Zephaniah, a Hebrew prophet who prophesied in the interval between the decline and fall of Nineveh and the hostile advance of Babylon; forewarned the nation of the judgment of God impending over them for their ungodliness, and exhorted them to repentance as the only way of averting the inevitable doom, while he at the same time encouraged the faithful to persevere in their godly course with the assurance that the day of judgment would be succeeded by a day of glorious deliverance, that they would yet become "a name and a praise among the people of the earth."