¹⁴ You pierced with his own arrows the head of [the enemy’s] hordes; they came out as a whirlwind to scatter me [the people], rejoicing as if to devour the poor [Israel] secretly.

¹⁵ You have trodden the sea with Your horses, [beside] the heap of great and surging waters.^(A)

¹⁶ I heard and my [whole inner self] trembled; my lips quivered at the sound. Rottenness enters into my bones and under me [down to my feet]; I tremble. I will wait quietly for the day of trouble and distress when there shall come up against [my] people him who is about to invade and oppress them.

¹⁷ Though the fig tree does not blossom and there is no fruit on the vines, [though] the product of the olive fails and the fields yield no food, though the flock is cut off from the fold and there are no cattle in the stalls,

¹⁸ Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the [victorious] God of my salvation!^(B)

¹⁹ The Lord God is my Strength, my personal bravery, and my invincible army; He makes my feet like hinds’ feet and will make me to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make [spiritual] progress upon my high places [of trouble, suffering, or responsibility]!

For the Chief Musician; with my stringed instruments.

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

² By taking away I will make an end and I will utterly consume and sweep away all things from the face of the earth, says the Lord.

³ I will consume and sweep away man and beast; I will consume and sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. I will overthrow the stumbling blocks (the idols) with the wicked [worshipers], and I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth, says the Lord.

⁴ I will also stretch out My hand over Judah and over all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place and the name of the idol priests with the [false] priests,

⁵ And those who worship the starry host of the heavens upon their housetops and those who [pretend to] worship the Lord and swear by and to Him and yet swear by and to [the heathen god Molech or] Malcam [their idol king],

⁶ And those who have drawn back from following the Lord and those who have not sought the Lord nor inquired for, inquired of, and required the Lord [as their first necessity].

⁷ [Hush!] Be silent before the Lord God, for the day [of the vengeance] of the Lord is near; for the Lord has prepared a sacrifice, and He has set apart [for His use] those who have accepted His invitation.^(A)

⁸ And on the day of the Lord’s sacrifice, I will punish the officials and the king’s sons and all who are clothed in [lavish] foreign apparel [instead of the Jewish dress, with its reminders to obey God’s commandments].^(B)

⁹ In the same day also will I punish all those who leap swiftly on or over the threshold [upon entering houses to steal], who fill their master’s house with violence and deceit and fraud.

¹⁰ And in that day, says the Lord, there shall be heard the voice of crying from the Fish Gate [in the wall of Jerusalem] and a wailing from the Second Quarter or Lower City and a great crashing and sound of destruction from the hills.

¹¹ Wail, you inhabitants of the Mortar [those located in the hollow part of the city]! For all the merchant people, like the people of Canaan, will be silent [entirely destroyed]; all those who weighed out silver and were loaded with it will be cut off.

¹² And at that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish the men who [like old wine] are thickening and settling on their lees, who say in their hearts, The Lord will not do good, nor will He do evil.

¹³ And their wealth shall become plunder and their houses a desolation. Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink the wine from them.^(C)

1 From Paul, a bond servant of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) called to be an apostle, (a special messenger) set apart to [preach] the Gospel (good news) of and from God,

² Which He promised in advance [long ago] through His prophets in the sacred Scriptures—

³ [The Gospel] regarding His Son, Who as to the flesh (His human nature) was descended from David,

⁴ And [as to His divine nature] according to the Spirit of holiness was openly ^[a]designated the Son of God in power [in a striking, triumphant and miraculous manner] by His resurrection from the dead, even Jesus Christ our Lord (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

⁵ It is through Him that we have received grace (God’s unmerited favor) and [our] apostleship to promote obedience to the faith and make disciples for His name’s sake among all the nations,

⁶ And this includes you, called of Jesus Christ and invited [as you are] to belong to Him.

⁷ To [you then] all God’s beloved ones in Rome, called to be saints and designated for a consecrated life: Grace and spiritual blessing and peace be yours from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

⁸ First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because [the report of] your faith is made known to all the world and is ^[b]commended everywhere.

⁹ For God is my witness, Whom I serve with my [whole] spirit [rendering priestly and spiritual service] in [preaching] the Gospel and [telling] the good news of His Son, how incessantly I always mention you when at my prayers.

¹⁰ I keep pleading that somehow by God’s will I may now at last prosper and come to you.

¹¹ For I am yearning to see you, that I may impart and share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen and establish you;

¹² That is, that we may be mutually strengthened and encouraged and comforted by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.

¹³ I want you to know, brethren, that many times I have planned and intended to come to you, though thus far I have been hindered and prevented, in order that I might have some fruit (some result of my labors) among you, as I have among the rest of the Gentiles.

¹⁴ Both to Greeks and to barbarians (to the cultured and to the uncultured), both to the wise and the foolish, I have an obligation to discharge and a duty to perform and a debt to pay.

¹⁵ So, for my part, I am willing and eagerly ready to preach the Gospel to you also who are in Rome.

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the Gospel (good news) of Christ, for it is God’s power working unto salvation [for deliverance from eternal death] to everyone who believes with a personal trust and a confident surrender and firm reliance, to the Jew first and also to the Greek,

¹⁷ For in the Gospel a righteousness which God ascribes is revealed, both springing from faith and leading to faith [disclosed through the way of faith that arouses to more faith]. As it is written, The man who through faith is just and upright shall live and shall live by faith.^(A)

¹⁸ For God’s [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative.

¹⁹ For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them.

²⁰ For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification],^(B)

²¹ Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor and glorify Him as God or give Him thanks. But instead they became futile and ^[a]godless in their thinking [with vain imaginings, foolish reasoning, and stupid speculations] and their senseless minds were darkened.

²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves].

²³ And by them the glory and majesty and excellence of the immortal God were exchanged for and represented by images, resembling mortal man and birds and beasts and reptiles.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their [own] hearts to sexual impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves [abandoning them to the degrading power of sin],

²⁵ Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever! Amen (so be it).^(C)

²⁶ For this reason God gave them over and abandoned them to vile affections and degrading passions. For their women exchanged their natural function for an unnatural and abnormal one,

²⁷ And the men also turned from natural relations with women and were set ablaze (burning out, consumed) with lust for one another—men committing shameful acts with men and suffering in their own ^[b]bodies and personalities the inevitable consequences and penalty of their wrong-doing and going astray, which was [their] fitting retribution.

²⁸ And so, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or approve of Him or consider Him worth the knowing, God gave them over to a base and condemned mind to do things not proper or decent but loathsome,

²⁹ Until they were filled (permeated and saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, iniquity, grasping and covetous greed, and malice. [They were] full of envy and jealousy, murder, strife, deceit and treachery, ill will and cruel ways. [They were] secret backbiters and gossipers,

³⁰ Slanderers, hateful to and hating God, full of insolence, arrogance, [and] boasting; inventors of new forms of evil, disobedient and undutiful to parents.

³¹ [They were] without understanding, conscienceless and faithless, heartless and loveless [and] merciless.

³² Though they are fully aware of God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them themselves but approve and applaud others who practice them.