“The men settled in complacency”
And at that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish the men settled in complacency, who say to themselves, 'The LORD will do nothing, either good or bad.' (Zephaniah 1:12 BSB)
What it sounds like today
God simply looking around with lights for smug people.
The cultural key
Two vivid pictures hide in this verse. First, God 'searching Jerusalem with lamps' evokes a careful, house-to-house hunt, a man with an oil lamp peering into every dark corner and cellar to root out what is hidden; no complacent sinner will escape notice. Second, 'settled in complacency' is, in Hebrew, a winemaking metaphor: the men are 'thickened' or 'congealed on their dregs.' Good wine was poured off its sediment (its lees or dregs) to keep it fresh; wine left sitting undisturbed on the dregs grew thick, syrupy, and spoiled. These men are that unracked wine, so long undisturbed by any judgment that they have gone stale and sludgy in their smugness, muttering that God 'will do nothing, either good or bad', that He is irrelevant. So God will take up a lamp and hunt out the settled sediment of the city. Jeremiah uses the same wine image of complacent Moab (48:11). A modern reader sees a search for smug folk; the first hearers heard spoiled wine and a lamp-lit manhunt.
Recovered meaning
God pledges a lamp-lit, house-to-house hunt for the complacent, who are pictured as wine gone thick and stale from sitting undisturbed on its dregs. Untroubled by judgment, they had decided God does nothing, so He comes searching for them.