Zephaniah 2

All of you people in Judah who are willing to humble yourselves, worship God and obey what he has commanded. Try to do what is right and make sure that you stay humble. If you do that, perhaps God will protect you when he punishes other people for their sins. \* 4 {When God punishes the Philistines,} the cities of Gaza and Ashkelon will lose all of their inhabitants. An army will attack the city of Ashdod in broad daylight and drive away all of its people. An army will also drive away the people of the city of Ekron. 5 Terrible things will happen to you Philistine people! You live near the sea. God has said that he will punish you Philistines who live in that part of the land of Canaan. He will punish you until everyone who used to live there is dead. \* 6 There will no longer be any cities in the seaside land of Philistia. There will only be grass. Shepherds will keep their sheep there so that they can eat the grass. 7 The Judean people who survive will go and live in that land. They will graze their sheep in those pastures. They will move into the houses that the Philistines have abandoned in the city of Ashkelon. This will happen because those Judeans will worship God once again as their God. God will take care of them and make them prosperous again. \*

God is the commander of the heavenly armies and the God of the Israelites. He says this: “I have heard the people of Moab and Ammon insult my people. I have seen them stealing territory from my people. So now I swear that I am going to destroy Moab and Ammon as completely as I destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Crops will no longer grow on their land, only weeds. The only way people will be able to make a living from that land will be to dig in the ground to get salt from the salt deposits there. No one will ever rebuild the buildings that were there. My people who survive will take away all the valuable possessions that once belonged to the Moabites and Ammonites. Those people will be the ones who own that land.” \* 10 The people of Moab and Ammon will get what they deserve for having been so proud. They should not have insulted the people who belong to God, the commander of the heavenly armies. They should not have tried to take away their land. 11 The people of Moab and Ammon will be greatly afraid when God punishes them. He will do that so powerfully that people will stop worshiping all other gods. People in every nation will worship God instead. Each person will do that in his own country. \* 12 God has also said that he will slaughter the people of Ethiopia. 13 God will also punish and destroy the people of Assyria. They live in a land that is northeast of us. He will cause an enemy army to destroy their capital city of Nineveh. It will become a place where no plants grow, like the desert. 14 Groups of many different kinds of wild animals will live where Nineveh used to be. Various kinds of owls will make their nests on top of the columns of its destroyed buildings. Those owls will sometimes perch on the sills of empty windows and hoot. Rubble will block the doorways. Rain and sunlight will ruin the valuable cedar wood that the Assyrians used to build their buildings. \* 15 The people of Nineveh used to be proud. They thought that no other country could conquer them. They said to each other, “Our city is the greatest city! No other city is as great as ours!” But an enemy army will completely destroy Nineveh. It will become a place where wild animals make their dens. People who go by that area will often make hissing sounds and shake their fists to show how much they hated that city. \*