1   The word of the Lord came to Zechariah in the fourth year of the reign of King Darius, on the fourth day of Kislev, the ninth month. 2   Bethel-sharezer sent Regem-melech with his men to seek the favour of the Lord. 3   They were to say to the priests in the house of the Lord of Hosts and to the prophets, ‘Am I to lament and abstain in the fifth month as I have done for so many years?’ 4   Then the word of the Lord of Hosts came to me: 5   Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, When you fasted and lamented in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it indeed in my honour that you fasted? 6    7   And when you ate and drank, was it not to please yourselves? Was it not this that the Lord proclaimed through the prophets of old, while Jerusalem was populous and peaceful, as were the cities round her, and the Negeb and the Shephelah?

8    9   The word of the Lord came to Zechariah: These are the words of the Lord of Hosts: Administer true justice, show loyalty and compassion to one another, 10   do not oppress the orphan and the widow, the alien and the poor, do not contrive any evil one against another. 11   But they refused to listen, they turned their backs on me in defiance, they stopped their

Joy and gladness in the coming age ears and would not hear. 12   Their hearts were adamant; they refused to accept instruction and all that the Lord of Hosts had taught them by his spirit through the prophets of old; and they suffered under the anger of the Lord of Hosts. 13   As they did not listen when I ^note called, so I did not listen when they called, 14   says the Lord of Hosts, and I drove them out among all the nations to whom they were strangers, leaving their land a waste behind them, so that no one came and went. Thus they made their pleasant land a waste.

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