3.6.3 Lexical cohesion: repetition
Zephaniah, as would be expected in a text of the prophetic genre, uses repetition frequently in an eloquent rhetorical style which produces a highly cohesive text. We will
look at just a few examples of this. This will also strengthen our argument for the text being an integral unit rather than being pieced together at a later date.
In 1:2 the second word of the oracle ט ֵ֜ז ָׅ ‘I will bring to an end’ is taken up and
repeated twice in 1:3 to connect the summary header with the details which follow. Then in 1:3 a word within the same semantic domain
֣ ִתּ ַם ְא ִ ְ ‘and I will cut off’ picks up the thread and carries it through to 1:4 taking it from applying to the generic ‘humankind’ to
the specific ‘the remnant of the Baal and the name of the pagan priests with the priests’. This verb occurs several times, not only in this chapter but also in chapter 3,
giving the overall text strong cohesion. The occurrences are as follows:
1:3
֣ ִתּ ַם ְא ִ ְ ‘and I will cut off’
humankind
1:4
ִ֞תּ ַם ְא ִ ְ ‘and I will cut off’
the remnant of the Baal…
1:11
ؕ ֖ת ְם ְאִו ‘they will be cut off’
the weighers of silver
3:6
ִתּ֣ ַם ְא ִ
‘
I will cut off’ nations
3:7
ת֣ ֵם ִָؚ־ׅ ֹֽב ְ ‘and it will not be cut off’ its dwelling As with the day of YHWH, it can be noted that the same vocabulary occurs in
chapters 1 and 3, but not in chapter 2, where the supposed addressee is different and therefore different vocabulary is required as would be appropriate for that audience.
4 Intertextuality
As Zephaniah has so much material from other sources, we cannot avoid the subject of intertextuality, although we cannot explore all the references as Zephaniah has
allusions to other books in almost every section. We agree with Berlin that it is important to take note of this textual world
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as it must have been known by the first audience to be rhetorically effective.
No discourse ever occurs in a vacuum. There is always a cultural context, a historical context, a social context, a geographical context and a literary context or oral
tradition to which the speaker or writer will make reference to engage his readers or hearers. If we ignore these contexts, we lose vital pieces of information about the
discourse and we might miss the emotive impact that using such known information would have had. ‘Originality is not always a matter of what a person can create himself,
but also, and as often, of how he uses material already present.’
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Berlin, Zephaniah, 13.
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Kapelrud, The Message, 55.
The Soviet philosopher and linguist, Mikhail Bakhtin, writing about the history of the novel in 1934-5, first spoke about the ‘dialogic’ properties of texts and the ways in
which multiple ‘voices’ ways of talking are transformed and re-used each time a new text is written. The French scholar Julia Kristeva 1986 later coined the term
‘intertextuality’ for the ways in which texts refer to and build on other texts.
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If we look at places where Zephaniah has borrowed from other texts, it will help us, at least partly, reconstruct the mental representation the original audience would
probably have had and help make the text more coherent to us. Zephaniah, as a skilful orator, chose to allude to such texts for a purpose, and we need to be alert to the
connections people may have made in their minds when certain images were invoked. To mention every allusion would be a whole study in itself, but we will focus on a few key
texts.
4.1 Creation and Uncreation