Zephaniah 2 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Gather yourselves like stubble, gather, you nation nobody wanted,

before the decree gives birth and the day blows past like chaff, before Yahweh's burning anger comes down on you, before the day of Yahweh's anger comes down on you.

Look for Yahweh, all you who are low in the land, you who do what he says is right. Look for justice. Look for a low place. Maybe you will be hidden on the day of Yahweh's anger.

Gaza will be left empty, Ashkelon will be a ruin. Ashdod will be driven out at noon, and Ekron torn up by the roots.

Grief is coming for you who live along the sea, you nation of Cherethites. The word of Yahweh is against you, Canaan, land of the Philistines. I will wreck you until nobody lives there.

The seacoast will turn into open pasture, into wells for shepherds and pens for sheep.

The coast will belong to what is left of the house of Judah. They will graze their flocks along it, and at evening they will lie down in the houses of Ashkelon, because Yahweh their God will come for them and bring back everything they lost.

I have heard how Moab insults my people and how the Ammonites sneer, how they mocked my people and made themselves big along their border.

So, as surely as I live, declares Yahweh who commands armies, the God of Israel, Moab will end up like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah: a patch of weeds, a salt pit, a waste with no end to it. What is left of my people will strip them, and the survivors of my nation will take their land.

This is what their pride buys them, because they mocked and made themselves big against the people of Yahweh who commands armies.

Yahweh will be terrifying to them. He will starve every god on earth down to nothing, and people will bow to him from wherever they stand, every island and coast of the nations.

You Cushites too: you will be run through by my sword.

He will stretch his hand out toward the north and wreck Assyria. He will leave Nineveh a ruin, dry as the desert.

Herds will lie down in the middle of her, every kind of wild animal. Desert owl and screech owl will roost on the tops of her columns. A voice will sing in the window, rubble will sit in the doorway, because the cedar work is stripped away.

This is the city that partied, that lived without a worry, that told herself, "I am, and there is no one else." Look at her now, a ruin, a place for animals to bed down. Everyone who goes past hisses and waves her away with a hand.