Zephaniah 2

1 Gather together and bind yourselves together,

undisciplined nation,

2 before you become like a flower passing away,

before the Lord’s anger comes on you,

before the day of the Lord’s wrath comes on you.

3 Seek the Lord, all you humble people of the land.

Do what is right, seek righteousness, and answer these things,

so that you may be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s wrath.

4 Gaza will be plundered,

and Ashkelon wiped out.

Ashdod will be thrown out at noon,

and Ekron uprooted.

5 Woe to those who live along the coastal strip,

neighbors of the Cretans!

The word of the Lord is against you, Canaan, land of the Philistines:

“I will destroy you and leave no one living there.”

6 Crete will become pasture for flocks

and sheepfolds,

7 and the coastal strip will belong to those who remain of the house of Judah.

They will pasture there

and rest in Ashkelon’s houses in the evening because of the people of Judah,

because the Lord their God has visited them

and turned back their captivity.

8 “I have heard Moab’s insults

and the blows of the children of Ammon,

how they insulted my people

and boasted against my borders.

9 Therefore, as I live,” says the Lord of armies, the God of Israel,

“Moab will become like Sodom,

and the children of Ammon like Gomorrah.

Damascus will be abandoned like a heap on a threshing floor

and wiped out forever.

Those who remain of my people will plunder them,

and those who remain of my nation will inherit them.”

10 This will come to them in return for their pride,

because they insulted the Lord Almighty

and boasted against him.

11 The Lord will appear against them

and completely destroy all the gods of the nations of the earth.

Each will bow down to him from his own place,

all the islands of the nations.

12 “You Ethiopians too

will be wounded by my sword.”

13 He will stretch out his hand against the north

and destroy the Assyrian.

He will make Nineveh a dry ruin,

like a wilderness.

14 Flocks and every wild animal of the land will graze in her midst.

Chameleons and hedgehogs will sleep in her ceilings.

Wild animals will cry through her broken walls,

and ravens in her gateways,

because her stature once stood like a cedar.

15 This is the scornful city that lived in confidence,

saying in her heart,

“I am, and after me there is no one.”

How she has become a ruin, a pasture for wild animals!

Everyone who passes through her will hiss and wave his hands.