Language Studies

Difficult Sayings

A pure language
Zephaniah 3:8-9

“"Therefore wait for Me," says the LORD, "Until the day I rise up for plunder; My determination is to gather the nations To My assembly of kingdoms, To pour on them My indignation, All my fierce anger; All the earth shall be devoured With the fire of My jealousy. ⁹ For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, That they all may call on the name of the LORD, To serve Him with one accord."” (Zephaniah 3:8-9)

This is not so much a difficult saying as an interesting saying. Zephaniah is regarded as one of the least known prophets, a contemporary of the more familiar Jeremiah, just predating the reforms of King Josiah and recovery of the Hebrew Book of the Law (2 Kings 22:8-13). In the Sabbath Jewish synagogue services, accompanying the reading of the Torah scroll, the Haphtoroth readings from the Prophets completely omit Zephaniah, although one verse (3:20) is anonymously^F1 used in the preliminary blessings.

This section of Zephaniah appears to talk about an end-time gathering of nations, for judgement, followed by a restoration. Only then will the peoples serve God in unity and purity with “one accord”, literally the idiom “one shoulder”, a picture perhaps of oxen united under one yoke. The purity of “lip, language, speech” (Strong’s #8193) could be taken as an Isaiah-like (Isaiah 6:5-7) cleansing of impure worship, idolatry and speech:

"Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts." ⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. ⁷ And he touched my mouth with it, and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged."

Some people, however, have seen in these verses a prophecy of the reversal of Babel, the restoration of all nations to one language in the time of Messiah’s coming. It is thought of as a messianic prediction within Judaism. Many regard this as either a restored Hebrew tongue on a new or millennial earth or the English language (probably that of the King James version!) as it grows to dominate the modern world. A further thought is added by the fact that since the restoration of Israel to nationhood was preceded by the recovery of Hebrew as a spoken language that this passage may speak of this. Most would accept though that the passage talks of “peoples” and therefore probably refers to more than just the Jewish nation, although the modern restoration of the Jews has seen them brought back to Israel from all “nations” were they were scattered, a remarkable prophetic even in itself.

A further layer of meaning may be triggered by the fact that this is the only verse (v.8) in the entire Hebrew Bible to contain all 22 of the Hebrew letters and all 5 of their additional final forms (some Hebrew letters change shape at the end of a word, much like the Greek σ/ς sigma), a further 25 verses^F2 contain all of the letters without their final forms. This is the equivalent of “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” in Hebrew, a feature known as "pangrams", or "holalphabetic sentences", as a variant why not try “Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs”, or the perfect pangram, only 26 letters in total too, “Mr Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx”. Hence this verse is used for writing practice by scribes producing Torah scrolls.

Supposedly, other than our Hebrew text above, the first pangram was made 500 years ago by printers wanting a test sentence using all the letters for a specimen book. Despite being Latin it is still used today by typographical designers and WordPerfect sample documents.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,
diam nonnumy eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolo...

It seems to be composed of fragments of a passage in Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written about 45 B.C.:

Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum
quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit...

Loosely translated as, “There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it, and wants to have it, simply because it is pain...”.

Fortunately, whilst the Hebrew verse initially speaks about pouring out God’s wrath and anger, it is more hopefully followed, by a united world of one pure tongue and language, worshipping one God.

FOOTNOTES:
F1: Anonymously in the Ashkenazi liturgy although cited as by “Zephaniah your seer” in the Sephardic rite.
F2: Ex 16:16; Deut 4:34; Jos 23:13; 2 Ki 4:39; 6:32; 7:8; 2 Chr 26:11; Ezra 7:28; Neh 3:7; Est 3:13; Eccl 4:8; Is 5:25; 66:17; Jer 22:3; 32:29; Ezek 17:9; 38:12; Dan 2:45; 3:22; 4:20; 7:19; Hos 10:8; 13:2; Am 9:13; So 3:8; Zech 6:11; see Ginsburg II:456; Kelley, Page H.; Mynatt, Daniel S.; and Crawford, Timothy G. 1998. The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Introduction and Annotated Glossary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, p.72.

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