Zechariah 7

7 ¹In King Darius's fourth year, our Father's word came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, Chislev. ²The people of Bethel sent Sharezer and Regem-melech and their men to plead for our Father's favor, ³and to ask the priests of the house of the Father of heaven's armies, and the prophets, "Should I weep and fast in the fifth month, as I have these many years?"

⁴Then the word of the Father of heaven's armies came to me:

⁵Say to all the people of the land and the priests: When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted? ^a a v5 The fifth-month fast commemorated Babylon's burning of Solomon's temple; the seventh-month fast commemorated the assassination of Gedaliah, Judah's last governor. ⁶When you eat and drink, isn't it for yourselves that you eat and drink?

⁷Aren't these the very words our Father proclaimed through the earlier prophets, when Jerusalem and her surrounding towns were settled and at peace, and the Negev and foothills were inhabited?

⁸And the word of our Father came to Zechariah:

⁹What the Father of heaven's armies says: Render true justice; show kindness and compassion to one another. ¹⁰Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, or the poor; and do not plot evil against one another in your hearts.

¹¹But they refused to listen, stubbornly turned their backs, and covered their ears so they wouldn't hear. ¹²They made their hearts as hard as flint, refusing to hear the law and the words the Father of heaven's armies had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So great anger came from the Father of heaven's armies.

¹³"Just as I called and they would not listen, so when they called I would not listen," says the Father of heaven's armies. ¹⁴I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations they had not known. The land was left desolate behind them, with no one passing through, coming or going. This is how they made the pleasant land a wasteland.