Zechariah 7

1 When Darius had been the emperor for almost four years, on December 7, Yahweh gave me [another] message.

And it came about in the fourth year of King Darius, that the word of the Lord came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month Chislev.

2 The people of Bethel [city] sent two men, Sharezer and Regem-Melech, along with some other men, [to the temple of Yahweh, the Commander of the armies of angels, ] to request that Yahweh bless them.

Now they of Beth-el had sent Sharezer and Regem-melech to make a request for grace from the Lord,

3 They also asked the priests at Yahweh’s temple and the prophets [this question]: “For many years, during the fifth month [and during the seventh month of each year], we have mourned and (fasted/abstained from eating food). Should we [continue to do that]?”

And to say to the priests of the house of the Lord of armies and to the prophets, Am I to go on weeping in the fifth month, separating myself as I have done in past years?

4 Then the Commander of the armies of angels gave me a message.

Then the word of the Lord of armies came to me, saying

5 [He said], “Tell [RHQ] the priests and all the [other] people of Judah that during the past 70 years, when they mourned and fasted during the fifth and seventh months [of each year], it was not really [RHQ] me, [Yahweh], whom they were [honoring].

Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, When you went without food and gave yourselves to grief in the fifth and the seventh months for these seventy years, did you ever do it because of me?

6 And when they ate and drank, it was really [RHQ] to [benefit] themselves.

And when you are feasting and drinking, are you not doing it only for yourselves?

7 That is certainly [RHQ] what I continually told the former prophets to proclaim [to the people], when Jerusalem and the nearby towns were prosperous and filled with people, and people [also] lived in the desert area to the south and in the foothills [to the west].”

Are not these the words which the Lord said to you by the earlier prophets, when Jerusalem was full of people and wealth, and the towns round about her and the South and the Lowland were peopled?

8 Yahweh gave another message to me, saying

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

9 “[Tell the people that] this is what the Commander of the armies of angels says: ‘Do what is just/right, and act kindly and mercifully toward each other.

This is what the Lord of armies has said: Let your judging be upright and done in good faith, let every man have mercy and pity for his brother:

10 Do not (oppress/treat cruelly) widows or orphans or foreigners or poor people. Do not even think about doing evil to anyone else.’”

Do not be hard on the widow, or the child without a father, on the man from a strange country, or on the poor; let there be no evil thought in your heart against your brother.

11 But the people refused to pay attention [to what Yahweh said]. They turned their backs [to him], and put their hands over their ears in order to not hear [what he said].

But they would not give attention, turning their backs and stopping their ears from hearing;

12 They were very stubborn [IDM], and they would not listen to the laws [that God gave to Moses] or the messages that the Commander of the armies of angels told his Spirit to give to the prophets who were now dead. So the Commander of the armies of angels was very angry.

And they made their hearts like the hardest stone, so that they might not give ear to the law and the words which the Lord of armies had said by the earlier prophets: and there came great wrath from the Lord of armies.

13 The Commander of the armies of angels says, “When I called/spoke [to the people], they would not listen. So when they called/prayed [to me], I did not listen.

And it came about that as they would not give ear to his voice, so I would not give ear to their voice, says the Lord of armies:

14 And I caused them to be scattered among many nations, where they were strangers. [It was as though] [MET] a whirlwind [picked them up and carried them away from their country]. The country/land that they [were forced to] leave was ruined, with the result that no one could [live there or even] travel through it. [It was previously] a delightful land, but they caused it to become (desolate/like a desert).”

But with a storm-wind I sent them in flight among all the nations of whom they had no knowledge. So the land was waste after them, so that no man went through or came back: for they had made waste the desired land.