1. Zephaniah 3:8 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

What time of fulfilment is suggested by the use of “all the earth”?

Zephaniah 3:8 (ESV)

8 “Therefore wait for me,” declares the LORD, “for the day when I rise up to seize the prey. For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger; for in the fire of my jealousy all the earth shall be consumed.

Zephaniah’s prophecy envisions a universal calamity, where not only Jerusalem but all the earth’s nations will be included in the day of destruction. The immediate historical event anticipated by the prophecy is the fall of Jerusalem, which would provide a picture of the judgment to come at the end of the world, where devastation will fall upon all nations of the world. The one is a foreshadowing of the other. Similarly, when the Lord Jesus proclaimed the terrors of God’s coming judgment, he "intertwines the destruction of Jerusalem with the end of the age so that the two aspects of his prophetic declaration cannot be separated. When armies surround Jerusalem and its desolation is near, then the ‘time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written’ will have arrived (Luke 21:20–22). The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 anticipated that great Day of Yahweh which shall consummate the Lord's judgments, even as did the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.”1,2