Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! I'm reading the Bible clear through this year, and I invite you to read along with me. But first, let us pray:
Everlasting Father,
All time belongs to you, and all the ages. In signs, in songs, in words of promise, you reassured your chosen ones, “I am with you; fear not.” You taught them through the prophets to trust that your saving deeds were not limited to the past.
When Jesus came, he fulfilled “all that was written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”
The Church has found him everywhere in these same holy books.
Help me to find Jesus in my reading today, to listen to him, and to follow him with all my heart.
Amen.
Today's chapters are Zephaniah 1-3.
It's another day with a complete book of the Bible!
Do you remember when we read about King Josiah and the great reform he inaugurated when the "Book of the Law" was discovered during the repairs in the Temple (2 Kings 22:1-23:30)? Zephaniah's ministry coincided with the period right before that Josian reform. Interestingly, Zephaniah may have been a descendant of good King Hezekiah, and so a cousin of Josiah (see Zeph. 1:1).
Zephaniah announces the coming of a judgment day, the "Day of the Lord," with a series of pronouncements somewhat like the Oracles to the Nations that we saw by his great contemporary, Jeremiah. But Zephaniah also gives a series of Oracles of Restoration that begin with the in-gathering of the Gentiles "that all of them may call on the name of the Lord" (3:9). The final scene is one of tenderness and delight in a restored Jerusalem.
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