Zechariah 7

A Question About Fasting

1 In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Kislev.

2 Now the people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-melech with their men to seek the favor of the LORD,

3 asking the priests of the house of the LORD of armies and the prophets, “Should we keep mourning and fasting in the fifth month like we have done for so many years?”

True Fasting

4 Then the word of the LORD of armies came to me, saying,

5 “Ask all the people of the land and the priests: When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for these seventy years, was it really for Me that you fasted,

6 And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just doing it for yourselves,

7 Are not these the words the LORD proclaimed through the earlier prophets when Jerusalem and the towns around her were secure and prosperous, and the Negev and the foothills were inhabited?”

Israel’s Disobedience

8 Then the word of the LORD came to Zechariah, saying,

9 “This is what the LORD of armies says: Judge with true justice, show faithful love and compassion to one another.

10 Do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, or the poor, and do not plan evil against one another in your hearts.”

11 But they refused to pay attention. They turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing.

12 They made their hearts as hard as flint so they would not hear the law and the words the LORD of armies had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets. So great wrath came from the LORD of armies.

13 “Just as I called and they would not listen, so when they called I would not listen,” says the LORD of armies.

14 “I scattered them with a storm wind among all the nations they did not know, and the land was left so desolate behind them that no one traveled through it. They made the pleasant land a desolation.”