Chapter
7:1-14
On December 7 of the fourth year of
King Darius’s reign, another message came to Zechariah from the
Lord. The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regemmelech, along
with their men, to seek the Lord’s favor. They were to ask this
question of the prophets and of the priests at the Temple of the Lord
Almighty: "Should we continue to mourn and fast each summer on
the anniversary of the Temple’s destruction, as we have done for so
many years?"
The Lord Almighty sent me this
message: "Say to all your people and your priests, ‘During
those seventy years of exile, when you fasted and mourned in the
summer and at the festival in early autumn, was it really for me that
you were fasting? And even now in your holy festivals, you don’t
think about me but only of pleasing yourselves. Isn’t this the same
message the Lord proclaimed through the prophets years ago when
Jerusalem and the towns of Judah were bustling with people, and the
Negev and the foothills of Judah were populated areas?’"
Then this message came to Zechariah
from the Lord: "This is what the Lord Almighty says: Judge fairly
and honestly, and show mercy and kindness to one another. Do not
oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and poor people. And do not make
evil plans to harm each other.
"Your ancestors would not listen
to this message. They turned stubbornly away and put their fingers in
their ears to keep from hearing. They made their hearts as hard as
stone, so they could not hear the law or the messages that the Lord
Almighty had sent them by his Spirit through the earlier prophets.
That is why the Lord Almighty was so angry with them.
"Since they refused to listen
when I called to them, I would not listen when they called to me, says
the Lord Almighty. I scattered them as with a whirlwind among the
distant nations, where they lived as strangers. Their land became so
desolate that no one even traveled through it. The land that had been
so pleasant became a desert."
