Prophet Zephaniah (Judah)

Zephaniah prophesied "in the days of Josiah son of Amon" (Zephaniah 1:1), and his genealogy, traced back four generations to a Hezekiah, possibly the king, may make him a member of the royal family. Speaking before Josiah's reforms had cleansed Jerusalem, he condemned those who bowed to the host of heaven on their rooftops, swore by Milcom, served Baal or wore foreign clothes, and warned of the Day of the Lord: "a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom" (1:15). He named the Fish Gate and the Second Quarter of the city, pronounced oracles against Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Cush and Assyria, and foresaw Nineveh turned into a desolation.

The book ends in joy: "Sing, daughter of Zion... the Lord your God is in your midst" (3:14–17), with a promise to gather the scattered and give the peoples "a pure language" to call on God's name. His day-of-wrath passage inspired the medieval Latin hymn Dies irae, and the Talmud (Pesachim 7b) draws on his image of God searching Jerusalem "with lamps" in deriving the custom of searching for leaven by candlelight.