1. Zephaniah son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah. No other prophet is given such a long pedigree, and the reason for it is by no means apparent. Two items are problematic: “Cushi” means “Nubian,” which would be odd for an Israelite first name, and “Hezekiah” could be the name of the Judahite king, as some commentators, traditional and modern, have proposed, but that remains questionable.

in the days of Josiah. His reign was from 640 to 609 B.C.E., so that would make Zephaniah an approximate contemporary of Isaiah. Zephaniah’s angry denunciation of idolatry in Jerusalem suggests that he prophesied before the sweeping reforms of Josiah, which began in 622.

2. I will surely sweep away everything. Zephaniah’s great power as a prophet-poet is in his evocations of the landscape of disaster.

from the face of the earth. Although presumably the impending destruction is to fall upon the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah, the prophet’s language makes the disaster sound global. In the next verse, he will pointedly echo the language of the Creation story, implying a reversal of creation itself (“man and beast, / . . . the fowl of the heavens and the fish of the sea”). This is an instructive instance in which the language of Prophetic poetry, with its commitment to hyperbole, pushes beyond its intended subject to an incipiently apocalyptic horizon.

3. with stumbling blocks for the wicked. These words fit into the prophecy rather awkwardly and may be an editorial gloss.

4. the remnant of Baal, / the name of the pagan priests. The two Hebrew words sheʾar and shem, “remnant” and “name,” are a hendiadys meaning “any remnant at all” and they appear here in the two versets in what scholars call a break-up pattern. That explains the slight oddness of “the name of the pagan priests.” The term for “pagan priests,” kemarim, designates celebrants of alien cults. Its bracketing here with kohanim, “priests,” suggests that the officiants of the cult of YHWH were joining forces with their pagan counterparts in syncretistic practices, as the Book of Kings reports.

5. those bowing on the roofs to the array of the heavens. There is abundant evidence that in the seventh century B.C.E. worship of astral deities, through Assyrian influence, had become widespread in Israel.

Milcom. The Masoretic Text has malkam, “their king,” but this is almost certainly a scribal substitution in order not to mention the name of the pagan deity.

7. a slaughter. The Hebrew means both “slaughter” and “feast,” and Zephaniah intends the former while playing on the latter as he goes on to represent God inviting guests to the slaughter-feast.

8. all who don / the garb of the foreigner. The prophet probably associates the use of foreign attire with pagan practices.

9. all who hop / over the threshold. This appears to have been a pagan practice when entering sanctuaries. An etiology for it is offered in 1 Samuel 5:5.

10. the Mishneh. This is a quarter in Jerusalem. The name means “the addition” or “the annex.”

11. the Ravine. This would have to be a valley running through Jerusalem, perhaps the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, just west of the walls of the city.

the people of traders. The epithet sounds derisive and may point to sharp trading practices.

14. on it the warrior shrieks. Even the battle-hardened fighter will be terrified.

15. A day of wrath is that day. The power of this prophecy of doom is focused in the anaphoric insistence on “day” throughout these lines. It is the day of the LORD, now heightened (in verse 14) to “the great day of the LORD” rushing down bitter and swift on the kingdom of Judah.

distress and discomfort. The Hebrew sound-play is tsarah umetsuqah.

devastation and desolation. The Hebrew sound-play is shoʾah umeshoʾah.

17. And their blood shall be spilled like dust / and their flesh like turds. The similes are purposefully unpleasant. Liquid blood turns into dry dust as it might be spilled, say, from a shovel. Solid flesh becomes turds dropping to the ground. The word used for “flesh,” leḥum, is not the standard term but poetic diction, its initial consonant alliterating with the double l sound of gelalim, “turds.”