True Fasting, True Faithfulness
7 1 In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of our Father came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Chislev. 2 Now the people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-melech and their men to plead for our Father's favor, 3 and 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 done for so many years?"
4 Then the word of the Father of heaven's armies came to me:
5 "Say to all the people of the land and to the priests: When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, 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. 6 And when you eat and when you drink, is it not for yourselves that you eat, and for yourselves that you drink? 7 Are these not the very words our Father proclaimed through the earlier prophets, when Jerusalem was settled and at peace, with her surrounding towns, and the Negev and the foothills were inhabited?
8 And the word of our Father came to Zechariah:
9 "This is what the Father of heaven's armies says: Render true justice; show kindness and compassion, one another. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor; and do not plot evil against one another in your hearts.
11 But they refused to listen; they stubbornly turned their backs and covered their ears so they would not hear. 12 They made their hearts as hard as flint, refusing to hear the law and the words that the Father of heaven's armies had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Father of heaven's armies burned with great anger.
13 "And it came about that just as I called and they would not listen, so when they called, I would not listen," says the Father of heaven's armies. 14 "I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations they had not known, and the land was left desolate behind them, so that no one passed through, coming or going. This is how they made the pleasant land a wasteland."