The LORD your God is in your midst,

A victorious warrior.

He will exult over you with joy,

He will be quiet in His love,

He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

—Zephaniah 3:17

Last week we started getting to know the Love of God because I think there is so much more to God’s Love for us than even most Christians know. Sure, there will be plenty of time in eternity for us to experience all the facets of God’s Love we may have missed out on in our earthly lives, but why wait? After all, in Psalm 27:13 (one of my new favorites!) it’s clear that having confidence that we will see the goodness of God in the land of the living can shield us from despair.

So today we’re going to look at another aspect of God’s Love for us—its fierceness and joyfulness. 

A long time ago, when I was still chronically single and felt completely lost in the world of dating—I shudder to admit it—I decided the best thing I could do was to approach dating like I approached anything else I didn’t understand… by studying it.

That’s right. It didn’t occur to me that it might be helpful to just try to broaden my social circle in any way I could, so I bought study material on dating. I’m not saying it was a complete loss. I did learn a lot about men and what they were looking for, and I breathed a sigh of relief every time I found something that resembled me, but there was one thing in particular that caught my attention.

Apparently, men often find women attractive when they display two seemingly opposite characteristics. I’m not talking about someone being happy one moment and sad the next. I’m talking about a woman who is strong and independent but can also be gentle and nurturing. A woman who is adept in business and can handle challenging situations but can then turn around and crack a joke about it. And to be fair I think this probably applies to what women find attractive in men as well.

These contrasting traits show depth of character and are exciting, and that’s what I see happening in today’s verse. There are two different pieces of God’s Love for us demonstrated here that don’t necessarily seem to go together, but there they are, smushed together in one verse, and I find it exciting.

First, we see that God is described as a victorious warrior. The word translated as victorious is a fun one. It doesn’t just mean that God won a battle somewhere. It also refers to deliverance and salvation. So when this verse talks about victory, it’s not a victory achieved for the sake of victory. The idea is that God went to battle on our behalf.

That’s not a particular shock. For those of us who are Christians, we already know about the battle Jesus waged for our souls and won after dying on the cross and rising again so we could have eternal life, but what I want to focus on here is the reality that it was a battle. 

We don’t often focus on that part because the enemy in that battle is invisible, but the fact that God chose to use language associated with battle tells us something—His Love for us is fierce. It’s something we forget because of Jesus’s meekness, but we have to remember that biblical meekness is not weakness; it’s strength under control, and I’d argue that when it comes to defending His people, God doesn’t hold back.

The other thing we see in this verse is how joyful God’s Love is. Each time you see the word joy or the word rejoice in this verse, it’s a different word. It’s almost like He wanted to make sure He painted a full picture of the richness of His joy, so He decided to use as many Hebrew words for joy as He could in one verse.

Then you get to the second to last line and, if you’re anything like me, the word quiet throws you all the way off. But that’s because it’s not the whole picture. This doesn’t mean He’s whispering to Himself or even attempting not to make any noise. It means He’s been struck speechless. 

So let’s put the image together. Someone has threatened the object of God’s Love—us. He’s gone to war and demolished the enemy, and now He’s returning victorious and overjoyed to see His beloved. So overjoyed that He’s occasionally struck speechless.

It’s strange to think of God’s Love like that. In some ways, it feels too human, and in some ways, it feels uncharacteristically…unmeek? When we think of the Love of God, I think we often think of His kindness and gentleness, like when Jesus healed the sick, but I think we should take joy and comfort in the fact that He also overturned tables when they were getting between God and His people because it means we were worth the fight.