JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. We’ve been talking about the section of Scripture called the prophets. In our last number of podcasts, we’ve focused on three contexts. Every interpreter needs to consider when using the prophets. Conveniently, all three contexts start with the letter C. We’ve focused on the first two of those contexts, the close context, and the continuing context. Today, Jason and Tom talk about the complete context.

TK: Welcome to GearTalk. Tom and Jason here, we have been going through the prophets. So Jason, we talked about three contexts, but we haven’t talked about the third one really. So can you quickly give us the first two, with three Cs? We did two Cs already.

JD: That’s right, Tom. Close context is the immediate historical and literary setting of our passage. The continuing context is understanding where our passage fits within the grand story of Scripture that climaxes in Jesus and how informing theology, how certain theology that we can assume existed in previous books of the Bible, has influenced, informed, our own passage.

TK: So that one, that would be Zephaniah, for instance, because we’ve used him as an example. Him looking backwards to things that had previously been written.

JD: That’s right. So the prophets’ use of Scripture, along with just what is our passage contribute to the overarching story, as the Bible is progressing and integrating and climaxing in the person of Jesus, what is our passage contribute to that movement? That’s the continuing context. And so that brings us to our third and final sphere that we want to be engaging our passage with. And that’s the complete biblical context. The complete context is the passage’s place and function within the whole of Scripture. So we’re not done interpreting God’s Word until we have considered all that God has to say about our text. And that pushes us then to the use of a passage like Zephaniah in later prophets, like Zechariah, and the use of our passage in the New Testament. So considering how does our passage actually anticipate the person in work of Jesus? Are there specific Old or New Testament passages that cite whether through illusion or quotation our passage and help give clarity about how it was being interpreted within the context of the Word itself? And that helps us understand all that we’re supposed to see in this passage as believers today.

TK: So where would you start, Jason? And I can imagine a couple scenarios, but one, a person possibly has Bible software that they are able to type something in. But then another scenario is you have a paper Bible in your heart language. So for both of us, it’s in English. And where would you start? If that’s the tool you had and you didn’t have more advanced tools like computer search things or something like that, how do you do it?

JD: Well, as we’ve done with previous contexts, I have a series of key things we need to be thinking about with respect to complete context. And so even before I would start using something like cross references, which is where I’m going to take you, I would want to be thinking is my passage part of a bigger unit within the canon? And in the Minor Prophets that matters because what we see is that within Jesus’ Bible as people like in Jesus’ day, we’re thinking about their Scriptures. They weren’t thinking about Zephaniah on its own. They were thinking about Zephaniah as the ninth volume in a larger book of the Prophets. And so my first step of thinking about my passage’s place and function within the whole of Scripture, thinking about the complete context is considering what is my passage, how is my passage contributing to the canon as a whole? Canon meaning the authoritative group of writings that we believe are Scripture. We’ve recognized them as the Word of God. And so I am thinking of a text like Acts chapter 7 where Stephen is overviewing, much of Old Testament history, and he says of Israel in Egypt that God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven as it is written in the book of the Prophets. And then he cites the book of Amos, Amos 5:25–27. So I’m right in the midst of Acts chapter 7, verse 42, and Stephen talks about the book of the Prophets or the scroll of the prophets.

TK: One book.

JD: That’s right. He’s got all of the twelve Minor Prophets envisioned on a single scroll. And what’s intriguing to him is that the first six of these prophets, Hosea through Micah, are not in chronological order, but they’re placed in a thematic order. Jonah is the first of our prophets. And yet Jonah is the fifth in the minor prophet sequence. And we call them minor again, not because they’re less important, but because they’re small. In fact, you can put twelve of them into a single scroll. And so we want to be considering not only the puzzle pieces individually, but how those puzzle pieces link to other puzzle pieces. That would be how each minor prophet connects one to another. Why, for example, is Jonah following Obadiah? Is there any relationship between these books? The fact that Jonah is the only of the Minor Prophets that begins with the conjunction “and,” the Hebrew word vav, it raises that possibility that something about our understanding of Obadiah’s message, where God confronts an entire nation for their pride and arrogance against those God is called his own Israel, and it confronts all of Edom, the nation for their waywardness, their sinfulness in maintaining pride and prejudice against the people of Judah when God let Babylon destroy Judah and Jerusalem. Now there’s this added book, Jonah, that begins with “and,” and we’ve got to ask ourselves, why are these two books together? Well, what’s amazing is that Jonah, the prophet who represents the nation of Israel in the north is proud, arrogant, just like Edom was being arrogant. He does not love, he loves when he’s a beneficiary of the steadfast love of God for himself, and he doesn’t want to see that steadfast love extended to those he counts as his enemies, and yet whom God was willing to put his affection toward. And so all of a sudden, I’m reading the book of Jonah, and there’s more at stake because Jonah is not just a lone puzzle piece, it’s connected to other puzzle pieces which together make a grand picture called the Book of the Twelve. And when we see the Book of the Twelve, a number of scholars have noted that not only do we see sin confronted, punishment, warned of, and the possibility of restoration after that punishment as three major themes in the Book of the Twelve, we actually see a movement in the Twelve, where the initial six books are principally confronting Israel for their sin, that’s Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, and then, Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah, unpack the nature of the punishment that God is bringing. This day of the Lord imagery is magnificent, and it will be against God’s Judah’s neighbors, but it will also come against Judah herself. And Zephaniah captures both of these as the climax of this movement, moving from sin to punishment, Zephaniah captures this punishment in one of the most graphic portrayals of the day of the Lord anywhere in Scripture, but then it also moves us beyond the day of the Lord as punishment into renewal in a way that none of the previous books have. It portrays, at the beginning of the book, one of the most graphic portrayals of God’s fury as divine warrior anywhere in Scripture, but then it ends with one of the most magnificent portrayals of global renewal and international restoration that we see anywhere in Scripture. And so it really marks a climax within the Book of the Twelve when we say, how does our book function within the broader canon? It is truly serving the Book of the Twelve by moving us beyond sin and punishment into a vision of restoration and hope. In fact, someone like Martin Luther said, there is a more glorious vision of the days of the Messiah portrayed in Zephaniah than anywhere else in the Minor Prophets. And that’s saying a lot when we consider books like Zechariah, which are just dominated by this grand vision of the Messiah’s day, yet Martin Luther was seeing something in the book of Zephaniah and the special role it’s playing in contributing to an overarching message that moves beyond sin and punishment to a vision of global renewal following the day of the Lord.

TK: You described it in one article as Zephaniah is almost the bottom of a U, right?

JD: Right. Right. So yeah, everything up to this point is going down, down in punishment, in brokenness, in curse. The day of the Lord is super dark. And then we come through that day of the Lord as darkness and we see that on this day is where God is reestablishing his end times Sabbath rest. And so the U, yeah, you get through the bottom of the U and it begins to go upward in the book of Zephaniah so that we begin to see hope. We begin to see light dawning in the distance and it moves the reader to really begin to long for the days of the Messiah in a way that no previous minor prophet had.

TK: I think that one thing, this conversation up till this point makes me think is for those of us who are maybe looking for all I want to do is find a verse and use it, apply it in my passage, you’re suggesting something that demands a lot, me getting my fingers in the text a lot deeper than that than just a cursory reading this whole notion of the context and what is expected of me in interacting with the text demands I actually get to know them. Not just the one text I’m using but the ones even surrounding it like you said.

JD: And I’ll just say that our work of biblical interpretation is a lifelong process. There’s always more of God to know and discover. And when we enter into the pulpit, it’s not because we know all that we could know and now it’s time to deliver it to the people. What we want to be sure of is that we have encountered God and that what we are proclaiming is right and true. It’s not all that could be said, but you can’t say less than we’re saying that what we’re capturing in our messages is indeed authentic and faithful. And you might find yourself, you know, I’m going to I’m going to step into one of the Minor Prophets early in your ministry and God lets you serve faithfully for 30 years and you come back 30 years in and all of a sudden you see, wow, I didn’t even realize that I haven’t studied a book like Zephaniah in 25 years. And yet I’ve been studying and preaching all the rest of Scripture and especially when it comes to the complete context, I understand Zephaniah so much better. Well, for example, there’s no minor prophet more like Zechariah or like Isaiah than Zephaniah. Isaiah’s message infuses all that Zephaniah is preaching. And so even spending time in a big book like Isaiah, you’re actually gaining an understanding of other books like Zephaniah. And then spending time in the New Testament where we have Peter saying all the prophets spoke of the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow, we’re beginning to understand what were the apostles seeing when they approached the Minor Prophets. How did they actually look into a book like Zephaniah, which never mentions the Messiah as a person anywhere in all 53 verses? And yet Peter says he’s there. Can you find him? Do you see him? And I think it’s when we get to this complete context that we need to be most ready to be aware of even bigger factors that are at stake in our reading of the Scriptures that are informing and influencing our understanding in a book like Zephaniah when the Messiah is never mentioned. And yet someone like Martin Luther could say, it portrays the age of the Messiah better than any other minor prophet. It should give us pause. And when we read Peter saying, what I am declaring to you is exactly what the prophet said would come to pass that I’m simply declaring to you what all the prophets declared that the Christ would suffer. And I’m simply saying what all the prophets said from Samuel and all who followed him also proclaimed these very days of the rise of the church. All the prophets proclaimed forgiveness of sins. We need to enter into a book like Zephaniah and say, where do I see it? Because it’s obvious to the New Testament apostles that they saw it and so that is significant and I want to meditate on some of that now.

So we’ve just asked this broader question of when we’re talking about complete context, considering the function of our whole book within the canon as a whole, within Scripture as a whole. But now let’s get focused and we want to know how Scripture uses this prophetic book. And I think you’re opening question Tom, that’s what it was pointing toward. We want to understand how does Scripture use my passage, not only does how does my passage use Scripture, but how do later authors, when they’re now viewing Zephaniah as Scripture, how are they building upon it? How are they using it? And I want to take us back to a passage that we had looked at in an earlier podcast, talking about the continuing context, we began to look at Zephaniah 3:8–10, where it’s one of the main commands in the book, one of the main exhortations, God declares, “Wait for me, oh remnant, wait for me, faithful ones of Judah and of other lands, wait for me, for the day when I rise up to seize the prey, or perhaps better, for the day when I rise up as a witness, for my decision is to gather nations to assemble kingdoms, to pour upon them, my indignation, all my burning anger, for in the fire of my jealousy, all the earth will be consumed.”

Now this language here of fire recalls an image earlier in the book when in Zephaniah 1, the prophet is talking about the day of the Lord and he says, “Be silent for the day of the Lord is near,” for the, sorry, “Be silent before the Lord God for the day of the Lord is near, for the Lord has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated his guests.”

Zephaniah portrays distinctively, not uniquely, we see the same thing happen in the book of Jeremiah, the same thing happen in Revelation, but he portrays the day of the Lord as a sacrifice, where God will come and make all things right by destroying either the sinner or the substitute.

When we think about sacrifice in the context of the Old Testament, we normally think about books like Leviticus, where a substitute bull, a substitute lamb is used to represent the sinner himself and the sinner is able to be pardoned because this unblemished lamb’s flawlessness is going to be counted as his own and his sin is going to be counted toward this lamb and the lamb will be slain in his stead. That’s how we usually think about sacrifice, but the day of the Lord in the book of Zephaniah is war, war against sinners and it gives clarity then that what’s actually happening in Leviticus with a sacrifice is Yahweh’s war against sin. He is a wrathful God, justly so and so it is that we read a little bit later in chapter one, “I’ll bring distress on mankind so that they shall walk like the blind because they sinned against the Lord. In the fire of his jealousy, all the earth will be consumed for a full and sudden end. He will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.” God is going to bring a sacrifice at the day of the Lord and yet those that are going to be consumed in the fire, it’s not a substitute, it’s the sinners themselves.

And so God’s motivation, his first motivation for his remnant to keep waiting patiently in a world filled with hostility and brokenness, a world filled with sin and with those that don’t like us here. God says, “Keep waiting patiently, trust me because you can be assured that I have purposed to rise in that last day. And when I rise, I will operate as a covenantal witness bringing judgment. It is my decision to gather people groups and world powers, nations and kingdoms to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger in the fire of my jealousy, all the earth will be consumed.” So that’s the first motivation, the day of the Lord is a day of judgment. It’s a day of sacrifice.

But then we move on and this is where we focused. The second motivation for God’s remnant people to wait in persevering hope is: “For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord. From beyond the rivers of Cush my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering.”

God’s envisioning here a future day of transformation where those who once had vile speech will now have their language purified, such that they will call upon the name of the Lord. And what’s amazing is it says it will happen at that time, at that time when God treats his enemies as a sacrifice and burns them up. Wait for me for you can be sure that the day is coming when I will renew the whole world and there will be peoples whose speech is transformed and they will now with unified voice call upon my name.

Now, Tom, when I raised this text to you last podcast and I said, “Tom, what passage is there, any other passages in Scripture that come to mind that talk about the change of language and calling upon the name of the Lord and those who were once dispersed, all of a sudden offspring of those dispersed ones becoming worshipers,” your mind immediately went to a text. What was it?

TK: It did. I immediately went to Pentecost and the events recorded in Acts chapter two.

And then where we went—and I would encourage those who didn’t listen to in the continuing context to go and listen to that because we went back then and talked about the events recorded at the Tower of Babel.

JD: That’s right because in the continuing context, we were focused on Scripture’s use of Scripture and our passage isn’t using… our passage is using Genesis 11 to show the reversal of the Tower of Babel. And there were a number of features in our passage that pointed in that direction. What were some of those features, Tom?

TK: I think the combination of the combination of language that when you were looking at it and you saying it only appears in these in these specific contexts.

JD: The use of language matched by the word dispersed, those two together only show up in Zephaniah 3:9 and 10, and Genesis 11:1 through 9.

TK: I guess this is a good thought, Jason. And you and I were talking about it earlier, that idea of what controls your interpretation so that it doesn’t get weird. This would be a good spot to say that’s a control, right?

JD: That was a control exactly. I needed, I used my assessment. I’ve got this thought that there’s a connection between two passages and one of the ways that I could justify a potential connection is by seeing the actual words that are used in one passage being used in another passage and it raises that possibility that there’s actually an allusion happening here.

TK: So to say Zephaniah is thinking of Moses and I can demonstrate that because these words appear only in this place and they don’t appear anywhere else, I can make a strong argument he’s referring to this passage.

JD: So in the same way that there were peoples at the Tower of Babel who were dispersed and at that time God confused their language and made multiple languages as 70 new nations were birthed. Now it appears that Zephaniah is envisioning a reversal of that judgment with global blessing where now the speech of peoples is going to be transformed so that they call on God’s name and the offspring or daughter of those ones dispersed are now going to be counted as God’s worshippers.

Now I made one more point Tom about Kush. Can you remember anything significant about Kush in relation to the Tower of Babel that I drew attention to?

TK: Let’s see, I think the point we made was that Kush is in relation to Nimrod, correct?

JD: So Kush was Nimrod’s father, and who was Nimrod?

TK: Nimrod was the builder of Babylon.

JD: That’s right, he’s the builder of Babylon. It’s the same word in the Old Testament. And so Kush is the people group, which is ancient Black Africa, Kush is the people group that instigated the building of the Tower of Babel, which was all about pride in building up their own name. And now God is going to use—it’s the only example of this international group that he even mentions—these rivers in the very region of the rivers of Kush at the very center of ancient Black Africa where the Kushites ultimately arrived after the dispersion of the Tower of Babel. God is going to use those very peoples as the instigators of this new transformation. I mean, that’s the one example that he gives.

So then you mentioned, though, Pentecost. And so now we would want to go in the other way as we’re thinking about the complete context, we’re asking, how does Scripture use a prophet? And there’s many people who have gone to the book of Acts in Acts chapter two and noted that Peter in Acts chapter two mentions a few things. For example, the transformation of tongues or languages. He mentions that there are Jews and proselytes. Those are Gentile believers in Yahweh, who had come from all the nations on the earth. So that when the 120 begin to speak in various languages, people like the Parthians and the Medes and the Elamites and the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontius, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, say, Arabians, they begin to say, “We hear these 120 telling in our own tongue, in our own language, the mighty works of God.”

And then Peter begins to preach a sermon and what’s intriguing as he says, this is exactly what Joel, not Zephaniah, what Joel predicted would come about. And then he cites Joel chapter two, climaxing in the statement, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Now, all of a sudden, there’s so… there’s many people who have read Acts chapter two in the Pentecost episode and say, this really appears as though he is alluding back to Genesis chapter 11 and portraying Pentecost as a reversal of the Tower of Babel. That what you have is languages now being transformed so that the gospel is able to be understood in all these tongues. And then he cites Joel adding emphasis that in that future day of the Lord, people were supposed to call on God’s name, which is the opposite of what they were doing at the Tower of Babel. And Peter’s saying, that’s exactly what’s happening. They’re calling on the name of the Lord.

But what I want to draw attention to is the fact that Joel does not mention anything about tongues. We see it in Genesis 11, but we don’t see it in Joel. But what we do see in Zephaniah is both a mention of tongues or languages and this phrase “call on the name of the Lord.” And what it suggests to me is that not only is Peter envisioning a fulfillment of Joel, and not only is Peter envisioning a fulfillment of Genesis 11 in reverse, he is envisioning the fulfillment of Zephaniah 3.

TK: Because the point the point you’re making is that that verse 21, 2:21, you’re saying that language is actually not found in Joel, correct?

JD: No, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord,” that is found in Joel, but the mention of tongues is not found in Joel. So that verse, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord” is directly out of Joel chapter 2 (verse 32), but that wording “calling on the name of the Lord” is also found in Zephaniah 3, verse 9. It’s word-for-word identical and then what’s also included in Zephaniah is this mention of tongues and the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It’s exactly the same term that Peter is using in his Greek discussion in Acts 2. So we have those two links and then we have this mention of peoples who will call on the name of the Lord. This is an international set of peoples and that’s what we’re seeing in Acts chapter 2, but it gets even more significant because after 3,000 people get saved, what do we learn? That they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship to breaking of bread and prayers and awe came upon every soul as God was doing his work and they had all things in common. This is, it appears something like a depiction of not only do they serve—that they call upon the name of the Lord, Zephaniah 3:9, but they serve him with one accord. They serve him shoulder to shoulder side by side. It’s as if Peter is envisioning the fulfillment of these very realities grounded in what we already saw in Zephaniah.

TK: I was just going to say, one thing from Zephaniah we’re looking for is an emphasis on Kush and so a check I could make is, am I going to find that here and maybe that’s a potentially troubling spot for somebody because you’d say, wait a minute, I’m not finding Kush in Acts chapter 2.

JD: And that’s very, it’s very significant Tom because when we see nations lists in the Old Testament, Kush is almost always there and in this long nations list in Acts 2:9–11, Kush isn’t mentioned at all.

TK: And so that might, it might seem like, oh, maybe he’s not thinking of Zephaniah.

JD: That’s right. That’s, that’s one possibility. That’s one possibility. But then we have to step back and we have to say, okay, those that are here focused on are Jews and proselytes. So there are some Gentiles present, but they are Yahweh followers. These are, those that are significantly counted among Israel. And Zephaniah is focused on an international people, not just Jews, not just proselytes, but those who would be coming from among all the nations. And that’s where I step back and I say, okay, well, who was Kush? Where do we read about Kush in the New Testament? Because it doesn’t mention Kush. There’s a different Greek term that our listeners are more familiar with that is associated with ancient Kush. And it’s the term that’s used all throughout the Greek translation of the Old Testament to render Kush. What’s that term, Tom?

TK: I think we’re talking about Ethiopia.

JD: It’s Ethiopia. And Ethiopia in Scripture is not where national Ethiopia is. It’s not directly associated with national Ethiopia. This is the ancient Black African empire. Ethiopia is all of ancient Black Africa as it was understood. And what’s significant then, once we realize that, Tom, is we step back and we say, Oh, actually, within the book of Acts, Ethiopia plays a prominent role. When we come to Acts chapter eight, we learn of a eunuch. We call him the Ethiopian eunuch. And he marks here in Acts chapter eight, just two chapters before the Cornelius and his family are saved where an entire family of Gentiles comes to the Lord. Before we get to there, we have a single Gentile convert. The Ethiopian eunuch, whom Philip meets and that Ethiopian has been reading from the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 53. And he doesn’t know to whom Isaiah 53 refers to and Philip tells him about Jesus and the Ethiopian eunuch gets saved.

And what that means is that in the flow of the book of Acts, as the gospel moves from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth, the movement to the ends of the earth is first noted in Acts chapter eight with the salvation of this Kushite. And that’s why it becomes significant if Kush was the instigator of the Tower of Babel. And God is promised in the book of Zephaniah that he’s going to use Kush as his—it’s the only international people given as an example of the reversal of the Tower of Babel. It makes sense then that Luke would hold off, not mentioning the presence of any Kushite in Jerusalem at Pentecost because he wants to save it, save the mention of Kush, the mention of Ethiopia to mark the fulfillment of Zephaniah chapter three where God is using Kush as the very first Gentile convert a Kushite that is an Ethiopian as the first Gentile convert for Christianity in all of Christian history. And thus God uses Kush as the instigator of the global international transformation.

TK: I think that’s… it makes a ton of sense that he would he would do this. I think the parts of the story that start—that maybe have seemed odd start falling in place when you go when you go here too. And this kind of fits in with that idea of I talked about control. And how do you know you’re actually tracking with a story? I think the thought of okay, if the language is significant, if Zephaniah was significant in Pentecost, I should be finding some reference to Kush. And we’re saying yes, you do actually early on in the book of Acts, but he saved this story. But I think even part of this story that Philip even Philip disappears much like the Lord disappears as the disciples are commissioned. And we know that the disciples are going to be successful in their ministry because the Lord’s left his spirit with them. And they go on and I think that’s part of what’s happening in Acts chapter 8. We think, well the Ethiopian went back to Africa and I don’t know if it’s going to be successful. And I think anybody would hearing the story in that age would say wait a minute, the exact same thing happened with us. The disciples would say this has happened with our Lord. He left, but he left his spirit with us. He’s giving us a picture. That’s happened with the Ethiopian eunuch too. He’s going back and God’s spirit is going with him. It’s going to be okay. The church is being established in this place.

So that’s neat. That’s neat. I think it’s a sunny and stunning story. And it directly ties to what you’re talking about in in Joel certainly and in Zephaniah and then going all the way back to the Tower of Babel.

JD: Now there’s an element that could cause an additional element that could cause pause. And this brings us to our next key facet of the complete context. We need to not only understand how our prophetic book functions within the overall canon, we need to not only know how Scripture uses the prophetic book itself. We need to recognize okay, our book speaks about Christ. It speaks about the sufferings of Christ. And it speaks about the glories that he would secure on behalf of his people. And going back to our passage, everything opened with, “For at that time, I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord.” at that time of the sacrifice. And we have to say, wait, if Zephaniah is being fulfilled in the days of Pentecost and in the rise of the church, then that means the day of the Lord has in some sense come. And it’s specifically portrayed as the day of the Lord as sacrifice, the day of the Lord as God’s vengeful wrath against his enemies, fiery blazing, burning heat, consuming those who stood against God in his ways. And Pentecost then was to happen at that time at which God punished his enemies, new creation, dawns only after the fiery judgment.

And so we have to, we step back and we say, but wait, Paul told the Thessalonians, if anyone tells you that the day of the Lord has come, don’t believe it. And so what do we do here, Tom? And I think this, what we’re about to, what I’m about to say is, is just so beautiful and amazing. At one level, the day of the Lord is all future. There are still an enemy—there is still an enemy population against God. And so we as believers here, wait, keep waiting for the day when the new creation will be complete as it grows out of the fires of judgment. But another very real sense, Tom, that future reality of the day of the Lord entered into the middle of history in the first coming of Jesus. When I read the book of Acts chapter two, this is what I gain in that very context of everyone who calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved, citing Joel chapter two, Peter says, “and I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.” So what’s going to mark the coming of the day of the Lord according to Joel is this cataclysmic intrusion of darkness and fire and the judgment of God. And that’s what’s going to actually give rise to his vision of people calling on the name of the Lord. And in the last days, God pouring out his spirit on all flesh and sons and daughters prophesying and young men seeing visions and old men dreaming dreams that overflows—within the flow of thought in the book of Joel that overflows out of the judgment. And what this means then in my mind is that Pentecost, if it is the day of renewal, the day of transformation fulfilling Zephaniah 3:9–10, then that means that Zephaniah 3:8 and the sacrifice had to at least at some level in some way have happened already because the renewal flows out of the judgment, and that pushes me back into the Gospel accounts to the cross event. What is Jesus doing? Every single one, all four, both the synoptic writers and John, the synoptic Gospels and John, mentioned that darkness came over the entire land as Jesus was sacrificed. What is Jesus doing? None other than bearing the wrath that was due us for our sake. God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that we in turn might become the righteousness of God. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. How does he take away? By becoming a slain lamb. And I propose that as Luke crafted his narrative, he was envisioning the cross event to be the time in which God punished his enemies.

All the fiery wrath of God against the elect was poured out upon Christ. And as the judgment of God was satisfied, as the wrath of God was subsumed in the person of Jesus, the new creation dawned and fulfillment began to be realized from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth. We begin to see how it is that even a prophet like Zephaniah that never mentions the Messiah explicitly spoke of him in talking about the day of the Lord as sacrifice, where God brings his war of judgment against sin by pouring it out against Christ on behalf of the elect. And once that judgment had fallen, new creation could dawn.

And Paul talks about today, 2 Corinthians 5:17. What has happened today is new creation because of what Christ did at the cross. So in a very real sense, the day of the Lord is still future for those who are not in Jesus. But in another real sense, the day of the Lord has already been initiated at the suffering and triumphant resurrection of Christ. And so all of a sudden, we begin to see Zephaniah did speak of Christ and he did speak about the sufferings of Christ in the church age. He spoke of the possibility of forgiveness and pardon and preservation through the wrath of God. We would see this again. I’ll just go to the end of the book, just a handful of verses after verse 10 comes verse 14. “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O Israel, rejoice and exalt with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away the judgments against you. He has cleared away your enemy. The king of Israel, the Lord is in your midst. You shall never again fear evil.”

This pushes me to another section of Scripture, Tom, that magnifies the person of Christ, and it’s John chapter 12. Think: Jesus entering into Jerusalem for his final week before his crucifixion. It’s Sunday before his death and branches of palm trees are pulled out and there’s a people that are crying, “‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,’ John 12:13, ‘even the King of Israel,’ they say. And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, ‘Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!’ And his disciples didn’t understand these things at first, John says, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.” So that little signal in verse 16 of John chapter 12 tells us that, okay, he’s talking about Old Testament fulfillment. And if you look carefully at John chapter 12 in your Bible study reading, you’ll see that when it says, “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” That’s a citation from Psalm 118:25–26. And when you read this statement in verse 15, “Fear not, daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.” The cross reference says cited from Zechariah 9:9.

Now, that’s as far as we get in my ESV. But if we were to go to those passages and look up Psalm 118:25–26, we would read, “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” but there’s no mention of “even the king of Israel.” If we were to go to Zechariah 9:9, we would see, wait, it doesn’t say, “Fear not, daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.” It says, “Rejoice, O daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.” And we have to say, why? Where does the author get, or the people who are crying out get the addition of “the king of Israel”? And why does John say “fear not” rather than “rejoice” like we see in Zechariah 9?

And I want to propose to him that John not only has Psalm 118 and Zechariah chapter 9, but that in all likelihood, Zechariah 9 is recalling Zephaniah 3:14–15 because the only place in the entire Old Testament where we get the phrase “king of Israel,” “daughter of Zion,” and “fear not” is Zephaniah 3:14–15. It seems as though John is not only recalling, most likely explicitly in quoting Psalm 118:25–26 and Zechariah 9:9, but he’s also using it, using his quotations to note an allusion to this text where Zephaniah, looking ahead and envisioning this great day of international transformation where God will enter in as warrior, sing over his people, save them from all their oppression. Zephaniah sees it to be so clear and so true and so certain he simply says, “Sing aloud, sing aloud, O daughter of Zion, shout, O Israel, rejoice and exalt with all your heart,” and then here it is: “O daughter of Jerusalem.” That’s exactly what we see in John 12, and that is found in Zechariah 9, “Fear not, O daughter of Jerusalem,” John 12:15, but whereas the Zechariah says, “Rejoice, O daughter of Jerusalem.” Now we’ve got Zephaniah saying, “The Lord has cleared away the judgments against you. He’s cleared away your enemy. The king of Israel is in your midst. The Lord, do not fear, fear not.”

So Zephaniah mentions “fear not.” he mentions the “daughter of Zion,” and he calls Yahweh “the king of Israel.” he is looking ahead. Zephaniah is looking ahead and envisioning the great victory at the end of the age as Yahweh, the king of Israel, entering into Jerusalem so that the listeners need not fear, and who are the listeners? They’re none other than the daughter of Jerusalem. Jerusalem in Zephaniah’s day was a wicked place. These are offspring, a remnant of that city who have now been transformed. Remember, Tom, that in Zephaniah 3, earlier we read about “the daughter of my dispersed ones” who have become worshippers. I think we’re talking about the same group, and in the midst, Zephaniah, when he talks about God having removed their judgments, he says, “The king of Israel, the Lord is in your midst. You need not fear.”

Now what John is doing in John 12 is he’s using the title that Zephaniah used for Yahweh as “the king of Israel,” and he’s saying, how is it that Yahweh is coming into Jerusalem to bring his transformed community to stir up lasting satisfaction? he is doing it through Jesus, who is the embodied king of Israel. So I think when it comes to magnifying the person of Christ, we’re seeing Jesus both as sacrifice, the cross event, but also as the great victor, the king himself who is leading Yahweh’s end times battle on the day of the Lord. That’s how John was picturing Jesus to fulfill the Zephaniah 3.

TK: So this, I’m just looking at John 12:13 and John 12:15. So 12:15, it starts out in 14. It says, “Just as it is written,” and then we read the quote, and we say it. It’s not exactly written like that in Zechariah, and you’re saying John is actually combining some passages here. He’s combining it from Zephaniah, correct?

JD: That’s right. I think he is recognizing that Zechariah 9 is likely built upon Zephaniah 3. And so John is combining not only Zechariah 9, he’s not only mentioning Zechariah 9:9, he’s combining it with Zephaniah 3:15.

TK: So then the thought here is this, if it’s something that they commonly do, which they do, we should expect this, that they are almost showing their homework, like all of us were told to do in certain classes. We had to, like, show your work. How did you get there? And if we said to John, if we had a conversation with him and, “John, this quote, how did you get there? This is not exactly how it appears in Zechariah. Can you show us your work?” And we saw his scribbles on the page, we would see Zephaniah written as he showed his work, and you’re just kind of working backwards to say, “I’m unpacking how he got where he got.”

That’s right. I mean, Zechariah opens, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem.” Well, that sounds like Zephaniah. “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O Israel. Rejoice and exalt with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem.” Zechariah seems to be using Zephaniah. But whereas Zephaniah speaks of the king of Israel as Yahweh, Zechariah already said, “Behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Zechariah is portraying the king as a man. And it’s in this very context, you and I have drawn attention to this in the past, Tom, that he says, as this king enters in on a donkey, “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations. His rule shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.” That final phrase, as this king who is a warrior and overcomes the war horse and breaks the battle bow and brings peace to the nations, it says, “His rule will be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.” That’s a citation from Psalm 72, verse 8. And so what that means is Zechariah is envisioning the king, the Messianic King of Psalm 72, to be realizing the end times day of the Lord reign of Yahweh that Zephaniah was pointing to.

It’s like there’s a constellation of texts that are coming to mind. And when we get into Psalm 72, we find out that the same figure who Psalm 118 is referring to is that same king, the anointed king of Psalm 72. So Zechariah saw the connection between Psalm 72, he would have affirmed the connection between Psalm 72 and Psalm 118 that John himself is building, and added to this constellation is Zephaniah chapter 3. And that’s what I’m drawing attention to, and we just want to learn to read our Bibles this way, where the New Testament authors and the Old Testament prophets are building all these connections. And that’s the right way to do our biblical interpretation. And we can follow along with our cross references, but often our cross references don’t even give us enough information. Like scholars haven’t built the connections that the prophets themselves are making. And they miss so much. And so our slowing down and saying, “Have I ever read this before? It sounds like something. Where was it?” And seeing if we can do a­­—

TK: This feels like something I’ve read before.

JD: That’s right. So if we can do some kind of a, you know, a concordance search, find those passages and begin to ask ourselves, what’s going on? And I think that what is going on is that Zechariah envisioned the Davidic hope for king to be realizing the day of the Lord and times reign of Yahweh. And then John recognizes the same. And now he’s got a name to put to that figure, and his name is Jesus.

And so all of a sudden we’re seeing, wow, Zephaniah and the Psalter and Zechariah, they’re all Christian Scripture, magnifying the same person, proclaiming the same message. And the gospel writers are simply modeling for us the right way to magnify Jesus in our Bibles. And they’re seeing things that we’ve so often missed. And yet they were there all the while. Zechariah set the pattern for us in knowing how to rightly interpret Yahweh’s end times reign through the lens of the king, the coming anointed king. And it’s Zechariah who gave us the lens for reading, this is the king that Solomon foresaw in Psalm 72. And when we read the Psalter, we see, well, that king is the same figure who is suffering as the cornerstone over whom people are tripping in Psalm 118, and the New Testament over and over again recalls Psalm 118 and applies it to Jesus. And this is the right way to interpret our Bibles. This is how God intends us from the beginning, how the prophets intended us to understand their texts.

TK: So Jason, let’s, as we wrap up here, let’s go back a little bit to that word I used earlier, control. That idea of something is leading to our interpretations. We’re not just making them up. We have a valid reason we got where we got. And you can certainly look at things that are quoted and things you said, “Yep, but he’s quoting Zechariah, but he’s alluding to Zechariah. And here’s how I’m getting there.”

So for you as a professor, you have a student who’s shown you certain things that have quotations, have allusions, but then let’s say he or she goes to a passage that they say doesn’t use any of the words, doesn’t use any of the allusions. However, based on this work and the themes, this falls in that same constellation. How would you respond to that? They’ve, they’ve gotten part way down, does that still in your mind exercise control?

JD: It does, so long as they’re able to establish biblical warrant. For example, many people will read Zephaniah on its own, and they’re not even thinking about the Book of the Twelve. I think that’s a wrong move because the New Testament authors clarify their thinking about this as a single book. So all of a sudden, for example, the vision of the Messiah and the hope for this coming deliverer that we see in Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk should be informing our reading of Zephaniah, even though the Messiah is not mentioned.

The fact that Hosea himself indicates that the final new exodus and work of God will be accomplished not only by Yahweh, but by his king, whom he calls David, this new David, that informs our reading so that if all of a sudden, I’m in Zephaniah, and I’m seeing elements of new exodus, for example, I can assume even if the Messiah is not mentioned that he’s there, because another prophet has already told me he’s there. And so we would then have to step back and say, “Huh, why wouldn’t Zephaniah have mentioned him if he knew he was there?” And I would say, in a book like Zephaniah, I think the lack of the mention, the explicit mention of the Messiah is likely part of his sermonic rhetoric, part of his purpose in not including. And he mentioned the Messiah is to show how dark and how distant Judah was from actual hope. And yet, there is hope in this book. And if there is hope, it’s hope coming from the Messiah as Yahweh works through him in the day of the Lord. And Zephaniah becomes a book that is loaded with anticipations of Jesus’s arrival.

And so yes, when it comes to warrant, biblical warrant for building these connections, we’re looking for, okay, we see what Zechariah is doing, and we see that Zechariah is actually part of this book or Book of the Twelve. And within The Twelve itself, then we have Scripture interpreting Scripture and giving us a lens for rightly understanding Zephaniah 3. If we missed it before we get to Zechariah chapter 9, we should gain it, gain the right understanding by the time we get to Zechariah 9. And all of that’s part of a single book. And then when we think about informing theology, we recognize that books like Isaiah and Jeremiah are assumed to be there to influence prophets like Zephaniah. And so we can read Isaiah 53 and recognize, “Oh, this would have been informing theology for Zephaniah.” he would have already had a framework for understanding a person as a sacrifice. And so this isn’t like we’re forcing something on Zephaniah. No, we’re actually reading Zephaniah with all the tools that God has given us to rightly understand what he would have been thinking about his words.

And then stepping back to recognize, we also want to say it may be, I mean, Zephaniah had not seen the person of Jesus yet. He died not having gotten to, like, longing to see what we see, had longing to hear what we’ve heard. He had a glimpse of what was coming, but he died not having received it. And so we’ve got a fuller picture than Zephaniah, but we don’t have less. And what we’re seeing here is that Zephaniah had a lot and he understood a lot. And so when it comes to trying to justify our claims, we’re thinking about grand worldview-informing theology that can substantiate our claim that this is part of the meaning of this text.

TK: Would it be fair to say, Jason, if so, like the book of the 12, it’s a unit, but a Zephaniah in God, in calling a Zephaniah to, in God calling a man like Zephaniah to write a book, that in the same way I would say about something like, “I don’t need to have that conversation,” or “I don’t need to write that because it was already said earlier in the conversation.” So this is what I’m focusing on here. Even in the prophets, if they leave out an explicit mention of the Messiah, he’s—that thought is, God is saying that’s already been covered thoroughly in other books here. That’s just presumed here in this book.

JD: That’s right. I think that’s absolutely true, that we can ask ourselves, why not mention it explicitly? And I’ve provided one potential thought for why it’s not mentioned, that he’s wanting to portray Judah as so distant from hope in order to heighten their sense of need, that they should really dread the day of the Lord because their sin is serious and they have—they’re not living close to hope. And yet the book lays out hope and it says, “If you seek the Lord, perhaps you may be hidden in the day of the anger of Yahweh.” So the, but you’re absolutely right that there’s a lot that these authors can assume because they’re assuming their audiences already know the Word, that audiences know the Word and are accountable to the Word that these prophets already have in their pockets, and we should be able to read their words, assuming a lot and reading things between the lines that are actually there in the mind of the author, and a lot of that has to do with informing theology. The fact that we read a minor prophet in light of the whole of the Minor Prophets. There’s other prophets that are influencing how we’re supposed to understand what these prophets say. They don’t have to say everything because it’s been said elsewhere, and that’s a great point to make.

TK: I think both of us as guys who love deer hunting, I think of early on when somebody would say to me, “Wow, there’s a lot of big bucks in this woods,” and you’re looking around and my first thought at that point is I’m looking around and I’m actually looking for the deer like, “How do you know? Where are they? I can’t see any,” but they’re seeing the signs all over the place of rub on a tree, a scrape on the ground, the type of cover, all sorts of things, trails, prints, that sort of thing, but that comes with experience in that context. But with the text, similar experience of saying the Messiah is all over this book, even though he’s like in Zephaniah not mentioned anywhere.

JD: I agree. Amen. Great example.

TK: Thank you for your help here. This has been a blessing. I pray that for all of us, either reading, while certainly reading, devotionally using the text and teaching others, preaching, we will consider these contexts and we will find it joy to do the hard work. What I love is you mentioned it earlier that as you grow and you look in, say, 30 years from now, I hope that I’m reading Zephaniah, for instance, different from how I am now, but it’s going to demand doing work today to get there.

JD: That’s right. And not only on Zephaniah, but on every other text that we’re looking at, believing that the same author has controlled it all.

TK: Amen. All right, Jason. Thank you. Blessings on your day.

JD: Thanks, Tom.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. We’ve included resources related to this topic in our show notes. For resources related to biblical theology, visit handstotheplow.org and JasonDeRouchie.com.