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Zephaniah, Prophet of Divine Protection, Part 6, Moab, Ammon, and Edom

Zephaniah 2:8 extends the destruction of the day of the Lord to Moab and Ammon:

⁸ “I have heard the taunting of Moab and the revilings of the sons of Ammon, with which they have taunted My people and become arrogant against their territory. ⁹ Therefore as I live,” declares the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “surely Moab will be like Sodom and the sons of Ammon like Gomorrah—a place possessed by nettles and salt pits, and a perpetual desolation. The remnant of My people will plunder them and the remainder of My nation will inherit them.”

Moab and Ammon were the children of Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19:36-38). Though Lot and his daughters escaped the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Zephaniah tells us that the nations that came from them will be desolated like Sodom and Gomorrah. To this day there are tower-like structures and cliffs made of crystallized salt, especially around Mount Sodom (a ridge of pure rock salt near the southwest shore of the Dead Sea). The entire area is barren, dry, and inhospitable, much like the biblical descriptions.

The territory of Moab and Ammon is now primarily the Kingdom of Jordan, located east of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. Its proximity to the modern Zionist state makes it vulnerable to the nuclear attack prophesied in Isaiah 29:1-6, because nuclear fallout drifts beyond national borders. It appears that the western portion of Jordan will become as uninhabitable as the modern Israeli state in the day of the Lord.

Moses’ Warning

Moses seemed to suggest this as well in his warning to Israel. In Deuteronomy 29:20-23 he says,

²⁰ The Lord shall never be willing to forgive him [idolatrous Israelites], but rather the anger of the Lord and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹ Then the Lord will single him out for adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant which are written in this book of the law [i.e., Deuteronomy 28]. ²² Now the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, when they see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which the Lord has afflicted it, will say, ²³ “All its land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.”

Moses thus prophesied the result of Israel’s worship of false gods. When Israel and Judah were sent into exile many centuries later, their destruction, though terrible, was not like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. The land was not full of salt pits, nor was it “a burning waste, unsown and unproductive.” It is not until Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 29 that such utter destruction is revealed as an inevitable occurrence.

Jeremiah’s Warning

Even Jeremiah adds to this revelation of judgment. Jeremiah 23:14 says,

¹⁴ Also among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: the committing of adultery and walking in falsehood; and they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one has turned back from his wickedness. All of them have become to Me like Sodom, and her inhabitants like Gomorrah.

Speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem the prophet continues in Lamentations 4:6, “For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom.” In other words, they are more worthy of judgment than Sodom was.

Edom, too, will be judged in similar fashion. Jeremiah 49:17, 18 says,

¹⁷ Edom will become an object of horror; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss at all its wounds. ¹⁸ “Like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah with its neighbors,” says the Lord, “no one will live there, nor will a son of man reside in it.”

As with Moab and Ammon, the nation of Edom no longer exists under its original name. Edom (Greek: Idumea) was conquered by Judah in 126 B.C. Its people were given a choice to convert to Judaism or to be driven into exile. They chose to convert, and as Josephus tells us in his Antiquities of the Jews, XIII, ix, 1. Here we read:

“Hyrcanus took also Dora and Marissa, cities of Idumea, and subdued all the Idumeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would be circumcised, and make use of the laws of the Jews; and they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted to the use of circumcision and the rest of the Jews’ ways of living; at which time therefore, this befell them, that they were hereafter no other than Jews.”

All of the end-time prophecies of Edom (Malachi 1:1-4, for example) must yet be fulfilled within some element of world Jewry. Malachi speaks of Edom’s desire to return to the old land and rebuild it. The Zionists fit this description. (For a longer explanation, see chapter 2 of my book, Who is a Jew?)

https://godskingdom.org/studies/books/who-is-a-jew/chapter-2-genealogical-and-converted-jews/

John’s Warning

In Revelation 11:8 the apostle links Jerusalem to Sodom itself, saying,

⁸ And their dead bodies [the two witnesses] will lie in the street of the great city which mystically [pneumatikos, “spiritually”] is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.

John’s main focus appears to be on the immoral character Jerusalem, as well as the bondage of Egypt; nonetheless, it implies divine judgment upon Jerusalem similar to God’s judgment upon both Egypt and Sodom. Zephaniah thus tells us that the Kingdom of Jordan will be devastated in the same way that Jerusalem is destroyed. Furthermore, this would have to occur in the future—that is, after John wrote the book of Revelation.

Jesus Himself told His disciples in Matthew 10:14, 15,

¹⁴ Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet. ¹⁵ Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.

The two witnesses in Revelation 11 were said to be rejected and killed by the people of Jerusalem on account of their witness of the gospel of Christ. Jesus told His disciples the result of Jerusalem’s rejection of the gospel.