Zephaniah — Editorial Guide

Editorial guide

This reading edition follows the Saints-priority English text. Source chapter and verse labels are retained, including textual additions and numbered gaps. Square or double brackets signal textual or translation qualifications retained from the companion edition. This is a V1 working translation awaiting specialist review.

Final reference review

All fifty-three Greek reading units and all fifty-three Hebrew companion units were checked against the German Bible Society’s Rahlfs–Hanhart (2006) and BHS (1997) online main texts. No verse is missing. This review does not include the critical apparatus, manuscript collation, an exhaustive reception survey or independent specialist certification.

Translation notes

1:9: Openly qualifies the act of judgment; the Greek gateways and house of the Lord remain distinct from the Hebrew threshold and masters’ house.

2:12: Slain renders traumātiai in this death-judgment context. LSJ, sense II, attests the word for a person slain in the Septuagint; wounded is another lexical sense, not a necessary contrast with Hebrew. Hebrew shifts from you to they; Greek continues you.

3:11,13: From you and the causal For are explicit in Greek and are retained. The remnant at 3:13 continues the sentence begun at 3:12.

3:17–20: Festival language remains at Greek 3:17, and shame at Greek 3:20. The Hebrew companion preserves its own clause boundaries, including the difficult shift to her at 3:18. The subject of Greek they at 3:20 is not explicitly named.

Reception notes

2:11; 3:8–12: Augustine, City of God XVIII.33, cites 3:8, then 2:11 and 3:9–12 with the remnant connection, interpreting them through Christ and the calling of the nations. His reordered citations and the wording of the English patristic translation are reception evidence, not the biblical base text.

3:10: Rashi identifies the Hebrew supplicants as those praying to God and the scattered community as those God dispersed. This Jewish commentary explains Hebrew expressions absent from the selected Greek verse; they are not inserted into the reading text.

Sources checked: Rahlfs–Hanhart 1, 2, 3; BHS 1, 2, 3; LSJ τραυματίας II; Augustine XVIII.33; Rashi 3:10.

Reviewed: Sep 11, 2026

Companion translation and editorial notes: Saints Translation: Zephaniah [V1]