ZEPHANIAH 2:3 and 3:12-13
Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord.
I will leave in your midst a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord, those who are left in Israel; they shall do no injustice and speak no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful tongue. For they shall graze and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.
Zephaniah is a prophet from the time of King Josiah (640 – 609 BC), a contemporary of Jeremiah. He preaches at a very difficult time. Josiah has been a pious king, an indefatigable restorer of the worship of Yahweh, an exterminator of idolatrous cults.
In his time, the “discovery” of the Book of the Law in the Temple takes place: it is promulgated again before the people, who swear fidelity to the Law. These are the moments in which the Deuteronomistic School emerges in splendor, which rewrites and reinterprets the entire History of Israel…
A king like this must be, in the eyes of the people, blessed by God, and attract the blessings of heaven for the people. But Josiah dies in an unfortunate battle against the Pharaoh of Egypt, and the faith of Israel is shattered, fidelity to the Law declines. Some words from the book of Zephaniah interpret it well:
“I will search Jerusalem with lamps
and punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts,
‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill.’” (Zephaniah 1:12)
In this context, the preaching of Zephaniah aims to bring the people back to the Lord. His book is a presentation of the Day of the Lord, the day of Judgment.
(From this book are taken the words of the “Dies Irae, dies illa”, as a threat of the judgment of the Lord for those who are asleep in life)
Our fragment, however, points to another important theme: “The remnant of Israel.”
“The remnant of Israel” is, first of all, that small remnant of the people who return from captivity and are ready to rebuild the temple and return to practicing the Covenant, that minority of the people who sincerely await the coming of the Messiah, far from political and triumphalist approaches, and who are faithful to the Covenant from the heart.
This theme poses a very deep, disturbing, and current line. There is a specific people subject to the Promise and the Covenant, with their worship, their temple, their priests…
But within it, there is a core that forms the true people, those who do not honor God with their mouths and for their convenience, by habit or by race, but from the heart, understanding the Covenant as a commitment to the mission that God entrusts to them and the Promise as the realization of God’s plan for salvation, not as the worldly exaltation of Israel.
This people is made up of “the poor of Yahweh,” who await the arrival of the Sent One not from power or appearance, not to triumph over the nations.
Poverty simply means that they are not the important ones in the people, that they have no power or influence whatsoever, that they do not expect to triumph over others thanks to God, and, in the deepest sense, that they expect from Yahweh inner liberation, salvation, because they know themselves to be poor, sinners.
1 CORINTHIANS 1:26-31
For consider your calling, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.
God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption; therefore, as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.”
Our continuous reading of this letter brings us today a fragment especially appropriate to the other two readings: “The Wisdom.”
The interpretation of this text is quite simple: those of Jesus are not looking for miracles, extraordinary and spectacular presences of the divine, nor depths of wisdom intended for the wise, scientists, or philosophers.
Those of Jesus participate in the wisdom of Jesus: knowing how to live, knowing who God is and who we are. And this is “the wisdom of the cross,” which is brilliantly summarized in the text of “The Beatitudes.”
According to the custom of the liturgy, the fragment has been reduced to a minimum, but it is interesting that we read this fragment with a little more breadth, to fully capture its meaning: 1 Cor 1:18 to 2:16.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.