Have you ever felt God that wanted you to tell someone something but you really didn’t want to do it? Maybe it was too awkward, maybe you were scared it was wrong or maybe you were close to the person you needed to prophesy over, and you really didn’t want to say it and then have to hang out with them afterwards. It’s one thing to prophesy over a complete stranger but another to prophesy over family, and in the first verse of Zephaniah, we find out that is what he is about to do.

The book of Zephaniah is a very small yet powerful book situated in the Old Testament. The first verse acts as an introduction for the person of Zephaniah and the time these words were spoken. That is, during the reign of Josiah, King of Judah, setting the book around 640-630 BC. Apart from this first verse, all the other verses are the words of the Lord, Jehovah.

Sometimes when you are reading the prophetic books, like all the books in the Bible, you can feel culturally distanced from the text and therefore a little frustrated that you can’t understand the culture, nuances and language that it is written in. 

But don’t fear, there are ways of getting around this, and it’s not to invent a time machine, however cool that would be. That is why we have commentaries and history books to help us. So, let me show you some great cultural insights from the Book of Zephaniah that really make the book come alive.

We have journeyed through some great details of Zephaniah already, so let’s look at a different way to study the biblical text in this Deep Dive and look at the nations represented in Zephaniah.