Zechariah
7
- In the fourth year of King Darius, the word
of the LORD came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month
of Kislev.
- The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and
Regem-Melech, together with their men, to entreat the LORD
- by asking the priests of the house of the
LORD Almighty and the prophets, "Should I mourn and fast in the fifth
month, as I have done for so many years ?"
- Then the word of the LORD Almighty came
to me:
- "Ask all the people of the land and
the priests, 'When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months
for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted ?
- And when you were eating and drinking, were
you not just feasting for yourselves ?
- Are these not the words the LORD proclaimed
through the earlier prophets when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were
at rest and prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills were settled
?'"
- And the word of the LORD came again to Zechariah:
- "This is what the LORD Almighty says:
'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.
- Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless,
the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.'
- "But they refused to pay attention;
stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears.
- They made their hearts as hard as flint
and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had
sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the LORD Almighty was
very angry.
- "'When I called, they did not listen;
so when they called, I would not listen,' says the LORD Almighty.
- 'I scattered them with a whirlwind among
all the nations, where they were strangers. The land was left so desolate
behind them that no one could come or go. This is how they made the pleasant
land desolate.'"
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