¹ Let the horn be sounded in Zion, and a war-cry in my holy mountain; let all the people of the land be troubled: for the day of the Lord is coming;

² For a day of dark and deep shade is near, a day of cloud and black night: like a black cloud a great and strong people is covering the mountains; there has never been any like them and will not be after them again, from generation to generation.

³ Before them fire sends destruction, and after them flame is burning: the land is like the garden of Eden Before them, and after them an unpeopled waste; truly, nothing has been kept safe from them.

⁴ Their form is like the form of horses, and they are running like war-horses.

⁵ Like the sound of war-carriages they go jumping on the tops of the mountains; like the noise of a flame of fire burning up the grain-stems, like a strong people lined up for the fight.

⁶ At their coming the people are bent with pain: all faces become red together.

⁷ They are running like strong men, they go over the wall like men of war; every man goes straight on his way, their lines are not broken.

⁸ No one is pushing against another; everyone goes straight on his way: bursting through the sword points, their order is not broken.

⁹ They make a rush on the town, running on the wall; they go up into the houses and in through the windows like a thief.

¹⁰ The earth is troubled before them and the heavens are shaking: the sun and the moon have become dark, and the stars keep back their shining:

¹¹ And the Lord is thundering before his forces; for very great is his army; for he is strong who gives effect to his word: for the day of the Lord is great and greatly to be feared, and who has strength against it?

¹² But even now, says the Lord, come back to me with all your heart, keeping from food, with weeping and with sorrow:

¹³ Let your hearts be broken, and not your clothing, and come back to the Lord your God: for he is full of grace and pity, slow to be angry and great in mercy, ready to be turned from his purpose of punishment.

¹⁴ May it not be that he will again let his purpose be changed and let a blessing come after him, even a meal offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?

¹⁵ Let a horn be sounded in Zion, let a time be fixed for going without food, have a holy meeting:

¹⁶ Get the people together, make the mass of the people holy, send for the old men, get together the children and babies at the breast: let the newly married man come out of his room and the bride from her tent.

¹⁷ Let the priests, the servants of the Lord, be weeping between the covered way and the altar, and let them say, Have mercy on your people, O Lord, do not give up your heritage to shame, so that the nations become their rulers: why let them say among the peoples, Where is their God?

¹⁸ Then the Lord had a care for the honour of his land and had pity on his people.

¹⁹ And the Lord made answer and said to his people, See, I will send you grain and wine and oil in full measure: and I will no longer let you be shamed among the nations:

²⁰ I will send the one from the north far away from you, driving him into a dry and waste land, with his front to the sea of the east and his back to the sea of the west, and the smell of him will go up, even his evil smell will go up.

²¹ Have no fear, O land; be glad with great joy; for the Lord has done great things.

²² Have no fear, you beasts of the field, for the grass-lands of the waste are becoming green, for the trees are producing fruit, the fig-tree and the vine give out their strength.

²³ Be glad, then, you children of Zion, and have joy in the Lord your God: for he gives you food in full measure, making the rain come down for you, the early and the late rain as at the first.

²⁴ And the floors will be full of grain, and the crushing-places overflowing with wine and oil.

²⁵ I will give back to you the years which were food for the locust, the plant-worm, the field-fly, and the worm, my great army which I sent among you.

²⁶ You will have food in full measure, and give praise to the name of the Lord your God, who has done wonders for you:

²⁷ And you will be certain that I am in Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other: and my people will never be shamed.

²⁸ And after that, it will come about, says the Lord, that I will send my spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters will be prophets, your old men will have dreams, your young men will see visions:

²⁹ And on the servants and the servant-girls in those days I will send my spirit.

³⁰ And I will let wonders be seen in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke.

³¹ The sun will be made dark and the moon turned to blood, before the great day of the Lord comes, a day to be feared.

³² And it will be that whoever makes his prayer to the name of the Lord will be kept safe: for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem some will be kept safe, as the Lord has said, and will be among the small band marked out by the Lord.

¹ The word of the Lord which came to Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah.

² I will take away everything from the face of the earth, says the Lord.

³ I will take away man and beast; I will take away the birds of the heaven and the fishes of the sea; causing the downfall of the evil-doers, and cutting man off from the face of the earth, says the Lord.

⁴ And my hand will be stretched out on Judah and on all the people of Jerusalem, cutting off the name of the Baal from this place, and the name of the false priests,

⁵ And the worshippers of the army of heaven on the house-tops, and the Lord's worshippers who take oaths by Milcom,

⁶ And those who are turned back from going after the Lord, and those who have not made prayer to the Lord or got directions from him.

⁷ Let there be no sound before the Lord God: for the day of the Lord is near: for the Lord has made ready an offering, he has made his guests holy.

⁸ And it will come about in the day of the Lord's offering, that I will send punishment on the rulers and the king's sons and all who are clothed in robes from strange lands.

⁹ And in that day I will send punishment on all those who come jumping over the doorstep and make their master's house full of violent behaviour and deceit.

¹⁰ And in that day, says the Lord, there will be the sound of a cry from the fish doorway, and an outcry from the new town, and a great thundering from the hills, and cries of grief from the people of the Hollow;

¹¹ Because of the downfall of all the people of Canaan: all those who were weighted down with silver have been cut off.

¹² And it will come about at that time, that I will go searching through Jerusalem with lights; and I will send punishment on the men who have become like wine stored over-long, who say to themselves, The Lord will not do good and will not do evil.

¹³ And their wealth will be violently taken away, and their houses will be made waste: they will go on building houses and never living in them, and planting vine-gardens but not drinking the wine from them.

¹⁴ The great day of the Lord is near, it is near and coming very quickly; the bitter day of the Lord is near, coming on more quickly than a man of war.

¹⁵ That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and sorrow, a day of wasting and destruction, a day of dark night and deep shade, a day of cloud and thick dark.

¹⁶ A day of sounding the horn and the war-cry against the walled towns and the high towers.

¹⁷ And I will send trouble on men so that they will go about like the blind, because they have done evil against the Lord: and their blood will be drained out like dust, and their strength like waste.

¹⁸ Even their silver and their gold will not be able to keep them safe in the day of the Lord's wrath; but all the land will be burned up in the fire of his bitter wrath: for he will put an end, even suddenly, to all who are living in the land.