Today is the 19th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian.

It's great to be here with you today as we move through this week toward Christmas and continue the journey day by day, step by step

that we've been on since the beginning of the year.

And as we've noticed in these last couple of weeks, we're reading quickly through the Old Testament

because we're working through the minor prophets.

And once again, that's not because they're less important, it's just because they're shorter than the major profits, which are a lot longer.

And so we're at the ninth book in the minor profits of 12.

And today's book is called Zephania, and we'll read it in its entirety today.

We know very little about who Zephania was.

The only information to really go on is the text itself.

The Lord gave this message to Zephania, when Josiah, son of Ammon, was King of Judah. Zephania was the son of Koshi, son of Ammon was king of Judah.

Zephania was the son of Kushi, son of Gadalliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezakiah.

And that last little bit is a clue because that's unusual to name four generations instead of just the

son of and so maybe Zeph and I had traced his ancestry four generations back to King Hezakiah.

And if we remember, Hezakiah was a good king who honored the Lord and reformed to Israel.

And so that could explain Zephania's awareness of the world around him.

His lineage might have also given him credibility to the prophetic work, but we don't know for sure.

Zephania's name means God has hidden and he tells us that the message was given during

the reign of Josiah and that would put him in the early to mid 600s

BC and that would make him a contemporary with some other prophets like

Jeremiah and there are scholars who very much believe Zephania was familiar with the writings of the other prophets.

Profits like Isaiah, because there are similarities in this language and tone. And Zephania is also a little bit different because

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