Zechariah 7

¹In 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 .

²Now the people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-melech and their men to entreat the favor of the Lord,

³saying 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 ?

⁴Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me:

⁵Say 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 ?

⁶And when you eat and when you drink , do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?

⁷Were 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 ?

⁸And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah , saying ,

⁹Thus says the Lord of hosts , Render true judgments , show kindness and mercy to one another ,

¹⁰do not oppress the widow , the fatherless , the sojourner , or the poor , and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart .

¹¹But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear .

¹²They 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 .

¹³As I called , and they would not hear , so they called , and I would not hear , says the Lord of hosts ,

¹⁴and 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 .