Zechariah 7

Justice and Mercy, Not Fasting

7In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah^t on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Kislev.^{u 2}The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melek, together with their men, to entreat^v the Lord^{w 3}by asking the priests of the house of the Lord Almighty and the prophets, “Should I mourn^x and fast in the fifth^y month, as I have done for so many years?”

⁴Then the word of the Lord Almighty came to me: ⁵“Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted^z and mourned in the fifth and seventh^a months for the past seventy years,^b was it really for me that you fasted? ⁶And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves?^{c 7}Are these not the words the Lord proclaimed through the earlier prophets^d when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were at rest^e and prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills^f were settled?’ ”^g

⁸And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah: ⁹“This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice;^h show mercy and compassion to one another.^{i 10}Do not oppress the widow^j or the fatherless, the foreigner^k or the poor.^l Do not plot evil against each other.’^m

¹¹“But they refused to pay attention; stubbornlyⁿ they turned their backs^o and covered their ears.^{p 12}They made their hearts as hard as flint^q and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets.^r So the Lord Almighty was very angry.^s

¹³“ ‘When I called, they did not listen;^t so when they called, I would not listen,’^u says the Lord Almighty.^{v 14}‘I scattered^w them with a whirlwind^x among all the nations, where they were strangers. The land they left behind them was so desolate that no one traveled through it.^y This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.^z’ ”