Zephaniah 1:4

Yet I reserved seven thousand in Israel, all the knees of which have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him.”

For though your people, Israel, are like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. A destruction is determined, overflowing with righteousness.

But they didn’t listen or turn their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.

Let Samaria throw out his calf idol! My anger burns against them! How long will it be until they are capable of purity?

that I will bless you greatly, and I will multiply your offspring greatly like the stars of the heavens, and like the sand which is on the seashore. Your offspring will possess the gate of his enemies.

from Mount Halak, that goes up to Seir, even to Baal Gad in the valley of Lebanon under Mount Hermon. He took all their kings, struck them, and put them to death.

“For Yahweh has driven great and strong nations out from before you. But as for you, no man has stood before you to this day.

Yahweh said, “I will also remove Judah out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and I will cast off this city which I have chosen, even Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, ‘My name shall be there.’ ”

But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it. The owl and the raven will dwell in it. He will stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness.

Therefore I will give their wives to others and their fields to those who will possess them. For everyone from the least even to the greatest is given to covetousness; from the prophet even to the priest everyone deals falsely.

You have rejected me,” says Yahweh. “You have gone backward. Therefore I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you. I am weary of showing compassion.

Yahweh has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion. He has stretched out the line. He has not withdrawn his hand from destroying; He has made the rampart and wall lament. They languish together.

As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird. There will be no birth, no one with child, and no conception.

He took the calf which they had made, and burned it with fire, ground it to powder, and scattered it on the water, and made the children of Israel drink it.

No man will be able to stand before you. Yahweh your God will lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land that you tread on, as he has spoken to you.

No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not fail you nor forsake you.

Yahweh said to Joshua, “Behold, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the mighty men of valor.

Yahweh said to Joshua, “Don’t fear them, for I have delivered them into your hands. Not a man of them will stand before you.”

He got rid of the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places around Jerusalem; those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the army of the sky.

He brought out the Asherah from Yahweh’s house, outside of Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust, and cast its dust on the graves of the common people.

Ah sinful nation, a people loaded with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken Yahweh. They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They are estranged and backward.

“You shall say this to them: ‘The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth, and from under the heavens.’ ”

Those of you that escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken with their lewd heart, which has departed from me, and with their eyes, which play the prostitute after their idols. Then they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.

therefore, behold, I have stretched out my hand on you, and will deliver you for a plunder to the nations. I will cut you off from the peoples, and I will cause you to perish out of the countries. I will destroy you. Then you will know that I am Yahweh.”

and tell it, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Behold, I am against you, Mount Seir, and I will stretch out my hand against you. I will make you a desolation and an astonishment.

“Though you, Israel, play the prostitute, yet don’t let Judah offend; and don’t come to Gilgal, neither go up to Beth Aven, nor swear, ‘As Yahweh lives.’

“Blow the cornet in Gibeah, and the trumpet in Ramah! Sound a battle cry at Beth Aven, behind you, Benjamin!

Don’t rejoice, Israel, to jubilation like the nations; for you were unfaithful to your God. You love the wages of a prostitute at every grain threshing floor.

Their heart is divided. Now they will be found guilty. He will demolish their altars. He will destroy their sacred stones.

The inhabitants of Samaria will be in terror for the calves of Beth Aven; for its people will mourn over it, Along with its priests who rejoiced over it, for its glory, because it has departed from it.

So Bethel will do to you because of your great wickedness. At daybreak the king of Israel will be destroyed.

Thus he showed me and behold, the Lord stood beside a wall made by a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.

Yahweh said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “Behold, I will set a plumb line in the middle of my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.

those who have turned back from following Yahweh, and those who haven’t sought Yahweh nor inquired after him.

Of these were the islands of the nations divided in their lands, everyone after his language, after their families, in their nations.

I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you.

Leave me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under the sky; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.”

Joshua took all these kings and their land at one time because Yahweh, the God of Israel, fought for Israel.

Therefore Yahweh’s anger burns against his people, and he has stretched out his hand against them and has struck them. The mountains tremble, and their dead bodies are as refuse in the middle of the streets. For all this, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out.

I will make justice the measuring line, and righteousness the plumb line. The hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters will overflow the hiding place.

Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit. When Yahweh stretches out his hand, both he who helps shall stumble, and he who is helped shall fall, and they all shall be consumed together.

I have sworn by myself. The word has gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and will not be revoked, that to me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall take an oath.

I will give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than of sons and of daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.

“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living waters, and cut out cisterns for themselves: broken cisterns that can’t hold water.

Therefore I am full of Yahweh’s wrath. I am weary with holding it in. “Pour it out on the children in the street, and on the assembly of young men together; for even the husband with the wife will be taken, the aged with him who is full of days.

I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation.

behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,” says Yahweh, “and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against its inhabitants, and against all these nations around. I will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and a hissing, and perpetual desolations.

As the army of the sky can’t be counted, and the sand of the sea can’t be measured; so I will multiply the offspring of David my servant and the Levites who minister to me.’ ”

Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Behold, I will punish Amon of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with her gods, and her kings; even Pharaoh, and those who trust in him.

“The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand. They are knit together. They have come up on my neck. He made my strength fail. The Lord has delivered me into their hands, against whom I am not able to stand.

You have walked in the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand.’

therefore the Lord Yahweh says, “I will stretch out my hand on Edom, and will cut off man and animal from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman. They will fall by the sword even to Dedan.

therefore the Lord Yahweh says, “Behold, I will stretch out my hand on the Philistines, and I will cut off the Cherethites, and destroy the remnant of the sea coast.

She will be a place for the spreading of nets in the middle of the sea; for I have spoken it,’ says the Lord Yahweh. ‘She will become plunder for the nations.

After this he will turn his face to the islands, and will take many; but a prince will cause the reproach offered by him to cease. Yes, moreover, he will cause his reproach to turn on him.

Yet the number of the children of Israel will be as the sand of the sea, which can’t be measured or counted; and it will come to pass that, in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’

The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, will be destroyed. The thorn and the thistle will come up on their altars. They will tell the mountains, “Cover us!” and the hills, “Fall on us!”

When it is my desire, I will chastise them; and the nations will be gathered against them, when they are bound to their two transgressions.

My people are determined to turn from me. Though they call to the Most High, he certainly won’t exalt them.

Now they sin more and more, and have made themselves molten images of their silver, even idols according to their own understanding, all of them the work of the craftsmen. They say of them, ‘They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves.’

I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death! Death, where are your plagues? Sheol, where is your destruction? “Compassion will be hidden from my eyes.

But they refused to listen, and turned their backs, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear.

Therefore as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore, were fathered by one man, and him as good as dead.

I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring may also be counted.

You stretched out your right hand. The earth swallowed them.

Yahweh said to Moses, “Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under the sky.”

He will deliver their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under the sky. No one will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them.

I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire, and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust. I threw its dust into the brook that descended out of the mountain.

For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and will surround us, and cut off our name from the earth. What will you do for your great name?”

therefore, behold, I will bring evil on the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam everyone who urinates on a wall, he who is shut up and he who is left at large in Israel, and will utterly sweep away the house of Jeroboam, as a man sweeps away dung, until it is all gone.

He also removed Maacah his mother from being queen, because she had made an abominable image for an Asherah. Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron.

He walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did Ahab’s house; for he married Ahab’s daughter. He did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight.

All the people of the land went to the house of Baal, and broke it down. They broke his altars and his images in pieces thoroughly, and killed Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars. The priest appointed officers over Yahweh’s house.

In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of Ahab’s house; and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.

He took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entrance of Yahweh’s house, by the room of Nathan Melech the officer, who was in the court; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

for he took away the foreign altars and the high places, broke down the pillars, cut down the Asherah poles,

Also he took away out of all the cities of Judah the high places and the sun images; and the kingdom was quiet before him.

For Pekah the son of Remaliah killed in Judah one hundred twenty thousand in one day, all of them valiant men, because they had forsaken Yahweh, the God of their fathers.

They broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence; and he cut down the incense altars that were on high above them. He broke the Asherah poles, the engraved images, and the molten images in pieces, made dust of them, and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.

You have rebuked the nations. You have destroyed the wicked. You have blotted out their name forever and ever.

Then I beat them small as the dust before the wind. I cast them out as the mire of the streets.

“I will also make it a possession for the porcupine, and pools of water. I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,” says Yahweh of Armies.

Therefore by this the iniquity of Jacob will be forgiven, and this is all the fruit of taking away his sin: that he makes all the stones of the altar as chalk stones that are beaten in pieces, so that the Asherah poles and the incense altars shall rise no more.

Your offspring also would have been as the sand and the descendants of your body like its grains. His name would not be cut off nor destroyed from before me.”

Their houses will be turned to others, their fields and their wives together; for I will stretch out my hand on the inhabitants of the land, says Yahweh.”

I will cut off your engraved images and your pillars out from among you; and you shall no more worship the work of your hands.

Yahweh will be awesome to them, for he will famish all the gods of the land. Men will worship him, everyone from his place, even all the shores of the nations.

No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

But how does God answer him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”

We exhort you, brothers: Admonish the disorderly; encourage the faint-hearted; support the weak; be patient toward all.