Fluent Translation · Read & Reflect
Zechariah 7
A Question About Fasting
In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, in Kislev. The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melech and their men to seek the favor of the LORD, saying to the priests who belonged to the house of the LORD of Hosts and to the prophets, “Should I weep in the fifth month and abstain, as I have done these many years?”
Was It for Me That You Fasted?
Then the word of the LORD of Hosts came to me: “Say to all the people of the land and to the priests: When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? Are these not the words that the LORD proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and at ease, with its cities around it, and when the Negev and the foothills were inhabited?”
Practice Justice and Mercy
Then the word of the LORD came to Zechariah:
“Thus said the LORD of Hosts:
Practice true justice,
and show steadfast love and compassion
to one another.
Do not oppress the widow,
the orphan,
the resident alien,
or the poor;
and do not devise evil
against one another in your hearts.
But they refused to pay attention. They turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears so that they would not hear. They made their hearts like stone so that they would not hear the instruction and the words that the LORD of Hosts had sent by the Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the LORD of Hosts. Just as I called and they would not hear, so they called and I would not hear, says the LORD of Hosts. I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations they had not known. The land was desolate behind them, with no one passing through or returning, and they made the desirable land desolate.”