Zephaniah 3:17

There is a verse that has been very comforting to me during the past two years. Zephaniah 3:17 "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."  I struggle experientially to know the love of God but His Word states emphatically that the Lord loves His own. I have heard that the picture here is of God with His child tucked securely between His shoulder blades. Also the child who is snuggled upon His chest.  As I view the pictures of a newborn son of some friends, I am better reminded of this verse. Dad has the baby close to him and smiling. I think it captures the verse well.

John Gill writes of this verse:

...there is a pleonasm of joy in Christ's heart towards his people, and so a redundancy in his expression of it; he rejoices with joy, and joys with singing; which shows how delighted he is with his people, as they are his chosen, redeemed, and called ones; as they have his own righteousness upon them, and his own grace in them; they are his "Hephzibah", in whom he delights; his "Beulah", to whom he is married; and it is his love of complacency and delight, which is the source of all the grace and glory he bestows upon them.