7 Reasons To Consider Zephaniah 3:14-15 As Zeph's Peak

Zephaniah 3:14-15:
"Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice
and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away the judgments against you;
he has cleared away your enemies.
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst;
you shall never again fear evil." (ESV)

Peak can be defined as "a zone of turbulence," where there are significant shifts and departures from the typical discourse structures (we are following Longacre's definitions and categories both here and below). There are at least 7 reasons to count 3:14-15 as Zephaniah's hortatory discourse peak.

1. Rhetorical underlining - repetition: 4 imperatives are repeated in 3:14 (more than in any other verse in Zeph).
2. Concentration of participants - crowded stage: Zion, Israel, Jerusalem, daughter, and God/LORD are all participants addressed or discussed elsewhere in the book.
3. Heightened vividness - shift in verbal balance: The 4 imperatives in 3:14 are not of the same roots, unlike how Zeph had done when stacking imperatives (2:1, 3).
4. Heightened vividness - shift in tense: The only time in Zeph that imperatives are grounded in qatal verbs (3:15, "has taken away...has cleared away").
5. Heightened vividness - shift in person and/or number: The only time in Zeph that the book has feminine singular imperatives.
6. Incidence of Particles - loss of prose particles: Prose particles are found in the preceding and following sections, but none in 3:14-15.
7. Change of Pace - shift in number of conjunctions: Zephaniah always grounds his imperatives with some conjunction, but 3:15 does not contain any.

An 8th argument may be a change of vantage point/theme in Zephaniah from judgment to deliverance, and 3:14-15 sits squarely in the middle of this change at a rhetorical high point (3:8-20 focuses on deliverance).

(Adapted from my thesis, "'King of Israel' and 'Do not fear, daughter of Zion': The Use of Zephaniah 3 in John 12.")