In his use of the day of the Lord, Zephaniah does not focus on a specific time period. Rather, it refers to an indefinite period when God intervenes decisively in human history, for judgment or blessing (depending on one’s relationship with the Lord). The emphasis in the day of the Lord is on Lord, Yahweh, the one who interrupts history and human affairs in an extraordinary way. As someone noted, This is rather a day which actually is Yahweh, in which his Godhead will take fully visible form.¹

Thus, it is very difficult to decide whether the day of the Lord in Zephaniah is a historical event, one that happens in history, or an eschatological event, one that ends this age and ushers in the next. The evidence appears to support both positions in Zephaniah. Thus, it is best to see the day as both historical and eschatological, a present and a future reality. That line between historical and eschatological fulfillment is here, as in all the prophets, blurry.² VanGemeren notes in this regard, Though the Lord's acts of judgment take place throughout the history of redemption, each act foreshadows the final judgment when all the doers of evil, corruption, and sin will be absolutely and radically judged and removed from the earth (1:3). Each judgment in history is an intrusion of the eschatological judgment, whether on Israel, Judah, or the nations.³

So when Zephaniah talks about the day of the Lord, to Judah the most immediate fulfillment of this is when Babylon comes against the city of Jerusalem in 586 BC, to execute God’s judgment against the people’s sins. And yet in Zephaniah, there are also several instances where he is looking beyond, toward an end-time day of the Lord of universal, worldwide significance. Zephaniah 1 presents us with both: it starts out with a proclamation of the universal judgment of the Lord, then it focuses in on Judah, then the leaders of Judah, then particular residents of Jerusalem, and then at the very end of the chapter, it broadens out again to mankind universally. In Zephaniah 1:8–13, God’s just anger is directed toward Jerusalem, in anticipation of his wrath against the world (Zephaniah 1:14–18). So the day of the Lord is used to refer to universal and localized, temporary days. Prophets often set near prophecies side-by-side with distant prophecies, telescoping the events without reference to the time that separated the events.