1 Samuel 9:13

9:13 When you enter the town, you can find him before he goes up to the high place to eat. The people won’t eat until he arrives, for he must bless the sacrifice. Once that happens, those who have been invited will eat. Now go on up, for ¹  this is the time when you can find him!”

Zefanya 1:7

1:7 Be silent before the Lord God, ² 

for the Lord’s day of judgment ³  is almost here. ⁴ 

The Lord has prepared a sacrificial meal; ⁵ 

he has ritually purified ⁶  his guests.

[9:13]  ¹ tc The MT has “him” (אֹתוֹ, ’oto) here, in addition to the “him” at the end of the verse. The ancient versions attest to only one occurrence of the pronoun, although it is possible that this is due to translation technique rather than to their having a Hebrew text with the pronoun used only once. The present translation assumes textual duplication in the MT and does not attempt to represent the pronoun twice. However, for a defense of the MT here, with the suggested translation “for him just now – you will find him,” see S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 72-73.

[1:7]  ² tn Heb “Lord Lord.” The phrase אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה (adonai yÿhvih) is customarily rendered by Jewish tradition as “Lord God.”

[1:7]  ³ tn Heb “the day of the Lord.”

[1:7]  sn The origin of the concept of “the day of the Lord” is uncertain. It may have originated in the ancient Near Eastern idea of the sovereign’s day of conquest, where a king would boast that he had concluded an entire military campaign in a single day (see D. Stuart, “The Sovereign’s Day of Conquest,” BASOR 221 [1976]: 159-64). In the OT the expression is applied to several acts of divine judgment, some historical and others still future (see A. J. Everson, “The Days of Yahweh,” JBL 93 [1974]: 329-37). In the OT the phrase first appears in Amos (assuming that Amos predates Joel and Obadiah), where it seems to refer to a belief on the part of the northern kingdom that God would intervene on Israel’s behalf and judge the nation’s enemies. Amos affirms that the Lord’s day of judgment is indeed approaching, but he declares that it will be a day of disaster, not deliverance, for Israel. Here in Zephaniah, the “day of the Lord” includes God’s coming judgment of Judah, as well as a more universal outpouring of divine anger.

[1:7]  ⁴ tn Or “near.”

[1:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “a sacrifice.” This same word also occurs in the following verse.

[1:7]  sn Because a sacrificial meal presupposes the slaughter of animals, it is used here as a metaphor of the bloody judgment to come.

[1:7]  ⁶ tn Or “consecrated” (ASV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).