Zechariah 7

Justice and Mercy, Not Fasting

In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah^a on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Kislev.^b The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melek, together with their men, to entreat^c the Lord^d by asking the priests of the house of the Lord Almighty and the prophets, “Should I mourn^e and fast in the fifth^f month, as I have done for so many years?”

Then the word of the Lord Almighty came to me: “Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted^g and mourned in the fifth and seventh^h months for the past seventy years,ⁱ was it really for me that you fasted? And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves?^j Are these not the words the Lord proclaimed through the earlier prophets^k when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were at rest^l and prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills^m were settled?’ ”ⁿ

And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah: “This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice;^o show mercy and compassion to one another.^p Do not oppress the widow^q or the fatherless, the foreigner^r or the poor.^s Do not plot evil against each other.’^t

“But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly^u they turned their backs^v and covered their ears.^w They made their hearts as hard as flint^x and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets.^y So the Lord Almighty was very angry.^z

“ ‘When I called, they did not listen;^a so when they called, I would not listen,’^b says the Lord Almighty.^c ‘I scattered^d them with a whirlwind^e among all the nations, where they were strangers. The land they left behind them was so desolate that no one traveled through it.^f This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.^g’ ”