Zefanya 3:14

3:14 Shout for joy, Daughter Zion! ¹ 

Shout out, Israel!

Be happy and boast with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem!

Zefanya 3:17

3:17 The Lord your God is in your midst;

he is a warrior who can deliver.

He takes great delight in you; ² 

he renews you by his love; ³ 

he shouts for joy over you.” ⁴ 

Zefanya 1:16

1:16 a day of trumpet blasts ⁵  and battle cries. ⁶ 

Judgment will fall on ⁷  the fortified cities and the high corner towers.

[3:14]  ¹ sn This phrase is used as an epithet for the city and the nation. “Daughter” may seem extraneous in English but consciously joins the various epithets and metaphors of Israel and Jerusalem as a woman, a device used to evoke sympathy from the reader.

[3:17]  ² tn Heb “he rejoices over you with joy.”

[3:17]  ³ tc The MT reads, “he is silent in his love,” but this makes no sense in light of the immediately preceding and following lines. Some take the Hiphil verb form as causative (see Job 11:3) rather than intransitive and translate, “he causes [you] to be silent by his love,” that is, “he soothes [you] by his love.” The present translation follows the LXX and assumes an original reading יְחַדֵּשׁ (yÿkhaddesh, “he renews”) with ellipsis of the object (“you”).

[3:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “he rejoices over you with a shout of joy.”

[1:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “a ram’s horn.” By metonymy the Hebrew text mentions the trumpet (“ram’s horn”) in place of the sound it produces (“trumpet blasts”).

[1:16]  ⁶ sn This description of the day of the Lord consists of an initial reference to anger, followed by four pairs of synonyms. The joining of synonyms in this way emphasizes the degree of the characteristic being described. The first two pairs focus on the distress and ruin that judgment will bring; the second two pairs picture this day of judgment as being very dark (darkness) and exceedingly overcast (gloom). The description concludes with the pairing of two familiar battle sounds, the blast on the ram’s horn (trumpet blasts) and the war cries of the warriors (battle cries).

[1:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “against.” The words “judgment will fall” are supplied in the translation for clarification.