The Prophet Zechariah

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- Chapter 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), Yahweh gave me another message.

The people of the city of Bethel sent two men, Sharezer and Regem-Melek, along with some other men, to the temple of Yahweh, Commander of the angel armies, to request that Yahweh be kind to them.

They also asked the priests at Yahweh’s temple and the prophets this question: “For many years, during the fifth month and during the seventh month of each year, we have mourned and fasted. Should we continue to do that?”

Then Yahweh, Commander of the angel armies, gave me 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. You were not really honoring me, were you?

And when you feasted at my temple, you did it just to have a good time; you did not really intend to honor me, did you?

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.”

Yahweh gave another message to me:

“Tell the people that this is what Yahweh, Commander of the angel armies, says: ’I told you to do what is just, to act kindly and mercifully toward each other, in order to honor my covenant with you.

I told you not to oppress widows or orphans or foreigners or poor people. I said to not even think about doing evil to anyone else.’”

But the people refused to pay attention to what Yahweh had said. They refused to cooperate with him; they refused to 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 Yahweh, Commander of the angel armies, became very angry with them.

In those times, when Yahweh, 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.

And I will scatter them among many nations, nations that they have never been to before. I will scatter them as a storm scatters leaves. After they are gone, their own land will be empty, with no one living there. No one will travel through it and no one will come back to it, because they have turned it, their most pleasant land, into a wilderness.”

In the fourth year of King Darius, the LORD’s word came to Zechariah in the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Chislev.

The people of Bethel sent Sharezer and Regem Melech and their men to entreat the LORD’s favor,

and to speak to the priests of the house of the LORD of Armies and to the prophets, saying, “Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years?”

Then the word of the LORD of Armies came to me, saying,

“Speak to all the people of the land and to the priests, saying, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month for these seventy years, did you at all fast to me, really to me?

When you eat and when you drink, don’t you eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?

Aren’t these the words which the LORD proclaimed by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and its cities around her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited?’”

The LORD’s word came to Zechariah, saying,

“Thus has the LORD of Armies spoken, saying, ‘Execute true judgment, and show kindness and compassion every man to his brother.

Don’t oppress the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart.’

But they refused to listen, and turned their backs, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear.

Yes, they made their hearts as hard as flint, lest they might hear the law and the words which the LORD of Armies had sent by his Spirit by the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the LORD of Armies.

It has come to pass that, as he called and they refused to listen, so they will call and I will not listen,” said the LORD of Armies;

“but I will scatter them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they have not known. Thus the land was desolate after them, so that no man passed through nor returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate.”