Zechariah 7

When Darius had been the emperor for almost four years, on the fourth day of Kislev (which was the ninth month in their calendar), God gave me another message.

The people of the city of Bethel sent two men, Sharezer and Regem-Melech, along with some other men, to consult with God

by asking the priests at God’s temple and the prophets if they should continue their years-long practice of mourning {the anniversary of the destruction of the temple} by fasting during the fifth month. \*

Then God, commander of the angel armies, gave me, Zechariah, a message.

He told me to say this to the priests and, in fact, to everyone in the whole land: “Tell me whom you were honoring when you did not eat but went around in dirty clothing. It was not me you honored in the fifth and seventh months these 70 years.

And when you feasted at my temple, you did it just to have a good time, not to honor me.

This is exactly what I kept telling the former prophets to proclaim to the people, when the people in Jerusalem and the nearby towns were many and prosperous, and when people also lived in the southern Judean wilderness, and in the foothills to the west.” \*

God gave another message to me:

“Tell the people that this is what God, commander of the angel armies, said {to your ancestors}: ‘I told them to do what is just, to act faithfully and mercifully toward each other, in order to honor my covenant with you.

I told them not to oppress widows or orphans or foreigners or poor people. I told them not to even think about doing evil to anyone else.’ \*

But the people refused to obey God. They resisted him. They did not even listen to what he said.

He had given these messages for his Spirit to repeat to the prophets in earlier times. The prophets were meant to speak these messages to the people. But the people were very stubborn; they would not listen to the law of Moses or to any message from God. So God, commander of the angel armies, became very angry with them. \*

In those times, when God, commander of the angel armies, called to the people, they refused to listen. So he said, ‘In exactly the same way, I will refuse to listen when they call to me.

I scattered them among many nations, nations that they had never been to before just as a storm scatters leaves. After they were gone, their own land was empty, with no one living there. No one traveled through it or came back to it, because they have turned it, their most pleasant land, into a wilderness.’” \*