Zechariah 7
1 In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, Kislev.
2 Bethel sent Sharezer and Regem-melech, along with his men, to seek the LORD’s favor.
3 They spoke to the priests of the house of the LORD of Hosts and to the prophets: “Should I weep in the fifth month and abstain, as I have done for so many years?”
4 The word of the LORD of Hosts came to me:
5 “Say to all the people of the land and to the priests: ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months throughout these seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?
6 And when you eat and drink, are you not the ones eating and drinking?
7 Are these not the words the LORD proclaimed through the earlier prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and at peace, with its surrounding towns, and the Negev and the Shephelah were inhabited?’”
8 The word of the LORD came to Zechariah:
9 “This is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Judge with true justice; show faithful love and compassion, each of you to your brother.
10 Do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, or the poor; and do not plot evil in your heart against your brother.’”
11 But they refused to pay attention, turned their backs stubbornly, and made their ears too dull to hear.
12 They made their hearts hard as flint so they would not hear the Law or the words that the LORD of Hosts sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So great anger came from the LORD of Hosts.
13 “Just as he called and they did not listen, so they will call and I will not listen,” says the LORD of Hosts.
14 I scattered them like a whirlwind among all the nations they did not know, and the land was left desolate behind them, with no one coming or going. So they turned a desirable land into a wasteland.
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