JY: Welcome to Gear Talk, a podcast on biblical theology. Recently, Jason DeRouchie published a substantial commentary on the Old Testament prophetic book Zephaniah.

JY: On this podcast, Dr. Fred Zaspel, editor of Books at a Glance, interviews Jason about Zephaniah’s message and lasting significance.

JY: Jason’s kids grew up with Zephaniah being one of their dad’s best friends, and we think that you will benefit from the way Jason clarifies how this 53-verse, relatively unknown prophetic gem is Christian Scripture that magnifies Christ and speaks to the church today.

JY: In the show notes, we’ll include some links to some of Jason’s writings on Zephaniah.

FZ: Greetings. I’m Fred Zaspel. Welcome to another author interview here at Books at a Glance. Today, we’re talking to Dr. Jason DeRouchie about his new commentary on the minor prophet Zephaniah.

FZ: Jason, great to have you with us. Thanks for coming.

JD: Thanks. It’s a delight to be with you.

FZ: It’s not often we see a commentary on Zephaniah, so congratulations on that.

JD: That’s right. This truly is one of those books so many don’t even know exist. Fifty-three short verses.

JD: My son told me that, okay, Dad, my phone says it takes 9 minutes to read through this book. And if I take that number of words and compare it to your commentary, it’s going to be a 17-hour read.

JD: That’s what he told me.

FZ: I was going to say, Zephaniah is one of those books where you tell the congregation you’re going to turn to Zephaniah, and then you take a coffee break. You explain that it’s in the Old Testament and give them time to look over in their index and find it.

FZ: What about all of that? Why is it so? Is it just because it’s one of The Twelve and it’s so small that it’s overlooked? Tell us about your own interest in Zephaniah. I know it’s been a long interest of yours. So tell us about all that.

JD: Well, it is an unknown book. We are Christians, and so many of us are raised solely on the New Testament, failing to recognize that our Old Testament is Christian Scripture.

JD: Then we go to the prophets and think of the heavy hitters like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12 Minor Prophets, minor only because of their size, they’re easily forgotten. Zephaniah is buried right in the middle of them and is filled with imagery of the day of the Lord, and half of that is punishment, which we don’t often like to think about.

JD: So I think we just don’t consider Minor Prophets very often. Now for me, I was thrust into teaching my very first Minor Prophets course 20 years ago this year.

JD: They were 8-week exegesis classes at the undergraduate Christian college I was teaching at. Over a 4-year period, I taught the Minor Prophets 10 times, and Zephaniah continued to be the book that destroyed me because of its call for humility and its battle against the proud.

JD: Originally, in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament series, I was slated to write on Deuteronomy. That’s what I had done my doctoral studies in, and I wanted to continue that work.

JD: But over time, it became evident that I was not going to be able to finish that project according to the calendar Zondervan had in mind. So I requested Zephaniah.

JD: Little did I know what I would gain. What I knew is that Acts 3:18 said all the prophets foretold the sufferings of Christ.

JD: Acts 3:24 said all the prophets declared the day that Peter was preaching in, which was Pentecost and beyond. All the prophets did that. Acts 10 told us that all the prophets foretold that everyone who believes in Jesus can experience forgiveness of sins.

JD: Peter again in 1 Peter 1 said the very prophets of the Old Testament that were speaking about the saving grace that was ours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring to know what person and time the Spirit of Christ in them foretold when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

JD: It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but us. They were searching and inquiring. Zephaniah was reading Isaiah. Zephaniah was reading Genesis and considering all the while, as Peter says, the person and the time of Christ’s coming.

JD: I had that framework, and it drew me into this book because it’s one of those Minor Prophets that never mentions the Messiah explicitly. Yet Peter says he’s there. His sufferings are talked about. The church age is talked about. So I was drawn into this book, and I ended up spending 10 years with this guy.

JD: Many projects happened in between, but I started it in the summer of 2014. For a decade, I’ve gotten to journey with this brother. He ministered during the days of Josiah, which is in the period when the book of the law was found.

JD: The essence of which I believe are the sermons in Deuteronomy. All of a sudden, my Deuteronomy side was piqued by wondering whether Zephaniah was serving Josiah’s reform movement before or after Deuteronomy was found.

JD: That informed my reading of Zephaniah’s use of Scripture. But then considering Zephaniah’s use in Scripture, how do later authors like Zechariah or John, Luke in the book of Acts draw on Zephaniah? Matthew, as a Gospel writer. How do they interpret it in light of Christ’s coming? All those factors have played in and helped.

JD: As I’ve sought to read this book within its close, continuing, and complete biblical context, I’ve been awed by what God has shown me. I truly see it as Christian Scripture with a lastingly relevant message for the church today.

FZ: I love it. I think that’s enough already to pique our interest in your commentary. It’s great. But I do have a few more questions. Wonderful. I love it. Tell us about the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series that you’re writing in. What’s distinctive about it, and how does that shape how you approach your work in the commentary?

JD: Well, it’s intriguing. Dr. Daniel Block has long been recognized as someone who reads Scripture carefully, seeking to trace arguments, not only saying what is there, but why the author said it that way.

JD: I wrote my dissertation at Southern Seminary under Daniel Block in the book of Deuteronomy, seeking to trace the flow of thought of Moses’ sermons. When Zondervan approached Dan during my doctoral days about this possibility, Dan kindly pulled me into the editorial team to help shape the vision for this series.

JD: The vision is that of discourse analysis. That is a careful look at the flow of thought and the rhetoric of the biblical author. How are they shaping their arguments? This commentary, in a distinct way, focuses on the main point of every pericope, seeking to shape an exegetical outline rather than a content-based outline.

JD: Rather than just saying what is there, it unpacks for the preacher and the teacher how every subordinate element within the structure of our outline is related to the main idea. It shows how that main idea is unpacked through the author’s thought flow. As we unpack the commentary proper, we’re not addressing word for word; we’re addressing thought for thought to clarify how the argument at this point in whatever book we’re in is being developed, whether it’s a narrative, a poem, or, in my instance, a prophecy.

JD: This isn’t just stringing together pearls. This commentary seeks to unpack the holistic message and, within my commentary, very intentionally place the message of the book itself in light of informing theology. That is, how is what Scripture was this prophet using, and where does the Scripture understand his place and his message within the flow of Scripture storyline climaxing in Christ? How is later Scripture drawing on and clarifying our understanding of this text? Those are the three words I used: the close, the continuing, and the complete biblical context.

JD: So that’s some of the distinctives of the commentary series as a whole and of my commentary in particular. Discourse analysis matched by biblical theology.

FZ: I’ve only begun looking through it. I’ve sampled here and there through it myself so far, and I’ve just been intrigued. I look forward to going through it myself. I think it’s a significant contribution to the study. You’ve mentioned the historical setting, Josiah et al. Is there more you can add to that, the historical setting of Zephaniah?

JD: One of the elements that’s pervasive throughout the book is this language of ingathering. It appears as though, and many commentators have drawn attention to this, that Zephaniah likely preached his message during the fall ingathering festival, that is, the Feast of Tabernacles. The book indicates that he is targeting the very sins that 2 Kings 22 and 23 note Josiah in his reformation movement was addressing.

JD: What’s not present is child sacrifice. So what it suggests to me is that Zephaniah is indeed serving in the days of Josiah’s reform, but after it has already been kick-started so that the most major sin, child sacrifice, has already been addressed. However, many of the smaller elements that are still active in Judah need to be confronted by this prophet.

JD: The very fact that I see Deuteronomy alluded to or cited numerous times in the book suggests to me that this is growing out of the context very near 622 when the book of the law was found. It was found, and then they celebrated Passover. So it was found in the spring, and the Feast of Tabernacles is in the fall. It suggests to me that this book was actually preached. It’s a single oracle. It doesn’t have repeated, for example, “Thus says the Lord.” It’s shaped as a single sermon, these 53 verses, that are the word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah. He proclaims it, it seems, in a single setting. At least that’s how it’s presented to us, associated with the Feast of Tabernacles.

JD: Why that’s significant is because he uses this image of ingathering to his benefit. In the same way that at a grape harvest, the bad grapes are thrown away even as the good grapes are gathered, God is going to do a great ingathering called the day of the Lord. That day of the Lord will be both punishment and renewal. It will have the blessing of fruitfulness, but before that fruitfulness comes, there will be a large amount of pruning that is done. That’s the image of ingathering, and it relates, as I said, to both punishment and renewal.

JD: Another key element of the historical context is that Zephaniah alone has a five-member genealogy in the prophetic introduction. It’s the word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, the son of Cushie, the son of Amariah, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Hezekiah. The final member is Hezekiah. This suggests that Zephaniah has royal blood in him. He is a Davidic descendant in a sea of debauchery, born in the days of Manasseh, most likely. Yet Manasseh, being the son of Hezekiah, and yet in the royal line maintaining, his name Zephaniah is Yahweh has hidden, protected. That’s how his parents envisioned him as one who is protected in the hand of God from all the yuckiness of the age.

JD: He has in his line royal blood. He’s a symbol of the Davidic hope and connected to the original reformer and now growing up in the days of the new reformer. Not only that, his father is Cushie. Cush is ancient black Africa, and Zephaniah’s grandmother named her son Mai Blackie, suggesting to me—and this is in an age where in the days of Hezekiah, the 25th Egyptian dynasty was a Kushite-ruled dynasty. As we’re reading through the biblical books, we see this influx of black Africans all throughout Judah. It’s not at all strange that there would have been, for example, a black woman who would have married into the Jewish line.

JD: What it suggests to me is that Zephaniah is a biracial prophet. He is both Judean with royal Davidic blood and African, infused into one man. His awareness, his royalty gives clarity to why he is aware of so much international affairs, but his black descent highlights why it is that he is focused significantly on Cush. First, as the one people group that has already experienced the destruction of God, this typological intrusion of the day of the Lord, Cush, that is, as in Nahum when it mentions that Thebes has already fallen. The Egyptian capital of Thebes was the Kushite capital of the 25th Egyptian dynasty, and Zephaniah is talking about that same destruction.

JD: Cush has already fallen, but then Cush becomes the sole region on the planet that gives exhibit A, example A of international transformation at the day of the Lord. It says in Zephaniah 3:9, “In that day,” that is at the day of the Lord, “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 the very region of Cush, my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, will bring my offering.” That’s the sole example.

JD: Cush is where Zephaniah goes to celebrate this international global transformation at the day of the Lord, where God will purify speech and where he will take the offspring of those once scattered and gather them like priests to his holy presence.

JD: I think that Zephaniah is indeed a black Jew, and he’s celebrating his ethnic heritage. That both is a central point in the book of how it reaches backward and forward. Because even as I talk about the change of speech, Fred, and the regathering of offspring once scattered, I would imagine that it sparks something in Old Testament history in your mind. The changing of speech and the language of scattering. What comes to mind in the Old Testament?

FZ: Babel.

JD: I think that’s exactly right. What’s amazing is that the one who built Babel, according to Genesis 10, was Nimrod, son of Cush. So it’s the Cushites who built Babel, and then God—so they’re the instigators of the hostility against God. Now Zephaniah is elevating Cush, ancient black Africa, as the very ones that God will start his international ingathering.

JD: So Cush brings about the global scattering, and then God will begin with Cush to reverse the decreation and bring creation. We could go back a little bit further. The region of Cush is first mentioned as one of the terminus points of the four rivers that flow from the Garden of Eden.

JD: Zephaniah says, “From the region of Cush, from beyond the rivers of Cush, my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, will bring my offering.” It’s as if those in black Africa once scattered are now following the rivers of life back to the very presence of God. We jump into the New Testament. Many scholars have highlighted how Pentecost seems to be alluding to Babel, but what they miss in the quotation with Joel 2 is that Joel mentions the Spirit’s outpouring, but he never mentions the change of speech.

JD: It’s Zephaniah 3 that mentions the change of speech. I see Luke intentionally reaching back to Zephaniah as all the nations are gathering to Jerusalem and the gospel is being proclaimed in multiple tongues. It’s an allusion to the initial fulfillment of Zephaniah’s prophecy. What’s amazing in Acts 2 is that Cush or ancient Ethiopia is never mentioned because, I believe, Luke intentionally holds off noting any presence of Cushites in Jerusalem because they’re Jews and proselytes.

JD: He holds off until Acts 8 mentioning the Ethiopian eunuch, the first Gentile convert to Christianity, to highlight, look, look. It’s ancient black Africa. It’s ancient Ethiopia from which God is now sparking this global reversal of the curse and global transformation.

JD: It springs forth in Acts 8 as the first Gentile convert. This is Scripture’s use of Scripture and Zephaniah’s use in Scripture as I’m understanding it, and it’s beautiful.

JD: Related to historical context, he is a biracial Jew. He is a black Israelite prophet whose own life is testifying to his messianic day of the Lord futuristic hope in what God will bring on a global scale, fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant promises.

FZ: I love it. I love it. I was going to ask you next, what is the big question? What is Zephaniah all about? What’s its major theme? You’ve already touched on that. Do you want to crystallize the theme of Zephaniah for us?

JD: I will. The book opens with the day of the Lord as punishment, portraying that punishment as cataclysm, conquest, and sacrifice, all three of which are brought together at the cross.

JD: This is one of the ways that I believe the day of the Lord as punishment in Zephaniah anticipates the sufferings of Christ. But that day of the Lord is only a backdrop for the main exhortations in Zephaniah 2 and 3.

JD: The first exhortation grouping comes in Zephaniah 2:1-3, and this is the essence of it: seek the Lord together to avoid punishment. The next exhortation comes in Zephaniah 3:8. In its context, wait for the Lord to enjoy salvation.

JD: Those are the two elements that I see shaping the essence of this prophet’s message: seek the Lord together to avoid punishment, wait for the Lord to enjoy salvation. Within the book, that salvation, that delightful salvation sets the highest-level motivation for the people to seek the Lord and wait for him.

JD: It’s that they might rejoice in their deliverance and that ultimately God might rejoice or sing over those he has saved. It’s this satisfaction that is the highest-level motivation in the book. That’s why I have made the subtitle of Zephaniah “The Savior’s Invitation to Satisfaction.”

JD: Seek the Lord together to avoid punishment. Wait for the Lord to enjoy salvation. That salvation is intimately related to rejoicing, making merry, celebrating the deliverance that God has wrought as he’s overcome the curse, and matching line by line this Savior King’s celebration over those he has redeemed.

FZ: I think it capsulizes the book very well. Is there a distinct role that Zephaniah has in the canon, a distinct contribution that it has to the canon?

JD: Yes. It’s especially seen in the book of The Twelve. Of all the Minor Prophets, Martin Luther said Zephaniah proclaims the age of the Messiah more clearly than any other.

JD: If you take the book of The Twelve, the 12 Minor Prophets—

FZ: More than Zechariah.

JD: That’s according to Martin Luther. The whole—and probably what he meant is the holistic view of the messianic era that includes one of the Bible’s most graphic portrayals of the day of the Lord as punishment and one of the most glorious portrayals of the day of the Lord as renewal.

JD: Within the book of The Twelve, the prophets proclaim sin, punishment, and restoration. They engage the sins of the people directly, usually through the lens of the Mosaic covenant. That’s what clarifies the standard upon which their lives are being weighed.

JD: Within that Mosaic covenant, it was clear: if you do not obey and follow the Lord, judgment will follow. The curses of the covenant will be poured out. The prophets move toward a focus on defining the nature of those curses and how bad it is going to get because God takes sin seriously.

JD: But always, the vision of the prophets is that on the other side of that judgment is renewal and restoration for a remnant. That renewal and restoration is directly associated with the work of the Messiah.

JD: Someone like Paul House has, I think, helpfully identified that even though every book in the Minor Prophets and indeed even the major prophets speaks of sin, punishment, and restoration, when we look at the whole of the book of The Twelve, recognizing that these books are not in chronological order, Jonah was the earliest prophet, but Hosea gets fronted.

JD: There appears to be a theological structuring of the book of The Twelve. Hosea through Micah, those first six books in The Twelve, principally focus on defining the sins of the people. Then Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah highlight the punishment that is going to come against the peoples, not only against Judah but against all the world for their turning away from God.

JD: Within this framework, Zephaniah provides—whether we would view it as the high point of punishment or perhaps better, this low movement in the book—it’s in Zephaniah that we get to the lowest point of the U and then begin to move upward. Zephaniah is indeed a climax within the book of The Twelve as a whole because it portrays extremely graphically through cataclysm and conquest and sacrificial language the judgment that God is going to bring upon the world.

JD: But then it moves through that judgment, and through the flames and the burning comes new life. The seed dies, and then out comes this glorious rising beautiful international community of God. Zephaniah envisions this in his final chapter, this portrayal of salvation and deliverance out of the day of the Lord in wonderfully beautiful ways that I believe are anticipating the church age.

JD: Within that framework, he provides a vital role within the book of The Twelve of moving us from punishment to a vision of renewal. It’s in that vision of renewal that then Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, that hope for renewal, end out the book of The Twelve.

JD: Of all the Minor Prophets, Zephaniah most holistically relates—similar to the book of Isaiah. Zechariah, without question, is bathed in Isaiah in ways that no other prophet is. But with respect to portraying both the judgment of God and the new creation of God, Zephaniah captures it.

JD: For a preacher that might say it’s too daunting for me to tackle one of those big major prophets, Zephaniah would be an ideal book to say, I’m going to give five sermons to these 53 verses and give my people a holistic view of redemptive history.

JD: It will take you all the way back to Genesis, unpacking the problem and showing the impact of that problem on the people of Israel and Judah of Zephaniah’s day, but it will move you through the exile all the way to the days of the coming of Christ.

JD: In John 12, at Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we hear, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel!” That reaches us back to Psalm 118. But the King of Israel is not part of that text, but it is part of John 12. Then it says directly after that, the people cry out, “Fear not! Your King comes to you, gentle, riding on a donkey, on the colt, the foal of a donkey.” That shoots us back to Zechariah 9. Zechariah 9 actually says, “Rejoice!” rather than “Fear not!” Where did John get that “Fear not, O daughter of Zion?” The one text in all the Old Testament that includes “King of Israel,” “daughter of Zion,” and “fear not” is Zephaniah 3:14-15.

JD: I think what’s happening is John is actually, as he’s writing John 12, not only drawing on Psalm 118 and drawing on Zechariah 9, but he also has in mind the promise of Zephaniah 3 that reads, “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exalt with all your heart! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you. He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. You shall never again fear evil.” Zephaniah is envisioning a day of the Lord that is already but not yet. A day in which God has intruded in and already overcome enemies.

JD: He’s urging the people, “Don’t fear! You need not fear anymore!” He’s called the King of Israel, and it’s supposed to spark the daughter of Zion, not Zion herself. The Zion of Zephaniah’s day was an evil, wicked place. This is an offspring of that group, a remnant of that group that are called to rejoice in light of judgment overcome.

JD: John sees Jesus as the ultimate embodiment of Yahweh in the day of the Lord coming into Jerusalem, calling his people, “Fear not! Because the judgments are going to be taken away.” It says in John 12 that “A great crowd was following Jesus. Indeed, many Greeks were there.” After the resurrection, the disciples remembered these words and understood the Scriptures.

JD: I think Zephaniah 3 was one of those Scriptures that they went back to and said—

FZ: It would seem so.

JD: The Lord’s reign, the day of the Lord, King Yahweh’s reign is being realized through Jesus, who has overcome the curse on our behalf.

JD: In doing so, he has trampled our enemy. Even now, as we await the full realization of the day of the Lord, we recognize new creation has already dawned. The fires of God’s wrath have already been poured out on our behalf at the cross. The day of the Lord has entered into the middle of history, and with that, the dawn of the new creation.

JD: The international ingathering beginning with Cush has started. We, as part of the church, are enjoying now this international transformation.

FZ: Love it. I love it. You mentioned the possibility of preaching five messages through Zephaniah. I’m sure this has happened to you before. You get invited to speak somewhere. You got one shot. It’s a Sunday school lesson or it’s one sermon, and if they want you to give them Zephaniah. Can you give us a two-minute summary of that sermon?

JD: Sin is serious. The day of the Lord is real. The day of the Lord will come in fury. In that day, Christ will be the agent of God’s destruction. But before Christ comes as the agent of that destruction, he came as the object of that destruction. He came as the one who bore our pain, and all the fiery wrath of God that is promised at the day of the Lord was poured out upon him at the cross. If we seek the Lord together, we can avoid the punishment promised in this book. If we wait for the Lord together, we can enjoy salvation because of what Christ has done. That’s the essence of how I would capture the Christian message of Zephaniah. I think that is what Zephaniah was ultimately hoping in.

FZ: Amen. Amen. This has been very helpful, Jason. Thanks so much. We’re talking to Dr. Jason DeRouchie about his new exegetical commentary from Zondervan on Zephaniah. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve read through just parts of it. I’ve sampled it here and there, and my interest has been enormously piqued. I look forward to working through the entire commentary. This has been a wonderful taste of it today, Jason.

FZ: Thanks a lot.

JD: Thank you.

FZ: Alright.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Check the show notes for some of Jason’s writings on Zephaniah. For more resources connected to biblical theology, visit handstotheplow.org and jasonderouchie.com. To support the work of Hands to the Plow, visit handstotheplow.org.