Later text
The LORD will be terrifying to them when He starves all the gods of the earth. Then the nations of every shore will bow in worship to Him, each in its own place.
Intertextuality Pair
Echo
Later text
The LORD will be terrifying to them when He starves all the gods of the earth. Then the nations of every shore will bow in worship to Him, each in its own place.
Earlier text
Genesis 10:5BSB
From these, the maritime peoples separated into their territories, according to their languages, by clans within their nations.
Zephaniah 2:11 declares that "the nations of every shore will bow in worship to Him, each in its own place," echoing the phrase from Genesis 10:5 where the descendants of Japheth are described as "the maritime peoples" (אִיֵּי הַגּוֹיִם, iyyei haggoyim, "islands/coastlands of the nations") who spread into their territories. Genesis 10:5 describes the scattering of nations into their respective territories after the flood; Zephaniah envisions these same far-flung coastland peoples turning from their false gods to worship Yahweh. The allusion transforms the Table of Nations from a record of dispersion into a prophecy of universal worship—the very peoples who separated into distant coastlands will each worship the LORD "in its own place." Zephaniah 2:11 itself supplies the mechanism for this reversal: the LORD "will starve all the gods of the earth," so that the scattered nations of the Table of Nations become, at last, gathered worshipers of the one true God.