Posts Tagged: Zephaniah 3:17

“QUIET LOVE”

On August 24, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

 

 

Zephaniah is a book that is full of God’s fury and judgment, first and foremost with his own people, Judah.  But other nations also come in for some pretty strong words.  Apparently, God doesn’t put up with a lot of crap from anybody!

However, toward the end of this very stormy book, the skies clear and bright sunshine breaks through.  3:17 is one of the most beautiful, haunting, and difficult to translate verses in the whole of the Bible.  Here is one attempt:

“The LORD your God is in your midst,

A victorious warrior.

He will exult over you with joy,

He will be quiet in His love,

He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.” (Zephaniah 3:17 New American Standard Bible, 1995)

While there are many intense debates as to precisely how this verse should be translated, there do seem to be certain key components.  In a very non-poetic bulleted list, these components might look like this:

  • God fights for us, in spite of all our messing up.
  • God rejoices over us greatly.
  • But God will also be quiet in his love—or perhaps, God will quiet us by his love.

In any case, there is both noisy joy and quiet love involved in God’s love for us.  I once heard someone say, “You know you’re really in love with someone when you can enjoy being quiet with them.”

Often, we think of God’s silence as being a problem.  But what if his silence is another expression of his love?  What if God loves us (me, you, the entire human race) so much that he is reduced to silence?

Or, on the other hand, what if we are sometimes so in love with God that we are reduced to silence in his presence?  Might that not be a sign of love?  Indeed, might silence be a form of love?

The monks at Gethsemani Abbey, a Trappist Monastery near Bardstown, Kentucky, have a sign that says, “SILENCE IS SPOKEN HERE.”  Yes!  Maybe we need to get over our fear of silence.  Maybe silence is one of the languages that divine love speaks.

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Fragments of a Song: Zephaniah 3:17

On May 30, 2016 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Fragments of a Song: Zephaniah 3:17

Every now and then, I catch the echoes of a song I cannot quite make out.  It is a haunting melody with wonderful lyrics, like a song heard in a dream.

Sometimes, in fact, I do hear it in my dreams.  More often, I hear it when I am fully awake.  Unfortunately, I am rarely fully awake.

Whenever I read Zephaniah 3:17, I realize that this is the song I’m hearing, but that only deepens the mystery.

“   The LORD your God is with you,

the Mighty Warrior who saves.

He will take great delight in you;

in his love he will no longer rebuke you,

but will rejoice over you with singing.” (NIV)

The Old Testament prophet Zephaniah lived during difficult times for the tiny Kingdom of Judah.  There were threats from outside, and oppression from within.  He was a descendant of King Hezekiah of Judah, but he was also likely of African descent.  (He is described as a “Son of Cush,” which may well mean that he was a black Jew.)  The troubled times, and possibly his ethnicity as well, likely made his life difficult.  Being royalty is not always good news, particularly in troubled times.

So, it is not surprising that the book of Zephaniah is full of darkness.  After the introduction, comes these sweeping words:

“I will sweep everything

from the face of the earth.” (NIV)

The book gets darker and more explicit after that.

Yet the promise of a new dawn comes at the end of the book.  And at that new dawn, Zephaniah hears a song, a song of great delight, a song of a mighty warrior.  No!  It is a song of the Mighty Warrior!

Yet, it is not a song of victory, or a song to taunt a defeated enemy.  Rather, it is a love song for exiles, for the oppressed.  It is a song of great joy.

Sometimes I hear this melody in a sermon, in a poem, in a song.  Sometimes I hear it in an achingly beautiful morning such as this one.  Sometimes I hear it when I read, when I study, when I write.  Sometimes I hear it when I am trying to obey God.  Sometimes I hear it when I have disobeyed, and need to know that I am loved with a “nevertheless” kind of love.  I am slowly going deaf, but I still hear snatches of this song.

Every now and then, I catch the echoes of a song I cannot quite make out.  It is a haunting melody with wonderful lyrics, like a song heard in a dream.

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