Other Nations Judged

13. What judgment message did Zephaniah pronounce against Moab, Ammon, and Assyria?

¹³ By means of his prophet Zephaniah, Jehovah also expressed his anger against nations that had mistreated his people. He declared: “‘I have heard the reproach by Moab and the abusive words of the sons of Ammon, with which they have reproached my people and kept putting on great airs against their territory. Therefore, as I am alive,’ is the utterance of Jehovah of armies, the God of Israel, ‘Moab herself will become just like Sodom, and the sons of Ammon like Gomorrah, a place possessed by nettles, and a salt pit, and a desolate waste, even to time indefinite. . . . And he will stretch out his hand toward the north, and he will destroy Assyria. And he will make Nineveh a desolate waste, a waterless region like the wilderness.’”—Zephaniah 2:8, 9, 13.

14. What evidence is there that foreign nations ‘put on great airs’ against the Israelites and their God, Jehovah?

¹⁴ Moab and Ammon were Israel’s traditional enemies. (Compare Judges 3:12-14.) The Moabite Stone, in the Louvre Museum in Paris, bears an inscription containing a boastful statement by Moabite King Mesha. He proudly relates his taking several Israelite cities with the help of his god Chemosh. (2 Kings 1:1) Jeremiah, a contemporary of Zephaniah, spoke of the Ammonites’ occupying the Israelite territory of Gad in the name of their god Malcam. (Jeremiah 49:1) As for Assyria, King Shalmaneser V had besieged and taken Samaria about a century before Zephaniah’s day. (2 Kings 17:1-6) A little later, King Sennacherib attacked Judah, took many of its fortified cities, and even threatened Jerusalem. (Isaiah 36:1, 2) The Assyrian king’s spokesman did indeed put on great airs against Jehovah when demanding Jerusalem’s surrender.—Isaiah 36:4-20.

15. How would Jehovah humiliate the gods of nations who had put on great airs against his people?

¹⁵ Psalm 83 mentions a number of nations, including Moab, Ammon, and Assyria, who put on great airs against Israel, and braggingly stated: “Come and let us efface them from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more.” (Psalm 83:4) The prophet Zephaniah courageously announced that all these haughty nations and their gods would be humiliated by Jehovah of armies. “This is what they will have instead of their pride, because they reproached and kept putting on great airs against the people of Jehovah of armies. Jehovah will be fear-inspiring against them; for he will certainly emaciate all the gods of the earth, and people will bow down to him, each one from his place, all the islands of the nations.”—Zephaniah 2:10, 11.

In 632 B.C.E., Nineveh was taken and destroyed by a coalition of Babylonians, Medes, and hordes from the north, probably Scythians. Historian Will Durant relates: “An army of Babylonians under Nabopolassar united with an army of Medes under Cyaxares and a horde of Scythians from the Caucasus, and with amazing ease and swiftness captured the citadels of the north. . . . At one blow Assyria disappeared from history.” This was exactly what Zephaniah had prophesied.—Zephaniah 2:13-15.

As for Moab and Ammon, according to Jewish historian Josephus, in the fifth year after the fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonians waged war on them and conquered them. They subsequently ceased to exist, as prophesied.

1. What did a Bible scholar state concerning the prophecy of Zephaniah?

ZEPHANIAH’S prophecy pointed far beyond its first fulfillment in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. In his commentary on Zephaniah, Professor C. F. Keil wrote: “Zephaniah’s prophecy . . . not only commences with the announcement of a universal judgment upon the whole world, out of which the judgment rises that will fall upon Judah on account of its sins, and upon the world of nations on account of its hostility to the people of Jehovah; but it treats throughout of the great and terrible day of Jehovah.”

2. What similarities exist between conditions in Zephaniah’s day and the situation within Christendom today?

² Today, Jehovah’s judicial decision is to gather the nations for destruction on a far wider scale than in Zephaniah’s day. (Zephaniah 3:8) Those nations that claim to be Christian are particularly reprehensible in God’s sight.

3. What can be said of many secular leaders and political governments today, and what did Zephaniah prophesy?

³ Many of Christendom’s political leaders love to be seen in church. But like Judah’s “princes,” a number of them exploit the people like “roaring lions” and ravenous “wolves.” (Zephaniah 3:1-3) The political lackeys of such ones “are filling the house of their masters with violence and deception.” (Zephaniah 1:9) Bribery and corruption are rife. As for political governments inside and outside Christendom, an increasing number of them ‘put on great airs’ against the people of Jehovah of armies, his Witnesses, treating them as a despised “sect.” (Zephaniah 2:8; Acts 24:5, 14) Concerning all such political leaders and their followers, Zephaniah prophesied: “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them in the day of Jehovah’s fury; but by the fire of his zeal the whole earth will be devoured, because he will make an extermination, indeed a terrible one, of all the inhabitants of the earth.”—Zephaniah 1:18.