Zephaniah son of Cushi צפניה בן כושי

The opening verse gives his lineage four generations back — to Hezekiah — and a dating: the days of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah. He is the only one of the Twelve whose ancestry is written out at such length, and because of it he is sometimes taken for a descendant of the royal house.

His years are the years of Josiah's reform: the scroll found in the Temple, the high places cleared, the altars destroyed. Zephaniah speaks of what the reform does not reach: idolatry left "as a remnant," priests bowing to the host of heaven from the rooftops, and men congealed "upon their lees" — complacent, sure that nothing will happen.

Hence his best-known image: "and at that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps." Not thunder and lightning — a lamp in the hand, a methodical going through the corners.

The second theme is "the day of the LORD," and Zephaniah describes it more densely than anyone: "a day of wrath is that day, a day of trouble and distress, a day of ruin and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of cloud and thick mist, a day of the shofar and the alarm." Part of the liturgy of the Days of Awe grew out of these lines.

The book ends, as almost all of the Twelve do, with a turn to consolation: a remnant of the people — "a poor and lowly people" who will do no wrong and speak no lie — and a promise to bring back the exiled "at the time when I gather you."