And you, O seacoast, shall be pastures: the Philistine cities will be so completely destroyed that animals will graze on their sites. In English it sounds odd to address the seacoast directly, and so Good News Translation restructures in order to continue addressing the Philistines who lived there. This gives the more natural sentence “Your land by the sea will become open fields.” This can also be rendered “… will become bush (or, forest)” or “… will become land where sheep graze.”

Meadows for shepherds and folds for flocks: the word translated meadows is of uncertain meaning. These fields or meadows are of course places with abundant grass rather than plowed fields for growing crops. New English Bible and Good News Translation translate meadows as “huts.” The Septuagint translator apparently read this word at an earlier point in the sentence, instead of seacoast, and understood it as a proper name, Crete. This tradition is followed by New American Bible and New English Bible. The overall meaning of the verse is much the same either way. Folds or “sheep pens” (Good News Translation) are the enclosed areas where sheep can be kept safe at night.

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. & Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on the Book of Zephaniah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1989. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .