Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ZEPHANIAH

(Heb. ṣĕpanyâ, ṣĕpanyāhû)

1. A Kohathite Levite, ancestor of the levitical singer Heman, to whom David gave responsibility for the ministry of music in the temple (1 Chr. 6:36[MT 21]).

2. The son of Cushi and a prophet during the reign of Josiah. He may have actively advanced the king’s reforms. Unique in the prophetic corpus, the superscription to the book traces his ancestry back four generations (Zeph. 1:1), perhaps because he was a descendant of King Hezekiah. If so, Zephaniah was related to the royal family he was criticizing.

3. The son of Maaseiah, the “second priest” (next in rank to the high priest Seraiah) of Jerusalem (Jer. 21:1; 52:54) who on two occasions came as an emissary from King Zedekiah to the prophet Jeremiah (21:1; 37:3). Shemaiah, a false prophet exiled to Babylon, wrote Zephaniah a letter rebuking him for not having reprimanded or imprisoned Jeremiah (Jer. 29:24-28); instead, Zephaniah simply read this letter to the prophet (24:29). After the destruction of Jerusalem he was among the leaders of the city taken captive by Nebuzaradan, the captain of Nebuchadnezzar’s guard, and brought before the Babylonian king at Riblah and put to death (2 Kgs. 25:18-21; Jer. 52:24-27).

4. The father of Josiah, to whose house the prophet Zechariah was directed to take the gold and silver collected from returned exiles to make a crown for the high priest Joshua (Zech. 6:10, 14).

Greg A. King/Michael A. Grisanti

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ZEPHANIAH

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)