Yesterday, I read the introduction to Ehud Ben Zvi’s A Historical-Critical Study of the Book of Zephaniah. Ben Zvi disputes the notion that the Book of Zephaniah was a transcript of a speech that the prophet Zephaniah gave on the street corner, for “the reading of the entire book of Zephaniah takes about ten minutes” (page 12). Would a prophet deliver a ten minute sermon? Ben Zvi thinks that the message in Zephaniah was for somebody, and that a community transmitted the book because it was important to a particular group of readers.
On pages 36-37, Ben Zvi discusses the superscription of the book, Zephaniah 1:1, which states that the LORD’s word came to Zephaniah during the reign of King Josiah. Was Zephaniah’s book intended to promote Josiah’s reform, threatening the Jews that God would cause the defeat of Judah if they did not get with Josiah’s campaign against idolatry? Ben Zvi doesn’t think so, for the Book of Zephaniah seems to assume that the destruction of Judah is inevitable, and that God will preserve a remnant. There is no explicit reference to Josiah’s cultic reform. Moreover, Zephaniah 1:4 refers to the remnant of Baal, and that leads some to believe that Zephaniah prophesied after Josiah’s anti-idolatry policies had left a mere remnant of Baal. Still another view is that Zephaniah’s prophecy relates to the time of Josiah’s successor, Jehoiakim, and that Zephaniah is saying that, notwithstanding Josiah’s reform, the destruction of Judah is coming.
A humorous point: Ben Zvi says that Martin Luther wrote in his commentary on Zephaniah that, “Among the minor prophets, he makes the clearest prophecies about the kingdom of Christ.” But Luther didn’t talk about the Book of Zephaniah in his sermons. Maybe Luther was being over-dramatic, or he couldn’t think of much to say about the book!