rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple in the early Persian period immediately following the end of the Babylonian exile. Such a sequence suggests that the book of Zephaniah, which is fundamentally concerned with the threat of judgment posed to Jerusalem and Judah on the so-called Day of YHWH, is to be read not in relation to King Josiah’s efforts at religious reform and national restoration in the late seventh century BCE,4 but instead in relation to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, Judah,