Bible Strands
Zephaniah 1:13
Their wealth will be plundered and their houses laid waste. They will build houses but not inhabit them, and plant vineyards but never drink their wine.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Zephaniah addresses the complacent residents of Jerusalem who claim the LORD will not act, announcing the imminent Day of the LORD.
The words — The Hebrew שׁממָה (shema'mah) means "desolation," and בָּנוּ (banu) means "they will build," which frame the verse's claim that construction and agriculture will yield no habitation or harvest.
The thread — This pattern of confiscated property and fruitless labor appears in Deuteronomy 28:30, Amos 5:11, and Micah 6:15.
Why it lands — The text states that human effort becomes void when divine judgment intervenes, requiring the reader to reject self-sufficient complacency.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Therefore their goods shall become a booty, and their houses a desolation: they shall also build houses, but not inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof.
Cross-references
- Amos 5:11 Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact from him a tax of grain, you will never live in the stone houses you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted.
- Micah 6:15 You will sow but not reap; you will press olives but not anoint yourselves with oil; you will tread grapes but not drink the wine.
- Deuteronomy 28:30 You will be pledged in marriage to a woman, but another man will violate her. You will build a house but will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but will not enjoy its fruit.
- Deuteronomy 28:39 You will plant and cultivate vineyards, but will neither drink the wine nor gather the grapes, because worms will eat them.
- Jeremiah 9:19 For the sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! How great is our shame! For we have abandoned the land because our dwellings have been torn down.’”
- Jeremiah 15:13 Your wealth and your treasures I will give up as plunder, without charge for all your sins within all your borders.
- Ezekiel 7:21 And I will hand these things over as plunder to foreigners and loot to the wicked of the earth, who will defile them.
- Deuteronomy 28:51 They will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain or new wine or oil, no calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks, until they have caused you to perish.
- Isaiah 5:8 Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field until no place is left and you live alone in the land.
- Isaiah 6:11 Then I asked: “How long, O Lord?” And He replied: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left unoccupied and the land is desolate and ravaged,