1: On the fourth day of the ninth month, in the fourth year of the reign of King Darius, GOD's Message again came to Zechariah.
2: The town of Bethel had sent a delegation headed by Sarezer and Regem-Melech to pray for GOD's blessing
3: and to confer with the priests of the Temple of GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, and also with the prophets. They posed this question: "Should we plan for a day of mourning and abstinence next August, the seventieth anniversary of Jerusalem's fall, as we have been doing all these years?"
4: GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies gave me this Message for them,
5: for all the people and for the priests: "When you held days of fasting every fifth and seventh month all these seventy years, were you doing it for me?
6: And when you held feasts, was that for me? Hardly. You're interested in religion, I'm interested in people.
7: "There's nothing new to say on the subject. Don't you still have the message of the earlier prophets from the time when Jerusalem was still a thriving, bustling city and the outlying countryside, the Negev and Shephelah, was populated?
8: [This is the message that GOD gave Zechariah.]
9: Well, the message hasn't changed. GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies said then and says now: Treat one another justly. Love your neighbors. Be compassionate with each other.
10: Don't take advantage of widows, orphans, visitors, and the poor. Don't plot and scheme against one another--that's evil.'
11: "But did your ancestors listen? No, they set their jaws in defiance. They shut their ears.
12: They steeled themselves against GOD's revelation and the Spirit-filled sermons preached by the earlier prophets by order of GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies. And GOD became angry, really angry,
13: because he told them everything plainly and they wouldn't listen to a word he said. "So [this is what GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies said]if they won't listen to me, I won't listen to them.
14: I scattered them to the four winds. They ended up strangers wherever they were. Their "promised land' became a vacant lot--weeds and tin cans and thistles. Not a sign of life. They turned a dreamland into a wasteland."