Zephaniah

From BibleWiki

Meaning: Jehovah has concealed, or Jehovah of darkness.

(1.) The son of Cushi, and great-grandson of Hezekiah, and the ninth in the order of the Minor Prophets. He prophesied in the days of Josiah, king of Judah (B.C. 641-610), and was contemporary with Jeremiah, with whom he had much in common.

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The ninth of the twelve Minor Prophets of the Canon of the Old Testament; preached and wrote in the second half of the seventh century B.C. He was a contemporary and supporter of the great Prophet Jeremias. His name (Heb. Zephanja, that is "the Lord conceals", "the Lord protects") might, on the analogy of Gottfried, be most briefly translated by the words God protect. The only primary source from which we obtain our scanty knowledge of the personality and the rhetorical and literary qualities of Sophonias, is the short book of the Old Testament (containing only three chapters), which bears his name. The scene of his activity was the city of Jerusalem (i, 4-10; iii, 1 sqq.; 14 sqq.).

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One of the twelve Minor Prophets who describes himself as "the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, King of Judah" (Zeph. i. 1). He seems, therefore, to have been a descendant of Hezekiah, King of Judah, since otherwise only the name of his father would have been given (comp. Isa. i. 1; Ezek. i. 3; Joel i. 1). If he was of royal descent, he probably lived in Jerusalem; and evidence of this is seen in his prophecies, where he describes various parts of the city. According to the first verse of the book which bears his name, he flourished during the reign of Josiah, and on the basis of his utterances the majority of modern scholars date his activity prior to the reforms so rigorously inaugurated and promulgated after 621, the pictures of corruption and the approaching foe being most appropriately referred to the situation in Judah during the early years of Josiah and the Scythian invasion.

See Also

1. Zephaniah (son of Maaseiah)
2. A Kohathite ancestor of the prophet Samuel (1Chr 6:36).
3. Zephaniah (father of Josiah)