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desolate places

Zephaniah 2:4-15

Zephaniah 2:4 For Gaza will be abandoned, and Ashkelon will become a sinister desolation. Ashdod will be driven out at noon, and Ekron will be uprooted.
Zephaniah 2:5 Woe, you who live on the seacoast, nation of the Cherethites! The word of Yahveh is against you, Canaan, land of the Philistines: I will destroy you until there is no one left.
Zephaniah 2:6 The seacoast will become pasturelands with caves for shepherds and pens for sheep.
Zephaniah 2:7 The coastland will belong to the remnant of the house of Judah; they will find pasture there. They will lie down in the evening among the houses of Ashkelon, for Yahveh their God will return to them and restore their fortunes.
Zephaniah 2:8 I have heard the taunting of Moab and the insults of the Ammonites, who have taunted my people and threatened their territory.
Zephaniah 2:9 Therefore, as I live – this is the declaration of Yahveh of Armies, the God of Israel – Moab will be like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah: a place overgrown with weeds, a salt pit, and a permanent sinister desolation. The remnant of my people will plunder them; the remainder of my nation will dispossess them.
Zephaniah 2:10 This is what they get for their pride, because they have taunted and acted arrogantly against the people of Yahveh of Armies.
Zephaniah 2:11 Yahveh will be terrifying to them when he starves all the gods of the land. Then all the distant coasts and islands of the nations will bow in worship to him, each in its own place.
Zephaniah 2:12 You Cushites will also be slain by my sword.
Zephaniah 2:13 He will also stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria; he will make Nineveh a sinister desolation, dry as the open country.
Zephaniah 2:14 Herds will lie down in the middle of it, every kind of wild animal. Both eagle owls and herons will roost in the capitals of its pillars. Their calls will sound from the window, but devastation will be on the threshold, for he will expose the cedar work.
Zephaniah 2:15 This is the jubilant city that lives in security, that thinks to herself: I exist, and there is no one else. What a desolation she has become, a place for wild animals to lie down! Everyone who passes by her scoffs and shakes his fist.

desolate places

How do you starve a god? You take away the people who worship him. That is what the LORD promises to do to all the false gods which the inhabitants of the nations worship. Instead, to the LORD they will bow down, each in its place, all the lands of the nations. The judgment will result in desolate places, and those who are left will not cling to their idols. They will seek the one true God.

LORD, make us wise enough not to wait until all the other contestants are eliminated. May we seek you now.