Do you ever read a passage and wonder if it really means what you think it does? Yeah, me too. Well, the verse below did that to me this morning.
“The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior.
He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love,
He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.” (Zephaniah 3:17)
As believers, we know that, not only is God in our “midst”, He is in us. We also know that He is a victorious warrior, as He defeated death in His resurrection. But what do the other phrases in that verse really mean?
“God will exult over you with joy”
The first thing I learned is that “will exult” is in the imperfect tense, meaning that it will never come to an end or be completed. “Will exult” (sus) means to be bright and cheerful; to be glad. When God thinks of believers, He greatly rejoices and His heart is glad! And if that isn’t moving enough, He does so with JOY!
Think of it like this. When you go to a sports’ game, you are bright and cheerful; your heart is glad that you are there. But if you add the fact that your child is on the team; well, that relationship takes it to another level. It adds JOY to the cheerful heart you had being at the game.
One of the two words the Hebrew language uses for “joy” is mirth. I confess I had to look that word up to make sure I knew what it meant. The dictionary defines mirth as gladness or gaiety as shown by or accompanied with laughter. Looking back to the sports’ game analogy – It’s like God, happily watching the game, and then saying with a proud chuckle, “Hey, see that player right there? He belongs to ME!!!” God, our heavenly Abba, does this when He looks at us as believers.
“God will be quiet in His love”
Honestly, given the phrase prior, this phrase stumped me. It seemed that we were going from a cheerful, joyful laughter to God being quiet. I had to dig a bit more to figure it out, and looking at the Hebrew meanings of the words in this phrase didn’t help a whole lot either. LOL. I decided to look at a few different translations to see if they would give me some clarity. They did! The English Standard Version stated that phrase like this — “He will quiet you by His love”. Well, that made perfect sense.
Sticking with the sports’ analogy, imagine you are on the field, playing a game against a tough-to-beat team. You’ve been fighting hard. You’ve been giving it your all, but the other team seems to score every time your team does. You’re getting discouraged and really worried. But then, you look up into the stands and see your dad. Seeing his love for you, coupled with the pride in His eyes, quiets your worries and fear, giving you the wherewithal to keep going.
Our heavenly Abba is up in heaven, ready and willing for His love for us to quiet whatever worries and fears we may be experiencing at any given time. Oh how I love Him!!
“He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy”
This phrase really impacted me. “Will rejoice” is also in the imperfect tense. The Hebrew word used for this phrase is (gil) which means to spin around (under the influence of great emotion). This describes when your heart is so full that it can’t contain itself. It comes out in action. The body responds to the heart. God’s love for us is so great, He can’t contain it!!
The phrase “with shouts of joy” (rinnah) describes a shout of gladness or a proclamation of triumph. The proclamation of triumph really tied in to the description of God in the beginning of the verse – “A victorious warrior”.
You know, thinking of the sports’ analogy didn’t do this phrase justice because there are “battles” here on earth that we may lose as we wrestle with our sin nature. BUT this verse proclaims God “the victorious warrior”, and because of our position in Him, we as believers share in the victory won by our Victorious Warrior!! When God looks at us as believers, He shows great emotion because in Him, we too share in His victory over the world, over sin, and over death!
“But thanks be to God!
He gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
~~1 Corinthians 15:57~~