to this personally. He raises up kings and puts them down! (Daniel 2:20-22). The prophet Isaiah writes; “Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are considered a speck of dust on the scales; He lifts up the islands like fine dust” (Isaiah 40:15).
Assyria’s demise as a nation teaches us about the end of all earthly empires that become an affront to God. In the Bible the kings of Assyria and Babylon are types of the final antichrist, who with his armies, will invade Israel at the end of this present age who I am persuaded scripturally will be the caliph of a revived Islamic empire that in its expanse as an empire will geographically eclipse the empires of Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. It will rule the Middle East and expand its tentacles into much of Europe as the Turkish Ottoman Empire did which lasted for at least 600 years.
What happened to Assyria teaches us something about what will happen to the empire of the Islamic antichrist. In the prophet Micah we read about his future prediction which in its prophetic context not only refers to the Assyrian invasion of Israel historically, but also telescopes to the end-time invasion of Israel by the Islamic antichrist, a middle-eastern potentate, and his hordes which will cover the whole land of Israel like locusts, as we see prophesied in the prophet Joel (Joel 1:4). When ‘the Assyrian’ invades Israel the Triune God Himself will raise up seven shepherds in Israel to oppose him as He raised up the Maccabees to resist and to overcome Antiochus Epiphanes in the 400 year time gap between the Old and the New Testaments. Antiochus was a major type of the Antichrist and the prophet Daniel affirms this in the Book of Daniel.
Micah writes; “He will stand and shepherd His flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majestic name of the LORD His God. And they will dwell securely, for then His greatness will extend to the ends of the earth. And He will be our peace when Assyria invades our land and tramples our citadels. We will raise against it seven shepherds, even eight leaders of men. And they will rule the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod with the blade drawn. So He will deliver us when Assyria invades our land and marches into our borders” (Micah 5:4-6).
We know from the Bible that when the Messiah comes back to fight against Israel’s enemies that “Judah will also fight at Jerusalem” (Zechariah 14:14). In fact we are also told in the prophet Isaiah that under the authority of their commander in chief the Messiah our Lord Jesus that the Israelites (Israelis) “They will swoop down on the slopes of the Philistines (Gaza the home of Hamas) on the west; Together (as one nation under their Commander in Chief the Messiah) they will plunder the sons of the east (the Arab nations in Saudi Arabia); They will possess Edom (Southern Jordan) and Moab (Central Jordan), And the sons of Ammon (northern Jordan) will be subject to them (Israel)” (Isaiah 11:14).
Prophetically as for ‘Assyria’ (Today being northern Iraq and south eastern Turkey) Isaiah tells us that the LORD will actually dry up the gulf of the Egyptian Sea (a judgement on Egypt); with a scorching wind He will sweep His hand over the Euphrates River (Once part of the Assyrian Empire). He will break the river up into seven streams (the number seven representing a perfect, finished and complete work of God) so that men can walk across the river in sandals. Those Israelis, who will have been exiled when half of the city of Jerusalem’s population were taken from the city by the Islamic armies of the Antichrist (Zechariah 14:1-2) will have a highway opened by the Triune God for His remnant who will return to Jerusalem to be united with their Messiah reigning from Jerusalem (Isaiah 11:15-16).
In that day, after the Messiah has returned and inaugurated His Messianic rule on earth with His headquarters at Jerusalem, God will bring His people home to Israel. As He encourages His people through the prophet Isaiah; “Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, And gather you from the west. “I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ And to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring My sons from afar And My daughters from the ends of the earth, Everyone who is called by My name, And whom I have created for My glory, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made” (Isaiah 43:5-7).
The culture, lifestyle and the idolatry and pagan hedonistic empire and the pride of Assyria and its king ruling in Nineveh were all brought into a place of desolation. The repentance procured under Jonah was long gone for this city of rebels against God. The geographical region that was once part of the Assyrian empire became as dry as a desert, signifying a spiritual drought in the whole region and a place where the animals and birds cried with their calls echoing through the rubble of the abandoned city, now a haunt of demonic entities and principalities with no place to dwell or to operate in that region.
This proud city that had sought to exult itself to the heavens to confront God and to see itself as a carefree city that could never be toppled or destroyed, now lay in ruins and a lair for wild beasts. The people who had survived the terrible reign of Assyria would scoff and shake their fists as they passed by the ruins of this empire whose kings and its government officials and citizens sought to raise themselves to the heights of heaven only to be brought down into the pit of utter ruin and destruction. Prophetically in the demise of Assyria we see a foreshadowing of the utter ruin that will come to the empire of ‘the Assyrian’ (antichrist) after the Messiah has come back who at His Second Coming will overthrow with the breath of His mouth and destroy by the splendour of His Second Coming! (2 Thessalonians 2:8).
