In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came to
Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, which is Chislev.
Now the people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-melech and
their men to entreat the favor of the LORD, saying to the priests
of the house of the LORD of hosts and the prophets, “Should I weep
and abstain in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?”
Then the word of the LORD of hosts came to me: “Say to all the
people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in
the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it
for me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you
not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? Were not these the
words that the LORD proclaimed by the former prophets, when
Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous, with her cities around her,
and the South and the lowland were inhabited?’”
And the word of the LORD came to Zechariah, saying, “Thus says
the LORD of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy
to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the
sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against
another in your heart.” But they refused to pay attention and
turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might
not hear. They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear
the law and the words that the LORD of hosts had sent by his Spirit
through the former prophets. Therefore great anger came from the
LORD of hosts. “As I called, and they would not hear, so they
called, and I would not hear,” says the LORD of hosts, “and I
scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had
not known. Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one
went to and fro, and the pleasant land was made desolate.”
