| [an error occurred while processing this directive] | NET Bible |
| 1[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 1In King Darius' fourth year, on the fourth day of Kislev, the ninth month, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah. |
| 2[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 2Now the people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melech and their companions to seek the LORD's favor |
| 3[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 3by asking both the priests of the temple of the LORD who rules over all and the prophets, "Should we weep in the fifth month, fasting as we have done over the years?" |
| 4[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 4The word of the LORD who rules over all then came to me, |
| 5[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 5"Speak to all the people and priests of the land as follows: 'When you fasted and lamented in the fifth and seventh months through all these seventy years, did you truly fast for me--for me, indeed? |
| 6[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 6And now when you eat and drink, are you not doing so for yourselves?'" |
| 7[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 7Should you not have obeyed the words that the LORD cried out through the former prophets when Jerusalem was peacefully inhabited and her surrounding cities, the Negev, and the Shephelah were also populated? |
| 8[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 8Again the word of the LORD came to Zechariah: |
| 9[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 9"The LORD who rules over all said, 'Exercise true judgment and show brotherhood and compassion to each other. |
| 10[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 10You must not oppress the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, or the poor, nor should anyone secretly plot evil against his fellow human being.' |
| 11[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 11"But they refused to pay attention, turning away stubbornly and stopping their ears so they could not hear. |
| 12[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 12Indeed, they made their heart as hard as diamond, so that they could not obey the Torah and the other words the LORD who rules over all had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore, the LORD who rules over all had poured out great wrath. |
| 13[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 13"'It then came about that just as I cried out, but they would not obey, so they will cry out, but I will not listen,' the LORD LORD who rules over all had said. |
| 14[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 14Rather, I will sweep them away in a storm into all the nations they are not familiar with.' Thus the land had become desolate because of them, with no one crossing through or returning, for they had made the fruitful land a waste." |
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