1. Zephaniah 2:15 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

What is so arrogant about Nineveh’s statement, “I am and there is no one else”?

Zephaniah 2:15 (ESV)

15 This is the exultant city that lived securely, that said in her heart, “I am, and there is no one else.” What a desolation she has become, a lair for wild beasts! Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist.

These words claim a status of pre-eminence that no human being is worthy of, a status reserved for the Lord alone (Isaiah 45:5–6, Isaiah 45:18, Isaiah 45:21–22; Isaiah 46:9; Mark 12:32). For any human to say such things is blasphemous.

The people of Judah must have thought of the words of the Lord when they heard these words. Repeatedly in the books of Deuteronomy and Isaiah we are told that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him (Deuteronomy 4:35; see also Isaiah 45:5).1